Managing Organizational Behavior 2nd Edition by Timothy Baldwin,Bill Bommer,Robert Rubin

Exercise 12

Influencing Without Formal Authority
You are the leader on a marketing project that requires a great deal of graphic design and production work to be successful. You have design people in the firm but they do not formally report to you and seem to have little urgency to get your work done. You are irritated by their lack of help and know they are not nearly as busy as they let on, but you have no authority to tell them what to do or threaten them with anything they care about. You are reluctant to go over their heads to their boss out of fear such a move would alienate them and compromise the level of effort and quality they would ultimately bring to the project.
To meet deadlines, you need some of the work done within a month. How might you get the graphics folks energized to complete your work? Are there any specific tactics you could use to get them moving? Are there any common but counterproductive tactics you should definitely avoid?