Latest / The Internal Move Podcast with Fexingo: Lateral Roles, Internal Transfers, and Staying at Your Company / How an Internal Transfer Can Help You Build Informal Influence
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this product manager I know — let's call her Jenna. She spent three years on a central platform team at a mid-size SaaS company. Good work, decent reviews, but she felt like she was always one step removed from where decisions actually got made. Luna: She was on the platform team — that's infrastructure, shared services, that kind of thing? Lucas: Exactly. She built tools that other teams used. Valuable, but invisible to the revenue side. So she made a lateral move to the sales-enablement team. Same level, same title, essentially the same comp. But within six months, she had more pull on the product roadmap than her old manager did. Luna: Wait — her old manager, who was still on the platform team, had less influence than she did, even though she moved sideways? Lucas: That's the story. And it's not because she got a new title or a bigger budget. It's because she unlocked something that internal transfers are uniquely good at giving you: informal influence. The kind of authority that doesn't come from an org chart but from being in the right flow of information and relationships. Luna: I love this angle because most people think about internal transfers as a way to get a promotion or a pay bump. But this is a different kind of win. Lucas: Right. And I think it's actually more common than the vertical leap. So let's unpack what informal influence is, why an internal transfer is one of the fastest ways to build it, and how to make sure you don't squander the opportunity. Luna: Let's start with the 'what.' How do you define informal influence in a corporate context? Lucas: I'd define it as the ability to shape decisions, get buy-in, and mobilize resources without relying on formal authority. It's when people come to you for advice, or they loop you into a Slack channel before the meeting, or your name comes up when someone says, 'We should ask so-and-so before we commit.' Luna: And the classic way to build that is to be really good at your job for a long time, or to network aggressively. Lucas: Both work, but they're slow. An internal transfer accelerates the process because it changes your position in the company's information network. Jenna went from being on a team that served other teams to being on a team that sat between sales and product. Suddenly she was in the weekly pipeline review, the product council, the ad-hoc calls where sales leaders vented about what was broken. Luna: So she got exposure to higher-stakes conversations, and she also became a bridge between two parts of the business that didn't talk to each other much. Lucas: Exactly. And being a bridge is a huge source of informal influence. When you're the person who can translate sales pain into engineering requirements, and you can do that because you've lived on both sides, people start to rely on you. Not because you have a VP title, but because you have context they don't. Luna: There's a name for this in network theory — it's called 'betweenness centrality.' The more you sit between different clusters, the more influence you have. Lucas: That's exactly the concept. And an internal transfer is essentially a deliberate move to increase your betweenness centrality. You go from being a node in one cluster to a connector between two or three clusters. And the beauty is, you don't have to start from zero. You already know the company, the culture, the systems. You're not an outsider trying to build trust from scratch. Luna: But there's a risk, right? You could end up in a role that's even more isolated. Or you could fail to build those connections because you're just doing your job and not actively leveraging your position. Lucas: Absolutely. The transfer itself isn't magic. It's an opportunity. And I think the key is to be intentional about how you use your first 90 days in the new role. So let's talk about a framework for capitalizing on the influence gap. Luna: Let's do it. Lucas: Step one: map the information flow before you start. Who holds the key meetings? What are the recurring decisions that affect your new team? Where are the bottlenecks? You want to identify the nodes where influence is concentrated, and then position yourself to become a feeder into those nodes. Luna: So before you even move desks, you're already thinking about the political landscape. Lucas: Exactly. Step two: in your first week, schedule one-on-ones with at least five people who are not on your new team. Ideally people from different functions who intersect with your new area. Tell them you're new to the role and you want to understand their priorities. That's a low-effort way to start building bridges. Luna: And you're doing it before you have any deliverables, so it doesn't look like you're angling for something. It's just curiosity. Lucas: Right. Step three: find one project that touches multiple teams and volunteer for it. Not the sexy flagship project — something operational, like a cross-functional process improvement. That's where you'll naturally become a connector. Jenna volunteered to help redesign the lead-handoff process between sales and product. That's a boring project on paper, but it put her in the room with the VP of Sales and the VP of Product every two weeks. Luna: And that's where she started to have influence on the roadmap, because she was the one saying, 'Hey, the sales team says these three features would close twenty percent more deals.' Lucas: Exactly. She became the credible voice from the sales side because she had the product background to frame it in terms of engineering effort. That's a classic example of informal influence. And it happened within months of a lateral move. Luna: I want to push back a little — isn't this just good networking? Couldn't she have done this without transferring? Lucas: Good question. She could have tried. But there's a structural barrier. When you're on the platform team, you're not invited to the pipeline review. You don't have a legitimate reason to sit in on sales calls. An internal transfer changes your seat at the table — literally changes which meetings you're on the distribution list for. That's hard to replicate through networking alone. Luna: So the transfer gives you permission to be in rooms you couldn't access before. Lucas: Exactly. And that permission is half the battle. The other half is what you do with it. Which brings me to step four: be generous with the information you now have. When you learn something in the sales review that might help product, share it — but do it in a way that's helpful, not gossipy. Send a one-line Slack: 'Heard in pipeline review that customers are struggling with X — thought your team should know.' Luna: That builds reciprocity. Now they'll think of you when they hear something that might help sales. Lucas: Exactly. And over time, you become a hub. People start to think of you as someone who just knows what's going on. That's informal influence in its purest form. Luna: I want to ask about the flip side. Can an internal transfer actually damage your informal influence? Lucas: It can, if you handle it poorly. The classic mistake is to treat the new role as a fresh start where you don't have to maintain old relationships. You leave your old team behind and stop attending their stand-ups. That's a mistake because your old network is part of your influence capital. You want to be the person who still knows what's happening on both sides. Luna: So you have to actively maintain ties with your former team, even if you're no longer working on their projects. Lucas: Right. Schedule a monthly coffee with your old manager. Stay in the Slack channel. Offer to help with onboarding your replacement. That shows you're not just a user of relationships but a builder of them. And it reinforces your reputation as someone who's connected across the org. Luna: There's also a risk of overplaying your hand, right? If you start acting like you have more authority than your title suggests, people might resent you. Lucas: That's a real risk. The key is to be a source of information and help, not a decision-maker. Don't say 'I think we should do X.' Say 'I've heard from a few teams that X is a pain point — is that something we should look at?' The influence comes from being the person who surfaces what others are thinking, not from claiming credit. Luna: That's a subtle but important distinction. It's about being a connector, not a commander. Lucas: Exactly. And that brings me to a broader point. Companies with high internal mobility tend to have flatter power structures, because people who've moved around accumulate this informal influence. They become de facto leaders even without the titles. And that's actually healthier for the organization, because decisions get made by people who have a holistic view, not just by whoever has the highest rank. Luna: So an internal transfer isn't just good for your career — it can also be good for the company culture. Lucas: If enough people do it, yes. But I think the individual calculus is still the main driver. And for someone listening who's considering a lateral move right now, I'd say: don't just look at the title or the comp. Look at the information flow. Look at the meetings you'll be in. Look at the people you'll be connected to. If the new role puts you in a higher betweenness centrality position, it's probably a better move than a vertical step that keeps you isolated. Luna: That's a great frame. And I think it's especially relevant for mid-career professionals who are hitting a plateau. A lateral move to a more connected role might be the reset they need. Lucas: Yeah. And if we've helped you think through a career move or decision like that, I'll just mention — you know, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these episodes coming. If you've gotten something out of them, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small thing, but it makes a real difference. Luna: Absolutely. We don't run ads, so listener support is what keeps this going. And it's appreciated more than we can say. Lucas: So back to the influence piece. There's one more angle I want to touch on, which is how to measure whether you've actually built informal influence after a transfer. Luna: How would you measure something so intangible? Lucas: A few proxies. One: people start coming to you for advice before they go to your boss. Two: you get added to Slack channels or email threads that are not strictly necessary for your role. Three: your name comes up in skip-level meetings as someone who 'gets it.' If those things start happening within three to six months of a transfer, you've done it right. Luna: Those are good signals. And they're also signs that you've become a node in the informal network. Lucas: Exactly. And the beauty is, once you have that informal influence, it compounds. More people come to you, which gives you more information, which makes you more useful, which brings more people. It's a flywheel. And an internal transfer can be the initial push that gets it spinning. Luna: So for someone who's been in the same role for two or three years and feels like they've maxed out their influence, a lateral move might actually be a faster path to impact than waiting for a promotion. Lucas: I think that's the key takeaway. Don't underestimate the power of a horizontal move. It can change your trajectory more than a vertical one, because it changes the geometry of your network. And in most organizations, network geometry is what determines real influence. Luna: I think that's a great note to end on. For anyone listening, if you're considering a move, look at where the information flows — and go there. Lucas: That's it for this episode. We'll talk to you next time.