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October 2019
Hey y’all!
I just watched a documentary about the origins of Halloween—the best holiday, don’t @ me—and about how the Catholic church incorporated many Pagan Halloween rituals into their own practice when people were reluctant to give them up upon conversion. By allowing people to hold on to some familiar traditions, the church was able to get more buy in and the converts were more receptive and agreeable to massive change. What an incredible analogy for change management!
Consider your leadership. Whether in-house or a consultant, you’re dealing with a team of high-ranking decision makers who seem to resist every brilliant idea you bring them. I’ve got several tried-and-true methods to help get the approval you need to get your job done, but I’m going to ask you to start with an empathetic lens towards your decision maker. Think how it must feel to have someone who is likely: a) younger than you; b) less experienced than you; c) more innovative than you; bursting into your board room and shaking things up.
Empathy is at the heart of everything we do; why not leverage it to solve our greatest roadblock?
Spookily Yours,
Dana Publicover
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Working Without Buy In: A Horror Story
It was a dark and stormy night just like this one, long ago. I had a signed contract with a new client to run a design sprint and in the project kickoff meeting, a 5-day 7-person in-office design sprint became 13 1-hour weekly phone calls with 19 people. I needed the money and the client, so I agreed to make it work.
14 bone-chilling weeks later, the group had 3 unvalidated solutions and a different problem statement than we began with, and I had nothing to show for it. I had promised results—and I failed. I lost the client, and I gained experience: from now on, I would get the buy in I needed to do my job, or I wouldn’t do it.
That’s not to say I get a 100% yes every time I pitch a project. It does mean that I only agree to do the MVP version (the Minimum Viable Product) of the project the client needs. I’ll negotiate and be flexible to meet their terms—obviously, getting an entire team in one room for 5 full days won’t work for everyone—but I make sure that their needs and mine, as a consultant are met.
So how do you get that buy in?
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Death Change by 1,000 Cuts
Instead of asking one big question whose answer may be “No,” instead ask 100 smaller questions whose answers are all “Yes!” Remember that inspirational quote about the river carving the rock? Or the less humane adage about the frog in boiling water? Your 100 yeses will amount to your big yes and they won’t even notice it happened.
But just asking isn’t enough. You need these 100(ish) yeses to result in quick, easy wins that prove you’re capable. You’re building credibility as you go, so make sure each of those 100 smaller tries get you results you can quantify (more on that in the next section).
Can’t get buy in for a hackathon? Ask for a 5 minute brainstorm instead. Use that momentum to get a 30-min working meeting. Roll that into an hour workshop. Show what you can do in 5 minutes, and how much more you can do with 30. Make your hackathon the obvious next step, and maintain that momentum with a good story.
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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
100 brilliant, quick wins is a huge accomplishment. But without good PR, it won’t matter. Just like in PR, you want to get out ahead of your story so you can control it. Part of selling that next yes comes from good storytelling. Make them care about the work you’ve done by showing the direct value to their own goals. In your 5 minute brainstorm, you could have the team come up with ideas around a known challenge and show decision makers that you solicited more than 100 new ideas for the problem, and that with a little extra time (perhaps 30 minutes) you could explore some of them further for viability.
Gather anecdotes from people participating in your quick wins. Ask them to share their thoughts (“I felt so creative!” “This was so much more productive than a regular meeting.”) with the team. Send an email recapping the experience to the entire group with quotes like these and a summary of your win. There is absolutely no reason not to share your own accomplishments, especially if you want buy in.
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Keep Haunting & Creep On
If you're trying to convert a team (of leaders, of associates, of Pagans, whatever) to a new belief system, you're going to be met with resistance. Change is hard for everyone, and fear of the unknown is a large part of that. Help ease the transition by keeping a few familiar components and incorporating them into your new strategies. Slow, incremental change is the best way to win them over.
One more important tip: when trying to get to your MVP or your 1/100 question, don’t start offering options or negotiating during your ask. Instead, let the questions asked by the decision makers lead to different options. Don’t present an alternative until you’ve been fully rejected.
Persistence, quick wins and good PR will have you landing your big YES in no time. Like a zombie at the door, don’t quit until you break through. If it comes easy, it’s not worth doing.
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Dana Publicover is the founder of Tiny Piñata and is a creative problem solver, user researcher and workshop facilitator. She lives in Greensboro NC with her programmer husband and twin 2-year olds. Her first book, Empathy at Scale , will be published in 2020.
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This is the Growth Design Newsletter. We produce monthly issues on topics relevant to growth design. Want to write or edit an issue? Hit reply!
In the November issue
Prioritizing Experiments |
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