Welcome to Edition #80 of Did You Know? (DYK), the weekly newsletter by Gorick Ng, Harvard career adviser and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Unspoken Rules, where we deconstruct the untold story of how someone (or something) became successful—and what you can do to follow in their footsteps.
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Did You Know? Mobilize, then persuade!
→ Read time: 5 min
Your success story this week
Did you know? Elections are won by persuading swing voters and mobilizing core supporters.
The U.S. presidential election just wrapped up. And, in classic Gorick fashion, I found a career lesson for the rest of us.
When we think of elections, we typically think of two (or more) candidates trying to convince the public to vote for them.
This perception is only half right. You see, there are 3 groups of voters in any election:
- Your supporters
- Your non-supporters
- Your undecided voters
As a candidate, you have 3 paths that you can take. You could:
- Fire up your base (i.e., convince those who already support you to vote for you)
- Persuade the non-supporters (i.e., convince those who don’t support you to change their minds and vote for you over their favorite candidate)
- Win over the undecideds (i.e., convince those who don’t yet support anyone to vote for you over the other candidate)
What’s the winning formula?
- Lock in your supporters
- Win over the undecided voters
- Forget about the non-supporters
Why? Because, like anything in life, you have limited time and resources. You need to pick your battles. This means starting with what’s easiest and most likely to work.
Your supporters already support you at heart. All you need to do now is turn their support into action. This is easier than convincing someone to go from not supporting anyone to supporting you (and then taking the extra step to vote for you)—and it’s absolutely easier than convincing someone to go from supporting someone else to supporting you.
You might even say that this is why Barack Obama beat John McCain in 2018, why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016, and why Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020.
In the case of Obama vs. McCain, Obama had a base that was both large and passionate. So, he doubled down, “put an army” of 6 million volunteers to work, and won (and even won over 66% of voters under the age of 30—a record breaker).
In the case of Clinton vs. Trump, Clinton took the opposite of Obama’s double-down approach. Her campaign assumed that the “Obama coalition” of young and minority voters who supported Obama would automatically vote for her, only to realize too late that “the enthusiasm Obama kindled among voters was not transferable [to Clinton].” Instead, she (a Democrat) went after “college-educated white women” who were “Republican-leaning”—and lost.
In the case of Trump vs. Biden, Biden’s campaign saw that Trump had turned off undecided voters, went after them, and won.
Of course, elections are complex—so it’s impossible to explain a certain outcome using a single argument alone. Nevertheless, the lesson remains: You may be able to neglect your opponents’ supporters, but you cannot neglect your own supporters. And once you’ve secured your base, it’s time to branch out.
What does this mean for you? The next time that you need to convince a group to do something (whether it’s to adopt your idea or to pick you over someone else for a promotion) remember electoral politics—and just how important it is to spend your time wisely.
Your career strategy this week
Did you know? Mobilize, then persuade!
You may not work in politics, but the lessons of elections are nevertheless relevant no matter where you take your career.
Consider a promotion. Algorithms don’t (yet) decide whether you should get promoted—people do. And where you have people you have, well, politics.
Unless you’re the only option and unless you report to the company owner, chances are that your promotion will be decided by a committee. The people on this committee may be high up, but just because they’re high up doesn’t make them immune to human biases.
This means that all else equal, they’ll probably pick the person they trust most, the person they know best, and the person they most relate to. (Sounds familiar? It’s the Three C’s of Competence, Commitment, and Compatibility.)
When it comes to promotions, most people—like my working-class single mom—simply put their heads down, do the hard work, and hope that their hard work will speak for itself.
Meanwhile, someone else is building relationships with these committee members so that, when the time comes, that committee member is speaking up on their behalf and making sure they get picked.
How do you catch up to people like that? Try filling in the following blanks:
(1) Lock in your supporters: “Let’s meet with _______ and make sure they’re aware of my goals, remember my contributions, and think highly of me.”
- I.e., Identify your supporters—and make sure you’ve secured their vote.
(2) Win over the undecided voters: “Let’s be friendly with _______ and make sure that they at least know that I exist and maybe even find me not annoying.”
- I.e., Identify your undecideds—and see how far you can go with them.
(3) Forget about the non-supporters: “Let’s not waste time with _______ since they already have their favorite candidate—and it isn’t me.”
- I.e., Identify your non-supporters—and forget about them.
This isn’t just for promotions, by the way.
If you’re trying to get a coffee chat with a future potential mentor, start by asking someone who already really likes you.
Or, if you’re preparing to present a big idea in a meeting, securing supporters ahead of time from those who will be in the room—and who already support you—can maximize your odds of success.
I know it because I’ve experienced it: I know this because when I was trying to launch The Unspoken Rules, I naively thought that surely everyone and their cat would love my work (see below: 4 things I can do that might be useful to you). But no—my biggest supporters were fellow first gens who know how important it is to demystify the unspoken rules.
The undecided voters? These are the people who are already avid readers of business books.
The non-supporters? People who have a wind at their back and who don’t think the book would be useful.
I thought my audience would be “everyone” when I, too, ended up getting the most love from my core supporters.
Mobilize, then persuade!
Gorick
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