Influence Without Authority Starts with Observation
Finally putting my anthropology degree to good use: navigating company cultures and pushing through blockers by seeing systems clearly.
TL;DR
If your strategy involves dramatic meeting energy and hoping influence just happens, that's certainly one approach. Mine is quieter and more effective: start small, prove something that moves revenue, recruit people who are genuinely excited, then build enough gravity that scaling becomes the obvious next move. Less table flipping. More system shaping.
Jane Goodall didn’t begin her research by charging into the forest and telling the chimps how to do their thing.
She didn’t assert dominance. She didn’t interrupt the ecosystem. She didn’t try to reorganize the hierarchy.
She observed. She watched social structures form. Noticed power dynamics. Learned patterns of trust. Understood who influenced whom.
Only after becoming familiar did she move closer, slowly and intentionally, until she wasn’t an intruder, but a trusted presence.
Influence without authority works the same way.
This is the anthropology mindset to consider in work.
You don’t enter an organization and announce change. You study its ecosystem. Its rituals. Its informal leaders. Its unspoken histories. Its survival instincts.
Not because work is a jungle. But because culture is.
My background in anthropology taught me that systems reveal themselves before they accept change.
At the Director level, your impact extends beyond your reporting structure.
You influence marketing decisions. You influence engineering tradeoffs. You influence roadmap priorities.
But you don’t control them.
Influence isn’t charisma. It’s observation, systems thinking, and strategic proof.
Observation Creates Leverage
Influence starts with noticing patterns others accept as normal.
In one product area, my team identified persistent drop-off in a key onboarding flow.
We could have escalated it broadly. Scheduled cross-team meetings. Requested sweeping redesigns.
Instead, we studied it.
Where exactly were users disengaging? What UX patterns were working and not working? How did this correlate to activation and potentially revenue?
The story was clear.
Rather than pursuing a large-scale mandate, we partnered with one aligned stakeholder and redesigned that experience. Completion increased significantly. Product adoption and revenue followed.
That single proof point changed the conversation.
We didn’t need to persuade broadly. We had evidence.
Once one leader could point to measurable UX-to-product-adoption impact, scaling improvements across the product area became momentum-driven rather than debate-driven.
Observation created leverage. Proof created influence.
Influence Moves Sideways Before It Moves Up
The Voice of the User initiative didn’t begin with executive sponsorship. It began with misalignment hiding in plain sight.
Product teams wanted richer customer insights but had little time to sift through fragmented data. Machine learning engineers were interested in what was technically possible but needed natural language data to power smarter models. The product content team was already telling the story of documentation as the product’s spine. And I wanted one thing: to scale user empathy so more decisions were grounded in real user behavior.
The ingredients were there. They just weren’t connected.
Looking across external forums, social channels, support tickets, and GitHub threads, I saw a goldmine of unstructured insight.
Instead of launching a formal initiative, I started small. A few passionate individual contributors. Shared curiosity. A side-hustle energy.
We began aggregating signals. Synthesizing patterns. Testing internal appetite.
Momentum built because the people involved weren’t assigned, they were invested.
What started as a coalition became an enterprise-level, custom-built feedback system designed for Cloudflare’s scale.
By the time it formalized, it wasn’t an idea. It was infrastructure.
Influence doesn’t always start with authority. Sometimes it starts with seeing the ecosystem more clearly than anyone else and building the bridge.
Be a Yes Partner, Strategically
Influence also grows when you are known as someone who expands possibility.
At one point, I was asked to take on responsibility for improving our YouTube presence. It wasn’t in my scope. I had never led video strategy. But I saw it as an opportunity.
I researched growth patterns. Studied YouTube optimization strategy. Analyzed competitor positioning.
Through that project, I built deep working relationships with:
- Developer relations teams creating technical video content
- Product leaders invested in distribution
- Marketing partners managing adjacent channels
The YouTube work mattered. But the relationships mattered more.
Taking on adjacent initiatives thoughtfully positions you as a multiplier, not a silo. Those side quests often become future bridges when larger initiatives require cross-functional trust.
Being a yes partner isn’t about overextending. It’s about recognizing opportunities to build durable alignment.
Influence compounds when people experience you as someone who helps their work move forward.
Add Deliberate Friction
Not every idea should be rushed.
There are always projects you could implement quietly and quickly. But stopping to invite input, especially from those affected, builds ownership.
Early conversations surface resistance before it calcifies. Stakeholders feel included rather than surprised. Momentum becomes shared.
Intentional friction prevents silent opposition. It turns progress into a coalition.
The Director-Level Shift
Influence without authority isn’t persuasion. It’s ecosystem awareness.
It’s:
- Studying culture before proposing change
- Building proof before seeking scale
- Identifying energy before assigning effort
- Connecting fragmented incentives
- Turning side projects into relationship capital
Managers execute within structure. Leadership shapes systems across it.
Like Jane Goodall, you don’t enter the forest announcing authority. You observe. You connect. You build trust. You move with intention.
Eventually, you’re no longer an outsider trying to influence the system. You’re part of how the system evolves.