There is an old African fable which has entered the lexicon of some bureaucracies and is known as “Zanzibar time.” The premise of the fable is fairly simple. A retired sea captain lives on the island of Zanzibar. He owns a fine chronometer reputed to always keep perfect timing. This was a great benefit to other local sea captains who set their chronometers by it and subsequently navigated happily along the coast, more or less.
In order to ensure the accuracy of his timepiece, the retired sea captain was in the habit of each month visiting a respected watchmaker in a town on the mainland. As luck would have it, the watchmaker kept his own, highly accurate, chronometer on display in his shop window. Everyone in the town set their clocks by the watchmaker’s chronometer, and each month before their usual lunch and discussion on town and island matters, the sea captain too would adjust his chronometer as necessary.
One day a curious missionary asked the watchmaker how he managed to ensure the accuracy of his chronometer. The watchmaker replied, “Happily, there lives on the island of Zanzibar a retired sea captain. Each month he does me the great favour of bringing his chronometer into my shop and after a leisurely lunch, I adjust my timepiece to his. In all the years I have known him, neither my chronometer nor his has ever varied by as much as a second.”
A quaint story, which reveals some pertinent points. The townsfolk and the other sea captains were perfectly aligned in their thinking and routine in their practice of setting the time. The retired sea captain could be commended for routinely seeking technical assistance to keep his chronometer accurate. Similarly, the watchmaker might well expect that a retired sea captain would be an unimpeachable source of knowledge on matters of time, tide and navigation; the stock-in-trade of a master mariner. The story doesn’t reveal what the missionary did having discovered “Zanzibar Time” but it does point to his curiosity as the key to developing greater understanding.
Every organisation has its own particular set of influencers, and many are defined by assumptions of professional norms and social status. Industry commentators, financial analysts and the media are traditionally important influencers, yet many business executives recognise that they have limited, if any, processes in place to truly develop, manage and measure their advice.
Research indicates that consumers and buyers increasingly look toward key individuals or small groups with specific knowledge for critical information and to broader media or interest groups to confirm their opinion. Simply relying on what someone else has said, without an understanding of the context or the source of the information, is unlikely to yield consistently wise decisions in the longer term.
Influencer Relationship Management (IRM) is somewhere between an art and a science. It relies on process, research, ranking and discernment. What makes information credible is strong research and what makes someone an influencer is ‘believability’. An effective IRM programme will identify at least four categories of influence:
- The initial influencers – likely to be those who make the most impact; first to raise an issue and to set an agenda
- The ultimate influencers – those individuals or small groups who exercise the most positive influence over buyers and decision-makers. They confirm an opinion or set it into context
- The determined detractors – those individuals or small groups who exert a strong negative influence over buyers or decision-makers
- The key target influencers– those individuals who make the final purchasing decisions or take the final action.
Influencing the influencers is not a new concept in public relations and it continues to evolve. It is a function of developing credible contacts and determining the context of the information they present. Reviewing an organisation’s IRM is certainly worth thinking about – unless of course everyone is quite happy working to “Zanzibar Time.” |
