Sometimes, if my six-year-old disagrees with the meal I’ve planned for dinner, she will corral my three-and-a-half-year-old and my husband to lobby for change. It works probably 60 percent of the time. 

She is a case study in “leading up” the chain of command. 

This week, Kellogg’s Harry Kraemer tells us how to do that in the corporate world. 

Plus, what happens to a customer’s expectations when they’re kept waiting? They might just expect more, creating a vicious cycle of long wait times. We discuss research from Kellogg’s Achal Bassamboo. 

Leading when you’re not the boss 

Influencing up in an organization is never easy—you might worry you’ll be seen as insubordinate or stepping outside of the established hierarchy. Kraemer says there is a way to finesse your leadership up the chain of command, but you need to lay some groundwork first. 

It helps to start by honing your leadership skills with the people who report to you. Think about how you can support your team and how you’ll integrate input from those whose opinions differ from yours to develop a balanced perspective. These are the foundations of a good leader. 

You can also lead in partnership with your peers. They don’t work for you, and you don’t work for them, but teaming up allows you to leverage your respective strengths to further the goals of the organization writ large. 

“There’s no competition, no vying for attention from the senior leaders. Instead, you’re focused on finding ways that you and your team can help others, just as you are welcoming help from them,” Kraemer says.

Influencing your higher-ups builds on these strengths. 

Let’s say your company is launching a new product in Europe, and senior leaders think the best place to start is the U.K. Your analysis suggests the French market is the stronger option, and you have genuine concerns about leadership’s direction. Before you say anything, you can tap your network of peers for perspective on product launches in Europe.

“This market intelligence may corroborate your boss’s plan, or it could convince you that you need to let your boss know what you’ve learned,” Kraemer says. 

If your boss is an approachable person, you can meet to present your analysis and findings. Then you can wait to see what happens. But if your boss is very hierarchical, you can take an indirect approach and ask another senior leader to speak to your boss on your behalf. 

Read more in Forbes. 

The vicious cycle of long wait times

Whether it’s for a food order or a doctor’s appointment, “as customers wait in a queue, there comes a point when they eventually get so bored or frustrated that they leave,” says Achal Bassamboo, a Kellogg professor of operations.

But fixing the problem isn’t only about adding staff or speeding things up; customer behavior and expectations may also shape whether people join a line in the first place and whether they stick around.

Imagine, for example, a trendy ice-cream parlor with lines out the door. Every customer who gets in line has a certain amount of time they’ll wait before giving up. Those who do make it in the door, however, may feel entitled to celebrate their successful patience.

“When it’s your turn to get ice cream after standing for a long time, you feel that you have earned the right to taste more flavors,” Bassamboo says. “As I make you wait, you change your behavior.”

A series of studies from Bassamboo and colleagues sheds light on this phenomenon and how businesses can use it to optimize wait times.

One of their key findings is that how long customers have to wait for a service—their “patience clock”—is connected to how much time they end up spending on that service—their “service clock.”

Because of these dynamics, there’s often a key inflection point where short, well-behaved queues become unruly long queues—or vice versa.

And businesses should be able to address long waiting times with a relatively simple, temporary fix that gets them back below that crucial tipping point, rather than a major change to the waiting system.

“You can actually bring maybe someone from the back of the store to come and help bring the queue down very quickly so that the wait is reset,” Bassamboo says. “And once the wait is reset, everyone goes back to tasting one or two flavors rather than five flavors.”

Read more in Kellogg Insight.