Do you know the HIPPO? not the hippopotamus animal, it is a different HIPPO, a HIPPO is an acronym that stands for a “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion” or “Highest Paid Person in Organization”, whether you work in a small or gigantic enterprise, you will always find a HIPPO (aka CEO) around, chances are you will be invited to a meeting to take a critical decision that may impact your project or sometimes the entire organization, and so the decision will hit your project either positively or negatively. in this post you will learn 5 ways to influence a HIPPO.

A HIPPO requires certain things to be considered before getting into a discussion with him, those things will highly depend on the HIPPO’s leadership style ( check my article about Marketecture to learn more about Leadership Styles), some HIPPOs are autocratic while others may be democratic,  you have to beware of autocratic HIPPOs as they can have big impact on your project, mostly a negative impact, and you will need to know how to protect your project from such a HIPPO, the following 5 ways will work with HIPPOs regardless of the leadership style they have.

1. Vision & Mission

There is nothing the HIPPO likes to hear better than the company’s vision & mission, often times the vision and mission are coined by the HIPPO and his fellows, you will need to be strategic when dealing with a HIPPO by always citing the vision & mission of the company, and relating the discussion or the issue under discussion to the vision & mission of the company, you can use the following to convey your point or change them a little bit to fit the situation

I am not able to see how this new project is related to our vision & mission, I think it will not fit in our portfolio

It is a big risk to pull resources from project 1 and move them to project 2, because project 1 is very strategic to establish OUR company as the leader in mobile phone software, and that has always been a core value of OUR organization

2. Benchmarking

A HIPPO will hardly believe you unless you benchmark to rivals and share their success stories, once you mention a competitor’s name, the HIPPO will always get tempted to listen to you, it is also very likely you will be asked about the source of the information you refer to, and so you will need to be ready with the answer, as a strategic player in your organization, you absolutely need to keep abreast of your company’s competitors, and here your real value will be crystal clear to everyone in your organization not only the HIPPO.

3. Use Numbers

When you try to influence a HIPPO, you will need to back your viewpoint with facts, and no better facts than numbers, you should be specific and use quantitative metrics, do not “say if we do not secure the required resources in order to finish the project on time (for example before the new year), we will lose too much money”, if you use qualitative expressions, this will get the HIPPO to ask you about quantities, and so it is better to be ready before you speak, it is better to say:

If we do not secure the required resources to finish the project on time, and specifically before 2010, this will make us lose the entire investment that is $500,000

Figures will grab the HIPPO’s attention and consequently will make him listen to you with more attention, also it will be even better to use an eye catching presentation, or read from a printed paper, that will give the impression that you have done your homework before stepping in the meeting room.

4. Lessons Learned

Each and every organization has Lessons Learned, you may mistakenly think that no Lessons Learned in your company, it is not really no Lessons Learned are there, it is about people do not have insight to see Lessons Learned, and that is really what distinguishes the good project manager from the average one, make it a habit; every day watch every colleague, project, incident, etc. and learn from those, eventually you will accumulate a big number of lessons which will translate to experience and insight. While dealing with a HIPPO emphasize your point with Lessons Learned from previous projects, initiatives, failures, successes, etc. however you will have to be cautious when you speak about failure and bad stuff, those may bring a bad memory to a HIPPO, because not all humans take failure as a step towards success, so you may need to prettify Lessons Learned, the bottom line is that, when you support your viewpoint with Lessons Learned, this will grab the HIPPO’s attention, as no one will ever want to repeat same mistakes.

5. Show Ownership

When you get into a meeting with a HIPPO, usually the agenda will be either to take a decision or to resolve an issue, in order to take a decision all the information required will have to be available, however that may not be the case, and so another meeting will need to be rescheduled until all the information required to take the decision is gathered, while so many people will be present, not everyone will express his willingness to own the research or the whole point of discussion, and here comes your opportunity, you can promise to dig in the whole thing and gather all required information, at that time the HIPPO will trust your judgement and always listen to you, indeed ownership is always a genuine trait of the good project manager.