How to get on the list

Nobody is choosing against you. They are choosing from whoever they can think of, and the person doing the thinking is rarely the one you have been trying to impress.

The gatekeeper is not an obstacle

In 1943 Kurt Lewin was asked why people eat what they eat, at a point when rationing meant the American government badly needed the answer. He said the question was wrong. Once food is on the table it gets eaten, so what matters is the route it took to get there. He mapped those routes, called them channels, and called whoever controls entry to each one the gatekeeper.

The useful part is what he did next. He did not campaign harder at families. He worked on the person deciding what came into the house.

Everybody treats the gatekeeper as the obstacle standing between them and the room. They are not. They are the only person in the whole arrangement whose job you can actually make easier.

They are being judged on something too

This is the part nobody thinks about. Whoever writes the list answers to somebody, and gets judged on who turns up.

An event organiser is judged on whether the room was any good and whether people came back. A recruiter is judged on the quality of the shortlist and how fast it arrived. Whoever forwards a name internally is judged on whether their recommendation made them look sensible. Whoever runs a community is judged on whether members think it is worth being in.

Different rooms, same shape. They are all carrying risk on behalf of somebody they are trying to impress.

Which reframes the whole thing. You are not asking for a favour from a person with power over you. You are offering to solve a problem for somebody who is slightly worried about their own list.

What makes a name easy to add

Three qualities, and they are all about reducing their risk rather than proving your worth.

You are describable in one line. They have to introduce you, or defend you, in a sentence. If they cannot say what you do without working it out, you are harder to add than the person they can.

There is evidence you turn up. Somebody who said yes and then cancelled is expensive to them in a way that has nothing to do with how good you are. A track record of showing up and being easy is worth more than a better CV.

You bring something the room does not already have. Not seniority. A perspective, a discipline, an age, a sector nobody else there has. Lists have gaps in them and the person writing it can usually feel the gap without being able to name it.

Do not ask to be added

This is the instinct and it is the wrong one, for a specific reason. Asking hands them the decision and the risk at the same time, with nothing to go on, and the safe answer to a stranger asking for a seat is always no.

The version that works is being visibly useful before there is anything to decide. Answering their question in a group. Turning up to the small event nobody went to. Sending them the person they were looking for. None of that is a favour they owe you back, and all of it means that when the list is being written you are already a name rather than a request.

The prompt

The hard part is working out what your gatekeeper is measured on, because it is never written down anywhere.

> The room: [name it].

>

> The person who writes the list: [their name and role].

>

> What I do: [a few lines, or your sentence].

>

> 1. Tell me what this person is most likely judged on. What makes their list look good or bad to whoever they answer to, and what a weak turnout actually costs them.

>

> 2. Based on that, give me three ways someone like me could be easier for them to include rather than riskier.

>

> 3. Then give me one action I could take in the next fortnight that puts me in front of them without asking them for anything.

>

> Do not write me a message to send. I want to know what they need first.

Step one is the one worth running. Nobody thinks of the person sending the invitations as having a boss, a target and a bad week, and that is exactly what makes them persuadable.

What actually happens

Usually nothing, at first. You do not get invited to the next one.

What changes is that you stop being a stranger to the person who writes the list, and the next time there is a gap in it, there is now a name to put in the gap.