He'd been in the role three months and, by every measure he could see, he was doing it right.
Strong peer relationships. Respected by his direct reports. People across the organization were starting to use his language. He felt momentum.
Then his CEO mentioned, almost in passing, a strategic initiative that cut directly across everything he'd been building. Clearly in development for months. He hadn't been in any of those conversations.
When we debriefed, he said something I've heard more than once: "I thought I was doing the right things."
He was. Just in the wrong direction.
What happened to him is ordinary. He came into a new role and, like most executives, read it as a social problem. New environment, new relationships, new dynamics, so he solved it socially. Peer dinners. Cross-functional coffees. Careful attention to his direct reports. Influence campaigns with the people around him.
All of it felt productive. Peer relationships were warm. His team was aligned. He was building presence.
What he wasn't building was proximity to where decisions actually got made.
The ideas he'd been sharing with peers for months? A version of them made it upstairs. Through someone else.
This is the thing most executives miss until it has already happened. Influence at the senior level flows downward, from the decisions made at the top, not outward from the middle.
When a CEO or senior executive hears your thinking first, your frame becomes the starting point. Everyone else is reacting to it, building on it, or pushing back against it, but the reference point is yours. That is what real influence looks like in a senior organization.
Ideas shared with peers don't work the same way. They diffuse fast. Attribution blurs. By the time a good idea travels from a peer conversation to the executive agenda, it has no clear owner and no momentum behind it. You spent the energy; someone else got the credit, or it just disappeared into the noise.
Building influence horizontally feels safer in the first 100 days. Peers are accessible. The dynamic is reciprocal. There is none of the exposure that comes with putting your thinking in front of the CEO before you feel fully settled. But safe is exactly where influence goes to die.
The executives I've seen get genuine traction in a new role are rarely the ones with the deepest peer networks. They are the ones willing to bring their perspective to the people above them, early and consistently, before the agenda was set without them.
The shift is about where you direct your best thinking. It has nothing to do with being aggressive or going around your peers.
Get your ideas in front of the right people before the agenda gets set, not after. Timing is everything here. Once the strategic direction is in motion, you are reacting. The goal is to be part of the conversation that shapes it, which means showing up earlier than feels comfortable, and with a point of view already formed.
Bring a perspective, not an update. When you get time with a senior executive, the instinct is to brief them on what's happening in your world. Resist it. Updates are forgettable. Perspectives stick. A well-framed observation about a market shift, a competitive dynamic, or an internal pattern you're seeing gives the other person something to engage with. Questions are useful, but as a way to sharpen and land your point of view, not as a substitute for having one.
Replace peer time with deliberate investment upward. This one is harder, because the calendar fills with peer and subordinate meetings by default. Be intentional about where you spend relationship capital in the first 100 days. Fewer lateral coffees, more consistent access to the floor above you. Not because peer relationships don't matter. They do. The executives who end up in the room where decisions get made are usually the ones who prioritized getting there.
Influence doesn't flow from the middle outward. It never did. The executives who understand that, and build accordingly, don't just feel more effective. They are more effective, faster, in ways their peers can't quite explain.
Until next week,
Kendall -
Find me on LinkedIn or Book a 1:1 call
Not a subscriber yet? Subscribe here