StrategyDriven » Change Management

Buy-In – The Imperative Strategy

Sarah Gee and Val Gee — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:00:56 +0000

In providing research and developing training programs for various large corporations about managing change, we find that the biggest stumbling block for employees from top-down is lack of buy-in. Top executives have the vision, but often fail to get buy-in from managers who have to carry out the change initiative. This lack of buy-in trickles down and pretty soon everyone is at odds with the change because not having been in the initial ideation sessions, they don’t see any value. Great change initiatives have died on the vine because ‘THEY are just giving us more needless things to do.’

Business Improv: Experiential Learning Exercises to Train Employees to Handle Every Situation with Success
by Val and Sarah Gee

The secret to business growth is right before your eyes – it’s the creativity and innovation percolating in each one of your employees every minute of every day. How do you harness it to make it work for your organization? Business Improv!

Based on the science of experiential learning, Business Improv uses improvisation activities from the theater to transform each employee into a great leader. The 75 hands-on activities in this proactive guide help you create an organization filled with people who:

Engage with and ‘own’ their work
Generate creative ideas that drive profit
Build innovative teams
Solve problems effectively
Make decisions with conviction
Respond and adapt to change

With Business Improv, you have the one and only tool you need to facilitate real, lasting leadership skills in every employee.

This idea is supported by Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter, authority on leadership and change, who finds that in order to succeed, 75% of the company’s management, needs to ‘buy into’ the change.

Busy managers, who are already overwhelmed with previous change initiatives, tend to panic and jump in too fast with new systems; they act without proper preparation and neglect to get input from their team which leads to a very bumpy ride. Systems fail to reach their full potential and people become frustrated, which results in pushback, absenteeism, and low productivity. In his book entitled Influence by Robert Cialdini he explains that one of the most influential words in the English language is ‘because’. Studies have proven that no word has more power to motivate people to take action than ‘because’. Simply adding this word to a request, to a statement, to a call to action, the numbers of people who respond go up exponentially. In other words, people need a reason to give their buy-in otherwise they won’t do it, drag their heels or do it very badly.

In our research we’ve found that leaders create change initiatives based on the needs of people whether that be, customers, employees or both. Managers on the other hand create systems based on the needs of their leaders. The problem is that when leaders (top executives) don’t communicate why they are making a change, mangers just create more systems and then manage the systems. The missing link is face-to-face communication in getting buy-in from the people who have to work the systems. Emails do not replace talk, yet they have become the lazy person’s way of sending communicating. Problem is, emails are not communication, emails are a means of sending out information which the sender has no way of knowing how it is being received. They can be deleted, sent on with a terse message, or ignored.

It’s an eye-opener to facilitate a class about managing a team through change to a team of highly qualified and eminent professionals – who have created comprehensive systems and matrices – and yet cannot handle pushback. Some managers even admit to closing their door and ‘keeping out of the way’ as if not being seen is the solution to gaining buy-in. The problem is that when top management fail to communicate their vision and get buy-in the only thing they pass along is another deadly initiative without instructions.

To mitigate the lack of buy-in, Johns Kotter created an 8-step change process model the first step of which is to Increase the Urgency for Change. This means gaining buy-in from stakeholders by developing a sense of urgency that will spark the initial motivation and get things moving. Increasing the urgency for change is about developing an open, honest and convincing dialogue about what’s happening in the marketplace, including opportunities and potential threats in the future. It is about gaining input from stakeholders to get as many people as possible talking about the proposed change because this builds a sense of urgency that feeds on itself and develops a tipping point where everyone agrees something must be done.

In order to involve and communicate effectively with stakeholders, think like a reporter!

What? Define the issue. Clearly state the problem or issue to be addressed.
Who? Identify everyone who is impacted – clients/customers, other stakeholders, etc.
Why? State why the issue is critical at this time.
Where? Where is this situation or issue occurring?
When? Occurrences, frequency, time of day, etc.
How? How will this be addressed – what is the solution?

To help with gaining stakeholder buy-in, complete a RASCI by following these directions:

Write stakeholders names across the top of the matrix.
List tasks/milestones down the left column.

For each milestone, indicate the role of the stakeholder:

Responsible: for the task/problem/project.
Accountable: has authority to sign off.
Supportive: provides resources or plays a supporting role.
Consulted: provides information and/or expertise.
Informed: needs to be notified of results but not necessarily be consulted.

Once the stakeholders, tasks and roles have been identified, find out their preferred method of communication; voice-to-voice, phone call, or email? Make sure there are no surprises, always reach out to stakeholders so they don’t hear it from someone else. Always thank the stakeholders for their input, and provide specific examples of how he/she added value to the process. Here are a few more tips:

Present information in small chunks, and check in with the audience.
Be specific about the type of support you need.
State the evaluation criteria.
Summarize the solution.
Present your decision.
Ask for feedback and support for your decision.
Look for visual cues from the audience: non-verbal signals of approval or disapproval?
Plan to listen and build in opportunities to ask for reactions.
Arrange ahead of time to invite stakeholders to validate points, or add commentary.
Rehearse! There is no substitute for rehearsing out loud and more than once.
Practice in a mirror, check eye contact, and scan body language for distracting gestures.
Pause to help gather thoughts, while enabling the audience to absorb the presentation.

In our book Business Improv, there are many activities about leadership, motivation and inspiration; here is an excerpt from Activity 40, entitled Motivation. During this activity, the participants have an opportunity to form small groups and create a positive presentation based upon their answers to three work-related questions. We also tell them that they can make up their answers if they get stuck.

Round 1

Ask the participants to take a few minutes to create responses to these three separate questions:

What is one positive thing you believe your company does?
How do you feel the very minute you found out you were hired, and how were you on that first day?
Why do you truly love what you do?

Round 2

Tell the participants that they each have a couple of minutes to present their answers to the group in a very conversational, motivational and authentic manner, as if they were talking to their friends.

The benefits to look for in this particular activity are:

Remember that motivation begins with you. While it’s great to go to a motivational seminar or hear a motivational speaker, when we get home, we are the ones who have to motivate ourselves to do something. When we take responsibility to motivate ourselves, we can achieve what we want to achieve.

Don’t rely on others for motivation. When we rely on other people to motivate us, we are putting the power into their hands. And when they are not available, we feel at a loss. We don’t know what to do – it’s as if the electricity has gone off and there’s nowhere to ‘plug’ ourselves in.

Renew your motivation every day. Wake up every morning and motivate yourself to complete your top-priority tasks. When you do the things you need to do, rather than doing the busy work, you will feel good at the end of the day.

The benefits are followed by Discussion Points, which for this activity are as follows:

Q: What did you remember about your first day? (I remembered how excited I was to have this new job. I got to work early, and I was eager to learn.)
Q: How do you feel about your job and company now? (I still love my job, and I realize that I take some things for granted.)
Q: What were the benefits of talking about your job and truly loving it? (I realized that there are some things that I truly love about my job. I had forgotten about them because I get stressed with the things I don’t like as much. I guess I just have to remind myself about what I truly love.)

When an eminent authority on leadership and change such as John Kotter states that, “To cope with new technological, competitive and demographic forces, leaders in every sector have sought to fundamentally alter the way their organizations do business…Yet, according to most assessments, few of these efforts accomplish their goals. Fewer than 15 of the 100 or more companies I have studied have successfully transformed themselves.” We need to do things differently – we need to get stakeholder buy-in from the top down, or continue wasting millions of dollars making changes that nobody cares about, and nobody uses.

About the Authors

Sarah Gee is co-author of Business Improv, and as senior faculty member for The Second City Business Communications has informed, challenged, inspired and entertained audiences for Fortune 1000 companies across the globe. As facilitator, consultant, and coach she shapes and builds corporate competencies for major corporations such as General Motors, MB Financial, and United Airlines. Sarah also helps develop future leaders with Business Management training programs for executive MBA students at the University of California, Anderson School of Management, Duke University Fuqua School of Business and Columbia College. Contact Sarah: info@mjlearning.com.

Val Gee is author of several books published by McGraw-Hill including: Business Improv, The Winner’s Attitude and Super Service. Since arriving in America from England in 1983, Val has designed, developed and delivered training solutions for business professionals worldwide including: Motorola, Hyatt Hotels, Siemens, DeVry University, GE Healthcare and HSBC. Bringing the power of her capability to focus on thought leadership, change management, and generating creativity, Val is currently facilitating several workshops around the U.S., for employees of a large government agency. Contact Val: info@mjlearning.com, www.mjlearning.com.

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A Technology Case Study: Implementing What the Customer Wants

StrategyDriven — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:20:22 +0000

In order for any change to occur – whether it’s a decision to purchase a product, or an implementation to add new technology – whatever touches the ultimate solution must buy-in to the change.

Often our focus is on getting the end-result we think we want. We forget that without buy-in from the necessary people and policies that maintain the status quo, we face the high cost of the resistance emanating from pushing change into a system that believes that it’s fine, thanks.

Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it
by Sharon Drew Morgen

Every day, business people face critical buying decisions – from new software to revamped website design to employee training programs. But all too often, the long lag time between recognizing the need for a new solution and actually purchasing and implementing it leads to lost sales, lost opportunities, and lost productivity. Thought leader Sharon Drew Morgen has uncovered what keeps organizations from moving forward and in her new book, Dirty Little Secrets, she reveals what potential buyers need to know to expedite the process of bringing positive change to their companies.

Dirty Little Secrets offers dozens of examples to clarify precisely how buying decisions can be facilitated through the right kind of questions, including an in-depth case study of a marketing manager who recognizes the need for a better website and wants to bring in an external design team. Sharon Drew explores what happens when he stumbles in the dark trying to bring his fellow managers, the internal tech team (which is responsible for the current site), and the CFO (to whom the tech team reports) on board. She then presents the same situation using Buying Facilitation^®. The result? “Decision facilitation” enables a smoother, faster process that leads to a better outcome for both the marketing manager and the design firm.

I’d like to share a story about how I helped my own tech guys shift their project work and our revenue as a result of having decision facilitation skills. At the end of the day, unless there is a decision – one person at a time – to adopt to, know how to, and be willing to change, there will be resistance and possibly failure.

First Signs of Trouble
In 1983, in London, I started up a body shop/recruitment company to support the ‘new’ language and ’4GL’ support technology called Focus. As the first company that supported this language (26 competitors grew up in the field) we grew quickly. Seemingly overnight we had 43 tech folks going out to client sites as programmers, systems analysts/designers, project managers/leaders.

Within the first months, I began hearing murmurs of annoyance from the folks: “Stupid users.” “We have to spend twice as long redoing what they told us to do!” “Why don’t they get it right when we first talk to them?”

As a test to see what was going on that was creating so much failure and cost (time/money), I called in my head tech guy to design a requirement I’d been complaining about.

Julian’s first question was: “What do you want?” I didn’t know how to respond because 1. I wasn’t a techie and didn’t know how to explain to him in his language; 2. I didn’t have the right description, as it was mostly a picture in my mind; and 3. no one in 1983 had the vocabulary or capability we have now. So I responded “I don’t know.” Julian smirked. “This is what I hear from clients. But I know what you want. I’ll take care of it and show you some screens next week.” We were already in the middle of the problem.

What he created was from his own vantage point, using his own beliefs and limiting assumptions (remember again that it was in 1983, and my ideas were well beyond the capability of the technology). “This is all wrong,” I said.

Julian’s eyes glazed over. In the UK you don’t tell the MD that she’s a Stupid User. I continued: “Imagine where we’d be now if you had started our conversation with ‘ What would you have if you had all of your wishes and dreams, and a computer could do everything that your brain would like to do?’ With that, I could have I would have ‘designed’ screens and offered colors and made up functionality. That would have been a far better start.

New Skills for Internal Consultants
I realized that all of our tech guys needed decision facilitation skills to enable them to

recognize how to bring together the appropriate elements to be included in a way that would serve both the strategic AND tactical elements,
elicit the right data at the right time so the clients could get their projects completed efficiently,
eliminate resistance.

I taught the 43 tech guys my ‘Buying Facilitation® model (a decision facilitation model that is a change management model, independent of buying or selling). The results were instant, and dramatic.

The systems designers were able to elicit the right data and develop the exact right design the first time with no redos.
The systems analysts not only understood the tech issues, but were able to understand and address all of the personal/human issues and manage the change and potential resistance issues upfront, before they became a problem.
The programmers got the proper information to code the first iteration, with a minimum of changes.
The client didn’t need the work to be redone.
The clients got to hear/see/feel their vision of success and agree to it before anyone moved ahead with technology.
The projects were completed well before time – sometimes 25% sooner – and since we were being paid on a project basis, we made more money and the team was freed up for the next project.
The clients trusted us so much that they handed over much of their own programmer’s work to us and were able to take on additional creative projects that they hadn’t planned.
With 26 competitors, we captured 11% of the market (even with prices well over 40% higher than everyone…. my nickname was Sharon Drew Blood), and my clients signed sole supplier contracts.
Everyone was happy, and I kept all of my employees for 4 years.

In fact, my competition tried to steal my employees; no one budged, regardless of the money that was thrown at them. I made sure they had plenty of personal time off, I took them for darts/beer at the local pub once a month, and I made sure they were happy. Plus I kept them doing what they loved, rather than having to deal with any ‘issues.’

I hired a ‘Make Nice Guy’ (who I also trained) to go make sure everything chugged happily along: if any sort of problem – client concern, project glitch, personality issue, tech malfunction – occured, it was his regardless of time of day. Or he could take the day off.

As a result, I had nothing to do but grow my company. And I was able to exit after under 4 years, with 3 branches in two countries (offices in London, Stuttgart, Hamburg), $5,000,000 revenue (remember this was a start up in 1983, in a huge depression) and a 43% net profit.

Your tech folks and internal consultants need decision facilitation skills in addition to technology skills. Because at the base of it all are humans who resist change, get confused, hang on to turf, and don’t always communicate properly. Let me know if I can help you design a program for your tech folks or internal consultants:sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation^®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and the new book Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. She lives in Austin, Texas.

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Inspiring Employees with a Values-Rich Environment

StrategyDriven — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:15:34 +0000

Even if your corporate culture leaves a lot to be desired, managers can create a localized environment that inspires your employees to achieve peak performance. It’s a fact that I discovered over and over in my work for JetBlue, Southwest, Doubletree and other companies with high-performing cultures: the vast majority of your employees want to work in a place where people care about customers and each other, are fully engaged, take pride in their work, and feel the obligation to continually improve. In other words, they want you to create an inspiring culture, even if it’s just in your department. They will even help you create it, if you show them the way.

Built on Values: Creating an Enviable Culture that Outperforms the Competition
by Ann Rhoades

Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is a believer in Ann Rhoades’ method of creating enviable cultures. In the foreword to Built on Values, he says: “In order to be successful in a volatile world, you must unleash the goodwill and creativity of your people. You must organize your culture in a way that will help your people achieve great things without constant supervision from above. Set this up right, and people will astonish you regularly with their great ideas and ability to take your organization to a higher level. Built on Values shows exactly how to organize your culture to make that happen. It is a practical guidebook for transforming an entire organization or just your little corner of the world into a place of caring and passion.”

Companies all over the country have implemented Ann Rhoades’ methods, developed when she was an executive at JetBlue, Southwest, Doubletree and others and perfected at her consulting company, People Ink. It is not a difficult method to understand and implement, but it is certainly more effective than lofty statements of purpose sanctified in a mission statement to inspire day-to-day excellence. Many leaders want to believe that all they need to do is proclaim a set of values and culture will magically change—but that does nothing to retool the actual values that control day-to-day actions on the front line. The method in Built on Values, on the other hand, allows culture to arise from outstanding values. “The productivity that will be unleashed is likely to be nothing short of astonishing,” says Covey.

My company, People Ink, assists companies in identifying their underlying values and building their cultures on those shared values, but there is no reason why the people in your department cannot do it on their own. The key is identifying your best employees – your A Players – and spread their values by hiring people who share those values and motivate all employees to live those values every day. And please realize: A Players don’t just come from management ranks; there are outstanding players on your front line that deserve a chance to help you.

We call this the Values Blueprint method of changing culture and we recommend you engage in a two-day retreat with a group of your best players to hammer out what your values should be and what behaviors best exemplify those values. I have seen this method effect culture change over and over, in large companies and small, for-profits, nonprofits and every iteration in between. Single departments and workgroups can also use this to create islands of excellence, even if your top leaders are not ready to buy in. Perhaps you can lead them to it though demonstrated results.

I have also found that even though culture change will be driven by different values in every organization, six fundamental principles inform every successful values-based culture change.

You can’t force culture. You can only create environment. A culture is the culmination of the leadership, values, language, people processes, rules, and other conditions, good or bad, present within the organization. But you can and should convene a team of A Players to help you analyze what the culture in your department currently is, how it is holding your performance back, and the values and associated behaviors that would change it in a positive way. However, realize that even the best employees cannot “create culture.” They can only help you create the right conditions for a good culture to arise.
You are on the outside what you are on the inside… no debate. What many managers don’t understand, except perhaps intellectually, is that you cannot create a great customer service organization if you treat employees badly. You can’t force people to smile and treat customers well, especially when they feel ill-used themselves. Not surprisingly, those organizations that do customer service best also treat their employees best. The bottom line? The service you provide for your customers will never be greater than the service you provide to your employees.
Success is doing the right things the right way. One of the best reasons for redefining corporate culture is that well-defined values can help you – and your employees – make better decisions. In values-rich companies, the front line is where most decisions about customer service can be made. In a company where good customer service is one of the values, one of the behaviors tied to it could be empowering front-line people with tools and knowledge to handle problems personally and immediately. A win there is a happy customer who did not have to speak to a supervisor. By defining your values and the behaviors based on them, you also simplify the task of day-to-day decision making: “Does that make sense in light of our values?” is all you or your employees have to ask yourselves.
People do exactly what they are incented to do. Our model of culture requires rewarding the behaviors you do want, taking into account how they lead to an outcome. This is made easier with simple values-based performance metrics, with rewards tied, as closely as possible, to achieving those metrics. Hiring and performance appraisal methods, too, must be revised to select people who display the values important to you. And you must be courageous enough to fire those who don’t. Even long-time employees. Even managers. Otherwise, they will render your ideal culture impossible.
Input = Output. Organizations will only get out of something what they are willing to put into it. Values maintenance—what we call continuous improvement—is as important as values creation. In other words, you are never fully “done” with culture change; you must be always vigilant that no one backslides into old ways. This requires regular monitoring of progress toward full implementation of the model, as well as values-based leadership development and succession planning.
The environment you want can be built on shared, strategic values and financial responsibility. Conscious action, beginning with determining a set of shared values, can set up the necessary condition for encouraging a culture that will make an organization into a leader in its industry. It should almost go without saying that those values should also be vetted in terms of responsible fiscal management. Happy-talk values that result in spending huge sums of money on questionable programs are not values that are sustainable in the long run. But neither should you let financial concerns derail the project in its infancy. Counsel your financial people to give it a chance – a values-rich culture is likely to save buckets of money sooner rather than later as turnover and training costs go down. It can even help companies avoid the high cost of layoffs – which then should no longer be a first resort to cut costs.

A culture based on the solid values of your A Players are most critical when making tough decisions, but that is also when they come in handiest to illuminate the way forward.

About the Author

Ann Rhoades, author Built on Values: Creating an Enviable Culture that Outperforms the Competition, is president of People Ink, a culture-change consulting firm. Ann serves on the Board of Directors for JetBlue and P.F. Chang’s. She was one of the five founding executives of JetBlue Airways; Chief People Officer for Southwest Airlines; and Executive Vice President of Team Services at Doubletree and Promus Hotel Corporations. To read Ann’s complete biography, click here.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 39 – Making Change Work: A Radical Approach to Change Management, Real Leadership

StrategyDriven — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:37:49 +0000

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 39 – Making Change Work: A Radical Approach to Change Management, Real Leadership explores what true leadership is and how it is effectively applied throughout the change management process. During our discussion, Sharon Drew Morgen, the New York Times bestselling author of Dirty Little Secrets, shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

what leadership is and the difference between leadership and management
the qualities, characteristics, and skills successful change leaders commonly possess
the difference between the exercise of power and force
reasons so many change implementations are unsuccessful
steps leaders should take to ensure change implementations succeed
how leaders can get buy-in before the change initiative begins
the outward signs a leader should look for that indicate the change has been accepted; that the organization will continue to adhere to the change and not revert back to its previous way of doing business
actions the change leader should take if he or she feels the organization is not accepting the change; that the change initiative is failing

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights Sharon Drew shares in Dirty Little Secrets and this edition of the StrategyDriven Podcast are the resources accessible from her websites, www.NewSalesParadigm.com and www.BuyingFacilitation.com. Sharon Drew’s book, Dirty Little Secrets, can be purchased by clicking here.

Making Change Work!
This podcast is the sixth and final podcast in a series that teaches leaders how to make change work.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider voting for us on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community. Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is a New York Times bestselling author and developer of a change management model based on buy-in that she’s written about in her latest book Dirty Little Secrets. She is the visionary thought leader behind Buying Facilitation^®, a decision facilitation model that focuses on helping buyers and those who would be impacted by the accompanying change manage their internal, unconscious, and behind-the-scenes issues that must be addressed before they purchase anything or buy-in to the requested change. She has served many well known companies including: KPMG, Unisys, IBM, Wachovia, and Bose. To read Sharon Drew’s complete biography, click here.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 38b – Overcoming Resistance to Change, part 2 of 2

StrategyDriven — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:33:05 +0000

Episode 38b – Overcoming Resistance to Change, part 2 of 2 explores the three different types of resistance frequently encountered when implementing a business change, how to recognize each type, and the actions change leaders can take to overcome each of these objections. During our discussion, Rick Maurer, author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance: Why 70% of All Changes Still Fail – and What You Can Do About It, shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

how change leaders can recognize the second and third types of resistance to change
actions leaders should take to overcome these types of resistance
how the three types of resistance ‘play off of each other‘ and how to use this interrelationship to more easily overcome the organization’s overall resistance to change

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights Rick shares in Beyond the Wall of Resistance and this edition of the StrategyDriven Podcast are the resources accessible from his websites, www.RickMaurer.com, www.ChangeManagementNews.com, and www.ChangeOSP.com. Rick’s book, Beyond the Wall of Resistance, can be purchased by clicking here.

A special gift for StrategyDriven readers…

We are pleased to announce that Rick has made his ebook, Introduction to Change without Migraines^TM, available for download at no cost to our readers. Simply click on the link above to download your copy of this remarkable ebook on effective change management.

Final Request…

About the Author

Rick Maurer, author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance, is a renowned change management expert, speaker, and bestselling author. He is an advisor to business leaders from a variety of organizations throughout the world, including major Fortune 500 companies, as well as private and nonprofit institutions in industries such as aerospace, healthcare, government, professional associations, telecommunications, and finance. Rick’s opinion has been sought by The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Investor’s Business Daily, Fortune, USA Today, and The Economist. To read Rick’s complete biography, click here.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 38a – Overcoming Resistance to Change, part 1 of 2

StrategyDriven — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 11:41:19 +0000

Episode 38a – Overcoming Resistance to Change, part 1 of 2 explores the three different types of resistance frequently encountered when implementing a business change, how to recognize each type, and the actions change leaders can take to overcome each of these objections. During our discussion, Rick Maurer, author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance: Why 70% of All Changes Still Fail – and What You Can Do About It, shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

whether resistance has to occur with every change or if it can be avoided
what resistance to change is
the three types of change resistance and risks associated with each
how change leaders can recognize the first type of resistance to change
actions leaders should take to overcome this type of resistance

Additional Information

A special gift for StrategyDriven readers…

Final Request…

About the Author

FREE StrategyDriven Trial Membership

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FULL ACCESS to StrategyDriven’s premium content for 14 days
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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 37 – Making Change Work: Why is Buy-in Necessary and How to Achieve It

StrategyDriven — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:09:40 +0000

Episode 37 – Making Change Work: Why is Buy-in Necessary and How to Achieve It explores the role of buy-in to the change management processes, its importance, and how to get it. During our discussion, Sharon Drew Morgen, the New York Times bestselling author of Dirty Little Secrets, shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

what buy-in means in terms of the change management process
how and when buy-in occurs
why people do not buy-in
how a leader can get someone who is resisting to not only buy-in but to do so happily
when the change agent should begin to seek buy-in from the various stakeholder groups
what skills change agents need to gain employee buy-in and how can they acquire these skills
what leaders can do to programmatically embed the buy-in approach to their change management policies

Additional Information

Making Change Work!
This podcast is the fifth in a series that teaches leaders how to make change work. The finale of the Making Change Work series will pull it all together; introducing a radical approach to change management – real leadership!

Final Request…

About the Author

FREE StrategyDriven Trial Membership

Start your FREE trial membership^* and receive:

FULL ACCESS to StrategyDriven’s premium content for 14 days
FREE COPY of a StrategyDriven Expert Contributor book^†
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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 47 – An Interview with Rick Maurer, author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance

StrategyDriven — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 11:16:02 +0000

Special Edition 47 – An Interview with Rick Maurer, author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance explores how to effectively managing business change by overcoming the three common change objections and better engaging the workforce in not only making the change but in sustaining the results. During our discussion, Rick Maurer, author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance: Why 70% of All Changes Still Fail – and What You Can Do About It, shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

why companies experience such a high change management failure rate
why people resist change
whether resistance has to occur with every change or whether it can be avoided
the key phases of the change management cycle
when change management activities should be started
the most damaging change management mistake leaders make and how to avoid it
what leaders should do to improve their change management effectiveness

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights Rick shares in Beyond the Wall of Resistance and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from his websites, www.RickMaurer.com, www.ChangeManagementNews.com, and www.ChangeOSP.com. Rick’s book, Beyond the Wall of Resistance, can be purchased by clicking here.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 35 – Making Change Work: If Decisions Are Always Rational, Why Are Changees Resisting?

StrategyDriven — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:08:36 +0000

Episode 35 – Making Change Work: If Decisions Are Always Rational, Why Are Changees Resisting? explores the rationality of decisions and their impact on change management. During our discussion, Sharon Drew Morgen, the New York Times bestselling author of Dirty Little Secrets, shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

why decisions are always rational
what causes resistance to logical change
what benefits can be gained from resistance
how resistance can be avoided when making a change

Additional Information

Making Change Work!
This podcast is the fourth in a series that teaches leaders how to make change work. Coming editions of the Making Change Work series will explore the steps to gaining the buy-in and committed effort needed to implement change successfully. We’ll cover topics including:

Why is buy-in necessary and how to achieve it?
Putting it all together, a radical approach to change management: real leadership

Final Request…

About the Author

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 34 – Making Change Work: The Problems of Change Management: Bias, Resistance, and Push

StrategyDriven — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:00:54 +0000

Episode 34 – Making Change Work: The Problems of Change Management: Bias, Resistance, and Push explores the problems associated with change management, namely, that of bias, resistance, and push. During our discussion, Sharon Drew Morgen, the New York Times bestselling author of Dirty Little Secrets, shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

how contemporary change management models handle resistance
why with thousands of years of amassed leadership experience change management isn’t easier
what leaders should be doing differently to avoid resistance to change
what part personal bias plays in change management and how to overcome these biases

Additional Information

Making Change Work!
This podcast is the third in a series that teaches leaders how to make change work. Coming editions of the Making Change Work series will explore the steps to gaining the buy-in and committed effort needed to implement change successfully. We’ll cover topics including:

If decisions are always rational, why are changees resisting?
Why is buy-in necessary and how to achieve it?
Putting it all together, a radical approach to change management: real leadership

Final Request…

About the Author

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 33 – Making Change Work: What are Systems and How Do They Influence Change?

StrategyDriven — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:18:34 +0000

Episode 33 – Making Change Work: What are systems and how to they influence change? explores what systems are and their importance to effectively managing any change. During our discussion, Sharon Drew Morgen, the New York Times bestselling author of Dirty Little Secrets, shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

what systems are and their role in the change management process
why ignoring systems makes change harder than it needs to be
the types of systems leaders can expect to deal with when making a change
how systems go through the decision-making process to determine whether to except or reject a particular change

Additional Information

In addition to the invaluable insights Sharon Drew shares in Dirty Little Secrets and this edition of the StrategyDriven Podcast are the resources accessible from her websites, www.NewSalesParadigm.com and www.BuyingFacilitation.com. Sharon Drew’s book, Dirty Little Secrets, can be purchased by clicking here.

Making Change Work!
This podcast is the second in a series that teaches leaders how to make change work. Coming editions of the Making Change Work series will explore the steps to gaining the buy-in and committed effort needed to implement change successfully. We’ll cover topics including:

The Problems of Change Management: bias and push
If decisions are always rational, why are changees resisting?
Why is buy-in necessary and how to achieve it?
Putting it all together, a radical approach to change management: real leadership

Final Request…

About the Author

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FULL ACCESS to StrategyDriven’s premium content for 14 days
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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 32 – Making Change Work: What is Change? and Why is Change so Hard?

StrategyDriven — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:35:23 +0000

Episode 32 – Making Change Work: What is Change? and Why is Change so Hard? explores what change is, its relationship to business systems, and why business changes are so difficult to effectively implement. During our discussion, Sharon Drew Morgen, the New York Times bestselling author of Dirty Little Secrets, shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

what change is and why its fundamentally the same regardless of industry or organization type
what systems are and their role in the change management process
what leaders do to make change so hard

Additional Information

Making Change Work!
This podcast is the first in a series that teaches leaders how to make change work. Coming editions of the Making Change Work series will explore the steps to gaining the buy-in and committed effort needed to implement change successfully. We’ll cover topics including:

What are systems, and how do they influence change?
The Problems of Change Management: bias, resistance, and push
If decisions are always rational, why are changees resisting?
Why is buy-in necessary and how to achieve it?
Putting it all together, a radical approach to change management: real leadership

Final Request…

About the Author

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Getting Beyond the Wall of Resistance

StrategyDriven — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:11:22 +0000

Did you ever wonder why so many changes in your organization failed? If so, you’re not alone. 70% of all major changes inside organizations fail. For instance, new strategies that result in reorganizations, merger integration, quality improvement efforts, and new software systems.

Of course failed changes are costly in dollars, but they also create missed opportunities, damaged reputations, and increased cynicism among staff. You may have heard people mutter, “Here we go again. It’s just another flavor of the month.”

Beyond the Wall of Resistance: Why 70% of All Changes Still Fail – and What You Can Do About It
by Rick Maurer

Seventy percent of all major changes in organizations fail – and that number hasn’t changed since researchers started examining success and failure rates some fifteen years ago. These failures are costly in terms of dollars and missed opportunities.

Companies are continually confronted with change, as plans for cost cutting, restructuring, new technology, quality improvement, new products/services, disrupt organizations of all sizes. Yet, not everyone within an organization is ready or willing to embrace such changes. Resisting proposed plans hinders progress for any company moving forward in today’s competitive landscape.

In Beyond the Wall of Resistance, author Rick Maurer, a renowned change management expert, speaker, and advisor to senior leaders in organizations, provides frustrated managers with a real-world guide for how to build support for change and stay competitive.

When the first studies about organizational change started coming out in the early 1990s, the failure rate was 70%. So how come nothing has changed? Since then, most executives and managers have attended change management training, entire consultancies were created to focus on the challenges of change, and many decent books made it onto the shelves of managers. Do an Amazon search on the phrase “change management” and you will get nearly 1400 hits.

How could so many people know what to do and then not do it?

I looked into failures and successes and found four major reasons why changes keep failing. And that prompted me to completely revise my 1996 book, Beyond the Wall of Resistance. I changed the sub-title to reflect the new emphasis: Why 70% of Changes Still Fail – and What You Can Do About It.

Reasons for Failure #1: Leaders Don’t Know What It Takes To Lead Change.

This is a minor reason for failure. Given the popularity of some fine books on change, many leaders do know what it takes. Nevertheless, organizations seem to believe that people still need more knowledge. So they schedule more training events, hire more motivational speakers with handy tips, and give everyone the book du jour. This is a waste of money.

I often create a hypothetical example of someone who leads change poorly. I ask my clients what impact that leader would have on the people he was trying to influence. My clients usually know exactly what problems this guy is creating. I ask, what should he have done? They know the answer to that as well. I then ask if there is anyway he can turn things around so that this change can get started on the right foot. Once again, these men and women come up with sound strategies that the leader could take.

In The Knowing-Doing Gap (2000), Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton argue that organizations have a lot of knowledge but little of that gets turned into action. I believe that is especially true when it comes to the challenge of leading change. May advice: stop wasting money on training and books unless you are certain that’s what people need.

Reason for Failure #2: Leaders Don’t Know How To Apply What They Know.

This is a big one. While organizations may do a great job of providing knowledge, they often do a poor job of helping people apply what they know. No musician would take the stage at Lincoln Center without having spent thousands of hours practicing under the supervision of a great teacher. Most baseball players come up through the minors where they develop their game. Each successive level in the minor league system adds new challenges. Star pitchers are suddenly humbled as they move to the next level. Basic plays that seemed so easy at one level take on new challenges at the next.

Case studies and role plays aren’t enough. Budding leaders need the opportunity to practice, get feedback, and go at it again in increasingly challenging situations. And they need the opportunity to apprentice under leaders who know how to turn resistance into support. Leaders who can read a room and address issues before they ever turn into problems. The very things that demand practice in real situations.

But, let’s say that leaders in your organization know what to do and how to do it and they still fail, then the following reasons for failure probably hold the key.

Reason for Failure #3: They Miss Their Own Competing Commitments.

In Immunity to Change, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey suggest that hidden competing commitments that keep us from doing what we say we want to do. If this weren’t the case, there would be no market for yet another miracle diet. All of us who said we wanted to live in a healthy manner, would do just that.

Think of leaders who truly believe it is important to get lots of other stakeholders deeply engaged in planning and implementing change. And yet, they lead change as if they had studied under Attila.

These leaders would do well to confront their hidden commitments. On one hand they believe in employee engagement, but on the other hand, there is something getting in the way. With reflection and deep sober looks into the mirror, they realize they have some equally strong commitments working against employee involvement. Maybe they are committed to staying in control (or they are afraid of losing control). Or they are afraid that employee involvement will be seen as soft and touch-feely. Hidden commitments can stop best intentions in its tracks.

Reasons for Failure #4: They Ignore the Context They Are Working In.

Many change management plans are neat and orderly. They begin with Step 1 and end at Step 10. As valuable as a leadership road map can be, it cannot be used effectively without looking at the actual road you are traveling. I hope no one drives a car with head immersed into the map, and yet, lots of changes get led that way.

A few things that leaders often miss when their heads are buried in their maps. History of change in their organization: Do managers and employees think that past changes were led wisely or that the clowns were running this circus? Timing: Are people worn out? Is this the fifth top priority project in the past few months? Resources: Are there sufficient resources such as time, money, access to key players, and so forth, or are leaders starting this with the hope that those things will magically appear? Culture: Does your culture support your plan for change? For example, there are some highly effective “large systems change” approaches that can get hundred involved in planning. Sounds good on paper, but used in a culture that is afraid of input and involvement, an otherwise fine approach will fail.

If you are satisfied with the success rate of change in your organization – by all means, celebrate and then learn from your own successes so you can repeat them. If you are like most leaders, you probably believe that your organization should increase its success rate. If that’s the case, I encourage you to use the four points listed here to assess how well you are doing. Do we know what to do? How to do it? Are there competing commitments keep us from acting on what we say is important? Do we pay attention to the context and culture of our organization? This assessment could help you greatly improve your success rate. I wish you well.

About the Author

Rick Maurer is a renowned change management expert, speaker, and bestselling author. He is an advisor to business leaders from a variety of organizations throughout the world, including major Fortune 500 companies, as well as private and nonprofit institutions in industries such as aerospace, healthcare, government, professional associations, telecommunications, and finance. Rick’s opinion has been sought by The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Investor’s Business Daily, Fortune, USA Today, and The Economist. To read Rick’s complete biography, click here.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 39b – An Interview with Sharon Drew Morgen, author of Dirty Little Secrets, part 2 of 2

StrategyDriven — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:25:04 +0000

Special Edition 39b – An Interview with Sharon Drew Morgen, author of Dirty Little Secrets, part 2 of 2 explores a new decision facilitation model that helps buyers (and those seeking change) manage the behind-the-scenes decision issues they have to handle privately before they get internal agreement to make a purchase. Sharon Drew also explains why the traditional sales model – that only handles needs assessment and solution placement – creates overly long sales cycles and loses such a high percentage of sales. During our discussion, she shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

what sales professionals need to understand about the internal changes buyers deal with as a part of the buying decision
business systems and how they fit into the buyer’s decision-making process
how sales professionals should deal with buyer’s assertions that a lower price is needed before the sale can be closed

Additional Information

In addition to the invaluable insights Sharon Drew shares in Dirty Little Secrets and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from her websites, www.NewSalesParadigm.com and www.BuyingFacilitation.com. Sharon Drew’s book, Dirty Little Secrets, can be purchased by clicking here.

COMING SOON!
Look for our upcoming six-part StrategyDriven Podcast series on Making Change Work. These insightful podcasts will help you and your team understand the steps to gaining the buy-in and committed effort needed to implement change successfully. We’ll cover topics including:

What is change? and Why is change so hard?
What are systems, and how do they influence change?
The Problems of Change Management: bias, resistance, and push
If decisions are always rational, why are changees resisting?
Why is buy-in necessary and how to achieve it?
Putting it all together, a radical approach to change management: real leadership

Final Request…

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen, author of Dirty Little Secrets, is the Founder of Morgen Facilitations, a sales training, consulting, and decision facilitation firm. Sharon Drew is the visionary and thought leader behind Buying Facilitation^®, the new sales paradigm that focuses on helping buyers manage their behind-the-scenes, offline, buying decisions. She has served many well known companies including: KPMG, Unisys, IBM, Wachovia, and Bose. Sharon Drew is the author of The New York Times Business Bestseller, Selling with Integrity, and the new bestseller, Dirty Little Secrets, as well as five other books and hundreds of articles that explain different aspects of the decision facilitation model that teaches buyers how to buy. To read Sharon Drew’s complete biography, click here.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 39a – An Interview with Sharon Drew Morgen, author of Dirty Little Secrets, part 1 of 2

StrategyDriven — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:17:40 +0000

Special Edition 39a – An Interview with Sharon Drew Morgen, author of Dirty Little Secrets, part 1 of 2 explores a new decision facilitation model that helps buyers (and those seeking change) manage the behind-the-scenes decision issues they have to handle privately before they get internal agreement to make a purchase. Sharon Drew also explains why the traditional sales model – that only handles needs assessment and solution placement – creates overly long sales cycles and loses such a high percentage of sales. During our discussion, she shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

why the typical sales model is broken and the problems it causes
why buyers don’t buy even when the offered solution is a perfect fit
how adding a change management model as a front end skill will help close over 400% more sales as it teaches buyers how to get the needed buy-in and agreement to make a purchase

Additional Information

What is change? and Why is change so hard?
What are systems, and how do they influence change?
The Problems of Change Management: bias, resistance, and push
If decisions are always rational, why are changees resisting?
Why is buy-in necessary and how to achieve it?
Putting it all together, a radical approach to change management: real leadership

Final Request…

About the Author

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When Does Change Happen?

StrategyDriven — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:39:17 +0000

Recently, a client called to ask for help: she wanted her franchisees to add Buying Facilitation^® to their sales skills so they could close more sales.

I sent them a couple of blog posts to help them rethink the differences between pushing a solution and first managing the change that a new solution would require. We then had a phone conference.

Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it
by Sharon Drew Morgen

With a 2% close rate, these folks defended their current skills: by any rational standard they rejected the possibility of being more successful, preferring to maintain their status quo. Were they irrational?

I don’t believe in the words ‘irrational’ or ‘rational.’ Like all decision makers these folks made the best decision they knew how to make at that moment in time: they are being totally rational – within their unique system of beliefs and values. These folks are more comfortable with their status quo than they are with the prospect of change, even at the expense of more money and more clients.

What is Change?

Change isn’t just a matter of having a new thought, or adding a solution, or asking folks to take on different tasks because if people had agreed that something was wrong and knew how to change it congruently, they would have changed already. The environment people live in is the sum total of all of decisions to date.

Change requires that we somehow integrate the new with the decisions and behaviors we’ve already created and maintain daily. Until or unless we figure out how to reconfigure our rules, roles, relationships, and ego issues, we will take no action – even if it means sticking with something that’s less than successful.

Broken Change Models

No current change management or sales models handle this problem. Before you decide to change, answer the following:

What would you need to know or believe differently to know when it would be time to make a change?

What rules and roles and relationships in your current environment would need to be maintained in order to adopt change without disrupting the integrity of your system?

What is it about your status quo that would need to be addressed prior to planning change in order to ensure that anything new wouldn’t destroy what you already do successfully?

Because until or unless you can be assured that you can make a change that is integrous with who you are, and get the appropriate buy-in for change, you will do nothing.

The big question is: what sort of buy-in would you need? And how could you go about getting it in a way that would be acceptable and welcomed by the system.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation^®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and the new book Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. She lives in Austin, Texas.

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Change Management – Introduction

StrategyDriven — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:39:38 +0000

“The number of transistors and resistors on a chip doubles every 18 months.”

Gordon Moore
co-Founder , Intel
Originally published in Electronics Magazine, April 19, 1965

When Gordon Moore made this famous comment, there were approximately 60 devices on an Intel chip. Four decades later, Intel placed 1.7 billion transistors on its Itanium chip; proving Moore’s Law to be fairly accurate.

Only a few things occur with certainty and one of those is change. Technology changes flattened the world and gave us access to individuals living thousands of miles away. And it did so in less than two decades. As business leaders, we no longer compete with local, regional, or domestic providers; we are challenged by rivals from Europe, India, China, and Japan.

Advances in technology altered the social fabric of the workplace too. While cell phones, email, and social networking connect us almost instantaneously from almost anywhere on the planet, medical breakthroughs enable us to live longer, more productive lives; bringing together four generations of employees in our workforce – each with differing values, goals, and needs.

Change is indeed occurring. Leaders who can motivate and inspire their employees to embrace change give their organization a significant competitive advantage. Those who do not place their organization at significant risk of becoming irrelevant.

Articles contained within StrategyDriven’s Change Management topic area provide insight to the principles of change management as well as the best practices of those leaders recognized as top performers in this area. Each article is tailored to help readers improve their organization’s change management policies and practices so to achieve superior results and move ahead of the competition.

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Be a GPS System for Change

StrategyDriven — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:01:48 +0000

As change agents, we find ourselves regularly challenged to get the buy-in and follow-through we need. We often start with a great premise and desired outcome, but few tools to enlist the necessary buy-in.

Two things must happen before change will occur:

the people in a system must recognize, manage, and buy-in to all the elements of the suggested change,
the system must comprehend that a solution will maintain the integrity of the whole.

Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it
by Sharon Drew Morgen

Unfortunately, we’ve never been taught how to help manage the behind-the-scenes – and often unconscious – issues necessary to create and maintain systemic change. We’ve operated on the assumption that with a rational initiative and good communication folks will know how and why to adopt the change – and if they don’t, we handle their resistance.

I suggest there is a more effective way to be successful: become a GPS system and lead the change from the inside out.

Be the GPS System, Not the Consultant

During change initiatives, we often don’t manage the unconscious issues that underlie the status quo and will shift during change. People will take no action – or will resist any request for change – until they address these in a way that maintains internal congruence. But because they are often hidden, we tend to ignore them until it’s too late.

Before designing a change initiative, we need to:

understand the details, associations, and historic import of the internal systems issues that created the problem that will be changed,
figure out how it has been maintained and held in place daily,
recognize the new rules, roles, and relationships that will emerge post-change,
help folks manage the differential in their beliefs between who they are now and who they will be, to help them accept change on a personal level first.

When we attempt to use negotiation skills or OD skills at the wrong time in the change cycle – and almost all change agents attempt to get folks to agree to change well before they have figured out their personal routes through their change issues – we are delaying the change and opening up the possibilities for rejection and sabotage.

Current strategic change models only manage the ‘push/information’ half of the change process. Let’s add a ‘pull/buy-in’ skill set.

To ensure buy-in to change, become a neutral GPS system to navigate followers through the old and new systems issues that will shift, and help them create their own new rules, roles, and relationship patterns.

Help them develop the sort of environment that will both match the change and manage the personal, idiosyncratic elements that have made the folks successful in their pre-change situation.

As part of your new GPS skill set, become a decision facilitator and lead change where it begins: within the system that created the need for change to begin with, and through the people who will be leading the charge.

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Get Buy-In First Before Initiating Strategic Change

StrategyDriven — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:04:43 +0000

Initiatives involve change. Yet no matter how essential or critical the change, change is fraught with pitfalls that are costly.

Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it
by Sharon Drew Morgen

The problem is that too often the change is a push from the top, with the assumption being that because the initiative is important, and well presented, that folks will naturally buy-in. But we know that’s not true.

The conventional way of achieving buy-in usually involves some sort of influencing:

find the decision makers in a group or those deemed to be ‘in the know’;
inundate these folks with the importance of this particular new initiative;
get influencers involved with creating and testing a prototype;
get 5 or 6 influencers to use it and start a buzz going;
write up case studies and send them out to the user population;
test the results, make the necessary changes, and start the implementation.

Basically, it’s a sales job: it’s information-driven and does not manage a belief change; individuals are often left out of consideration; communication is often top down rather than across contexts and individual-criteria based.

A Change Initiative Deemed Successful

I interviewed the CEO of a well-known copy company, asking him how he managed change. He told me of a recent initiative that had needed buy-in from 30,000 employees. He spent over a million dollars on a high quality dog and pony show – and then went on the road for 6 months to introduce the initiative.

He said everyone bought in. Everyone I asked? Well, yes, except for about 10%.
SDM: What happened to those 10%?
CEO: It became a retention issue.
SDM: You fired them? You fired 3,000 people?
CEO: Yes, but it wasn’t a problem. They were deadwood: the folks that had been around 18-20 years.

He fired the core – the very history – of his company because he didn’t know how to get buy-in. Others have since told me that a 10% fall-out rate is great, that it could have been worse.

We have assumed that by asking our target audience to make behavioral shifts – often leading to new job descriptions, or new relationships and skills – we can get buy-in. But we are merely pitching an idea from our own map of the world and assuming that the listeners will react as we want. We are pushing from the outside, hoping to get specific results from the inside.

The Systems of Change

We actually have no idea what criteria needs to be met before others are willing to change. We have no idea what internal issues we’re asking people to shift.

We don’t realize that before change can happen, a series of internal agreements must be accomplished to ensure the congruency of the unique system the person or group has lived with for some time.

Until or unless a person or group is consciously willing to support a request for change, they will merely attempt to carry out what they think they’ve understood.

But what does that mean? It means people will only do what they are comfortable with, to the level they agree. It’s quite impractical to assume that others will change because they’re told to.

Let’s think about that for a moment. People-systems include all of the criteria – rules, roles, relationships, beliefs, partners, economic factors, branding and competition issues, ego needs – which the people have already bought into and acted upon when entering the system (i.e. becoming an employee).

In fact, the entire range of criteria that folks have originally bought into is relatively impervious to change, otherwise it wouldn’t be a system. And anything new that enters that system must parallel the same norms, rules, beliefs, and implied outcomes included in the status quo, or the system will reject it.

In other words, if a team has been doing a job based on one set of rules, they won’t change their behaviors just because a new set of rules has been issued. They would certainly individually give it a try because the request comes from on-high, but they might not know how to work together as a team with the new rules, or they might individually be carrying out functions inappropriately because their unconscious annoyance might kick in, or whatever.

Indeed, when others must acquiesce to change, when rules and roles and norms, relationships and skills must change as a result, the ‘inside’ needs to shift more than the ‘outside’ – the inner beliefs rather than the external behavior or rules.

Change Our Beliefs

What if we believed that:

unless each person – each person – that will be a part of the change process has to buy-in to the change before they are presented with an action plan or they might end up unwittingly (or ‘wittingly’) sabotaging the operation;
a system will reject any element that threatens its status quo;
people are doing the best they can at any moment, but may have conflicts: What if the change encroaches on their levels of responsibility, or interaction with colleagues or clients or other departments? What about managing new partner relationships? A lot of ideas and responsibilities may be competing in the same category for the same mind share;
unless there is buy-in at the belief level, people may not necessary know how, or be (un)consciously willing, to change;
people are generally willing to change and be compliant at a conscious level but un/sub conscious issues may create a different set of buy-in behaviors that may be counter productive to the ultimate change requested;
decisions don’t need to get made right away – the status quo has successfully been in place until ‘now’;
disagreement up-front might end up shedding light on inherent problems with a proposed implementation, and managing the disagreement might yield a more robust solution.

In other words, people may not be aware that they have issues that are causing them to not be compliant with the change request, and that without discovering and then managing these issues up front, there will be implementation issues that may derail the success of the project. Not to mention how the change process might be enhanced as buy-in discussions might lead to increased creativity and leadership.

Let’s approach change by recognizing that buy-in should be achieve before attempting to implement any change initiative.

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