Jenoir Client Spotlight: Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association – IC20 Online Master Class

By Dirk Schlimm

Eminent teamwork expert, John Katzenbach, shares three insights about teamwork that are worth repeating: (1) teamwork is not about team building, it is about performance; (2) teamwork happens across departments and hierarchies; and (3) the most ambitious goals can only be achieved through teamwork. If Katzenbach is right, and I believe he is, teamwork has never been more important: With the massive upheaval brought on by COVID-19, working together well is not just a nice idea, it is an imperative.

Times of crisis are when leaders show what they are made of. Winston Churchill, a long-time political outsider, led England through the dark times of WWII promising nothing but blood, sweat and tears; Rudi Giuliani, first perceived as rigid and self-righteous, won praise for uniting New Yorkers in the aftermath of 9/11; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, criticized equally on the left and on the right, was the one who reassured Americans during the anxieties of the Great Depression.

Special thanks to Michael P.J. McKendry for this blog entry. It is part of the IPP 2.0 Blog Series, which revisits the “rules” introduced in Dirk’s book Influencing Powerful People and invites experts from various sectors to share their perspective on the topic. Michael is a recently retired executive with almost 30 years of diverse legal and business experience within multinational corporations and a large law firm.

I recently retired from a position as VP Corporate Services, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary at an industry leading international manufacturing company. Prior to that I worked at a leading global consumer products company and prior to that at a large law firm in downtown Toronto. For close to 30 years I came into contact with clients (both external and internal) who were often powerful in any number of ways, including those who were: important within the organization in which I was employed; important within society; superiors within the organization; powerful and/or domineering personalities; entrepreneurs who ran their own businesses; political figures; or even stubborn and headstrong individuals that could be intimidating to deal with as a client in either a law firm or a corporate setting.

Powerful people, especially those of the larger than life variety, do not accept the status quo. They are driven to influence, disrupt, and shape the world around them; sometimes they “make” history. But power does not exist in a vacuum. Any era has its own irresistible currents that provide the context in which powerful people operate; these forces will empower some and obstruct others. Thus, understanding the times is critical - both for powerful people themselves and those seeking to influence them.

A little more than 10 years ago I started organized research into a topic that had been a preoccupation of mine for a large part of my professional career: How to work with and influence powerful people. The outcome of this venture was the publication on Influencing Powerful People (IPP) in 2011 and 16 “rules” of IPP engagement.