The Cure for NIH Syndrome: Use the Friendship Formula to Win Sponsors

You have likely faced challenges landing an idea with another group, team, or company. In the context of big organizations, this comes up for every project that needs a sponsor as receiver.

In almost any line of work, it’s very common to see people with an idea they “know” (i.e., strongly believe but without facts) is brilliant.  And they “know” the right team to take it.  So, they begin with over-pumped words, then they get frustrated that the team won’t listen.

Many people I coach run into this, and if you do, too, here’s a formula that may help.

First, let’s explore what’s happening.

The Condition

From the perspective of the leader or team, your project is coming out of the blue. They never asked for it. They likely have so many objectives in front of them right now, and nobody ever has enough resources to do everything that they want.

Your project wasn’t on their radar. Consequently, what you think aligns perfectly to their area, just doesn’t fit with their strategy. Even if all of this stuff aligns, your project is still a risk to them.

Even if it’s free, it’s free-as-a-puppy. Most projects require a lot of maintenance, understanding, and often full-time people assigned to move it forward. Where are those resources going to come from?

Worse, how would they know it’s a fit? Who are you to come in and connect with their business and bring an idea? You haven’t been living in this problem space for nearly as long as they have, so the chances you’ve seen and accounted for all of the issues that they have is unlikely in their mind.

All of this, and being burned by many projects in the past that didn’t pan out, leads to what’s referred to as Not Invented Here (NIH) Syndrome. But let’s not view NIH Syndrome as a flaw of the receiving team. Instead, it’s a learned, protective behavior.

To illustrate this, let’s look at an analogue from the Open Source Software (OSS) world.

A Metaphor: Pull Requests

In the OSS world, major initiatives often receive contributions–called pull requests (PRs)–from people seeking to advance the project.  That’s where the open part comes from.  Often there’s a committee or a procedure for reviewing PRs. Let’s imagine that you are on that committee.

If you receive a PR from a previous known contributor who has given to your project a long time, that becomes more of a code review to accept.  Then there are PRs slightly less trustworthy than that, such as a PR from somebody new to you but with an amazing reputation on other projects.  Or from somebody who has submitted a little to your project and continues to make contributions.

At the opposite side of the scale lies a request from a complete stranger. Now imagine that it is an enormous, crazy, possibly direction-changing request with thousands of lines of code, touching lots of files, maybe with architectural changes. The person who submitted it thinks it’s brilliant and expects to be received with open arms. They toiled on this for months or years in what they view as an opus of code.

Oh my goodness, what would you on the PR committee do with that?  Most likely you politely phrase a firm rejection.  That’s way too much risk for your flourishing project to take on.

So, that’s what the out-of-the-blue project person faces when they show up with their (brilliant!) idea. Here’s a method to treat it.

The Treatment

Jack Schafer, ex-FBI operative, shared his model The Friendship Formula in his book The Like Switch. 

This formula is used to make contacts and flip agents from foreign powers.  It can help people make new friends.  And it can help you get your project in front of the right people.

The formula is simply:

Friendship = Proximity + Frequency + Duration + Intensity

Proximity is just being close to the other person.  It’s being near, being seen.  In business, this can be building a reputation and getting your name known.  This comes for free if you’re in your target leader’s organization already.  You’re pretty close, but if you’re across the company, you need to find ways to get your name seen and heard in that area.  That’s the start of building influence.

Frequency is how often you or your name is seen.  This could also be how many times you have made contact.  In the open source software example, this could be achieved by writing on the issues, submitted small write-ups, putting in your name, and even submitting small PRs over with bug fixes. 

Duration is how long you spend on each of these contacts. Once you’re getting longer and longer interactions, the friendship is blossoming. In the business case, this is once you see an interest for meetings, deeper engagements, more being written to you, the request for a call… all of these are good signs that the relationship is getting stronger.

Intensity is how deep the connection is when it’s happening.  This is how well you’re aligning to the person or team when you do connect.  Are you quickly getting to the core of the issues that the team faces and really connecting on this deeper level, or are you getting surface-level interactions that are more like brush-offs?

Now note, early on, especially with busy or in-demand people, you will need to soften all of these, allowing them to develop at the right pace. Going too far too fast on any of these will lead to blowing the connection altogether and having people flip the bozo bit on you. You don’t want to go so far to flip anybody over, so proceed with caution.

Here’s how to get deeper, faster.

The Prescription

Here’s how to apply the formula.

Proximity – Show up often, get your reputation known in the space and by multiple people on the team and nearby. Leaders regularly seek out others in their circle for information about you. If you’re unknown or not well respected, that will be an issue. But if you have no reputation, just getting your name seen or heard several times is good publicity. 🙂

Frequency – Start slow and amp up if this is received / reciprocated.  You don’t want to come on too fast and become a denial-of-service attack on their inbox.  But making an effort to drop a line here or there, something that’s low cost, but friendly and letting them know you have something to give without asking for much in return goes a long way.  Try not to take up much time, but be present and seen more often in the early phases.  Then, once you have meetings, follow up with emails, get your name in their inbox, and keep being seen.

Duration – Always leave the leader wanting a little more or your time.  Always plan to leave early, but buffer to stay longer if the leader keeps talking.  Let the leader ask for more of your time, not want you to go away.  And gradually allow this duration to increase over time.  This will deepen your relationship.

Intensity – During the time together, get to the emotions, the goals, the drives.  Get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible.  Show up with an understanding of the group’s needs and target markets.  Show that you get their space and are looking to help.

Over time, you will be in with the team, and you can bring results and information based on what you know that leader is interested in seeing. This is a healthy, sustainable version of hustling. It will result in more of your projects landing.

What’s Next

For future posts, I will get more into tactics for applying this formula. I will also cover more of what happens within the incubation zone.

I’d love to hear what you think. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you for reading and sharing.

Best, Ed