Today, I'd like to introduce a term to you. Authority Points.
Authority Points is a measure of your influence and credibility within your organisation. They reflect how much weight your ideas, opinions and decisions carry, based on trust, expertise and past impact.
Points grow over time as you build reputation through contributions, successes and consistent reliability. Working well with others can also increase your Authority Points. Higher points means greater ability to drive decisions, rally support or get resources allocated.
Authority Points are also quite easy to lose. If you break trust or fail to deliver. If you ignore team input or undermine team work. Poor communication or overpromising and underdelivering will net you negative points as well.
Authority Points have only one use. You can spend them to make shit happen.
There are three rules that govern Authority Points.
- Rule #1. You can't spend more than you have.
- Rule #2. Once you spend them, they're gone.
- Rule #3. The more points others have, the less yours are worth.
Kind of like money.
So why do they matter for accessibility?
Accessibility is an initiative like any other. You need to spend Authority Points to get it noticed.
Suppose you’ve wanted for a while to introduce accessibility into your team and product.
I see two ways to make that happen.
The hard way is to spend from your own Authority Points. Drum up support. Rally your team. Lobby everyone around you. It'll take time, depending on how many Authority Points you have. A high enough number will likely get your accessibility initiative front and center with decision makers. Not enough and you're ignored.
Now remember! Once you spend Authority Points, you won't get them back.
So the easier, and sneakier, way is to get others with more points than you spend theirs. The way to do that is to be on the lookout for opportunities that align with your accessibility initiative, ready to pounce when the opportunity arises. You have to bide your time and weigh each opportunity. And the person bringing it to the table.
Whenever there's an opportunity where the likelihood of it getting implemented is high and the person proposing it has more Authority Points than you do, grab it! Step up and suggest accessibility might also be a good fit for this. If you've gauged it correctly, the team will get behind the project with accessibility as a ride-along.
The easy way has more chances of success when you're low on Authority Points. Plus, you're likely to keep your Authority Points and get your accessibility initiative implemented.
Here are some opportunities that almost always have a high chance of success:
- A push for product reliability and scalability (always happens)
- Security requirements (no one says no to more security)
- Entering new markets (the idea of making ginormous sums of money)
- Tenders and requests for proposals (RFPs) (the idea of new money with existing features)
Think about how you'd tie accessibility to these and always have proposals ready for when these opportunities arise.