Doing great work isn’t enough
🚀 Launch into influence—your people are already inside.🚀
Think doing great work is enough?
It’s not.
In Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don’t, Jeffrey Pfeffer makes this clear.
Performance matters, but it’s not sufficient.
If you want to advance, earn more, and gain responsibility, you need to understand power dynamics and how influence actually works inside groups.
One of those dynamics is familiarity.
Just think about why it’s so hard for remote employees.
The idea that wins isn’t always the best one; it’s the one people recognize.
Psychologists call it the Mere Exposure Effect. In social psychology, it’s sometimes called the Familiarity Principle.
We trust what feels familiar.
In decision-making, that means:
The idea people have heard before feels “safer”
The concept that keeps popping up feels “right”
The new idea—even if better—feels risky…so it gets sidelined.
You bring a strong idea to a meeting.
It lands…fine.
Ten minutes later, someone else says a version of it, and suddenly, it clicks for the group.
Why?
It wasn’t better.
It was familiar enough.
If you want your ideas to influence decisions, don’t rely on a single moment.
Build exposure:
Share your idea in advance (1:1s, quick chats)
Use consistent language so it sticks
Reintroduce it naturally across conversations
Let others carry it forward
By the time the decision happens, it doesn’t feel like your idea. It feels like the idea.
Familiar ideas are easier to process, and what’s easy feels true, smart, and safe.
Doing great work isn’t enough.
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