Engine For Change

If you’re driving change, you should read Buy-In and you should read it soon.

It’s a quick read.  It’s an easy read. And, thankfully, it’s a practical read.

As a change driver, you’re constantly pitching great ideas to people who don’t have to listen to you, or agree with you, or do anything because of what you said.  In Buy-In, Professor Kotter and co-author Lorne Whitehead offer their winning method for how you can gain buy-in for your ideas and overcome 24 of the most common idea-killing attacks.

Diligently practical, Buy-In is a book you’ll want on your bookshelf.  You’ll want to reference it every time you pitch a great idea.

The book starts with a fictional change story set in a local library, placing you right in the middle of the action.  Writing you into the story, the authors take you through a scene where you and your brother-in-law Hank win over a semi-cynical crowd of your fellow Centerville citizens.  If you prefer a business book with one big narrative over a steam of small tales and long research paper references, you’ll appreciate the quick wit and illustrative dialogue of the Centerville Library meeting.

In part two, Kotter and Whitehead explain in detail the buy-in method they demonstrated in the Centerville Library story.  Starting from four idea-killing attack categories (i.e., fear mongering, delay, confusion and ridicule or character assassination) and the 24 typical idea-killing attacks within those categories, the authors first map the buy-in minefield, then offer you their mine sweeping method for each of the 24 attacks.

Clearly outlined, their method is simple (in a good way), and counter-intuitive:

1. Gain people’s attention by allowing the attackers in and letting them attack.

2. Then win the minds of the relevant, attentive audience with simple, clear, and commonsense responses.

3. Win their hearts by, most of all, showing respect.

4. Constantly monitor the people whose hearts and minds you need; the broad audience, not the few attackers.

5. Prepare for these steps in advance, with the ideas in this book.

What I found truly interesting about their method is that throughout part two and the appendices the authors restate the method in several different ways.  By comparison, most authors of this type of book refuse to vary a single word of their central theme, repeating over and over the same lines.  You’ll probably appreciate the variation of the buy-in method because within the different ways the method is written you’ll likely find one that best speaks to your heart and mind.

Once the method is outline, the authors take you through the 24 idea-killing attacks in a series of one or two page mini-sections, offering their simple, clear response suggestion for each attack.  You’ll need to practice the sort of response that’s right for your idea, but you  should easily be able to vary the simple responses by practicing, whether alone or with the help of a few friends pretending to be hecklers.

In the conclusion, in what I’ve observed is his standard style, Professor Kotter pushes you forward into action with a simple, clear case and a challenge to do more.  Those of you who know the size of the organization I report to every day will appreciate why this quote hit me hard.  He writes,

What if good ideas are crushed (1) twenty times per day in one single, big company (which, if it has ten thousand employees, is a small number of ideas) and (2) once a day for every thousand people in a country (which also sounds very small)?  Do the math, and you find that’s over five thousand good ideas per year shot down in a big company and over three million per year in North America. Three million good ideas a year, the best 1 percent of which–thirty thousand!–might have a very large effect on a few, or maybe most, of us.”

You’re driving change because it’s your passion.  Why not tune up your change driving engine by supercharging your buy-in success rate?  Grab a copy of Buy-In today.  Stage it next to your desk.  Read it. Use it.

Your organization, your country, and maybe even your continent needs your change!  With those stakes, isn’t Buy-In worth a try?

[For those of you more inclined to video than a book, check out the HBR site with four buy-in tactic videos.]

If your change is stuck behind a seemingly insurmountable obstacle and you’ve tried all the ways you can think of to get over, under and around the obstacle, here’s my advice: Stop trying.

Stop trying to climb the obstacle alone. Go looking for a guide.

If you had a plumbing problem in your house, and you knew nothing about plumbing, would you:

1. Check the yellow page under plumbers? Sadly there is no yellow book listing for the sort of guides you’re looking for. This blog is probably the closest thing you’ll find.

2. Research how to do the work yourself? Turning yourself into your own guide is an option, but it usually takes a while.

3. Just start hacking at your pipes? Isn’t that what you’ve likely been doing with the obstacle up until now? How well is that working for you?

4. Ask around for recommendations of who your friends called the last time they had a problem like this?

When you’re driving change and you’re stuck, stop trying to go it alone and start asking around for help.

Ask, “Who knows someone who gets energized by researching the tiniest details behind legislative and administrative policy?  I need that person today!”.

Find someone who sees your obstacle as the “get to” opportunity they’ve been looking for.  Network them into your team and set them free to succeed.

Although there’s a strong do-it-yourself movement, I, for one, believe that your choice is obvious when your choice is between toiling alone at something you can’t train yourself for fast enough and finding someone who knows your issue and enjoys resolving it.

Let the plumber do the plumbing.  Let the guide lead you over, under or through the obstacle. Then run the water and keep driving change.

I’m very frustrated right now…” – Theodore R. Mills, age 3

This past week, my three-year-old son has been using this phrase over and over again.  You see, he’s at that age where what he want to accomplish outstrips his ability to accomplish it.  He can’t get what or where he wants at his pace, and for him those delays are maddening.

What can a three-year-old teach you about driving change?

When you’re frustrated, it’s okay to say so.

Too many times I’ve seen change leaders walking around with a perpetual smiles on their faces, trying valiantly to hide their frustrations from their team members.  News flash! You’re not fooling anyone; we can tell you are frustrated.

If you’re feeling frustrated that means you still have passion for your change.  I’d be more worried if, when you were stopped or stalled, you didn’t seem to notice.   No passion and no emotion means no energy to get past the obstacles and on to victory.

Typically, after Theodore tells me he’s very frustrated, I ask him, “What should we do about that?” Then, together, we come up with some clever ideas to get him past his frustration.  Why not try the same with your change.  Admit you’re frustrated and ask your team, “What can we do to get past this? How can we get moving again?”

Enjoy their answers,  try some out, and keep driving change.

I’ve never given out homework before, so this post will be a first.

Here’s your assignment.

Sit down with a piece of paper and a pen.

Now close your eyes and visualize some change you want to make.

Open your eyes, pick up the pen and take one minute to write down all the endings you can think of to the sentence, “I can’t make the change I want because…”

How many sentence endings did you write?

Let’s go again, but this time take one minute to write down all the endings you can think of to the sentence, “I can make the change I want because…”

How many “I can” endings did you write?

If you had more “I can”  than “I can’t” endings, please accept my congratulations.  You’re on your way to driving the change you want, because your belief is winning out over your fear.

If you had more “I can’t” than “I can” endings, start over and repeat until your “I can” side wins.  You must practice seeing more of what’s possible than what’s against you because success comes to those who say “I can.”

In March, while visiting, Dr. Kotter said,

For someone who roams around the world and has hundreds of companies, universities and the government, there are some things going on [at PSNS & IMF] that are on the leading edge…If you don’t know about them, you’ve got to figure it out; find it. And, if you have been involved, you can pat yourself on the back.”

Since March, I’ve noticed that the Kotter International site’s descriptions of the 8-steps have changed, reflecting more of the PSNS & IMF method for making the 8-steps work.

Today I submitted an end of year report (we use a fiscal year calendar) to an amazing group of leaders capturing all their success over the past year.  I’d like to think their year of work influenced how Dr. Kotter wrote the “step 5: empower action” section of the Buy-In appendix.  He wrote:

People who buy into a vision look for ways to help the change effort without being instructed.  But they almost inevitably run into some obstacles.  The obstacles take many, many forms: bosses who haven’t bought in; IT systems not capable of supporting the strategies; lack of the skills needed to make the vision a reality; a lack of training to develop these missing skills.  The guiding coalition finds way to eliminate these obstacles, empowering people to do what they want and what the change effort requires.

Those of you who read this blog and work with those leaders know this describes exactly what they do every day.

The work those leaders did in the past year truly pushed the PSNS & IMF method out onto that leading edge, showing us how to generate successful change over and over again.

It sure is fun to live on the leading edge!

Now I’m wondering; do you want to join us there?

Yes?

Then what are you waiting for? That’s not a rehtorical question.

I’m really curious what you’re waiting for.  Post a comment and let me know.

Maybe we can get you past whatever your obstacle is together.

Why not try?  The world needs your change.

All my Guiding Coalition pals out there will love Buy-In‘s appendix featuring a modified version of John Kotter’s 8-steps.  This part, under “step 2: Build the guiding coalition” is one of my favorites:

Because they feel a strong sense of urgency, these people are not forced by anyone to be a “committee” or a “task force.” They want to help. They volunteer to help. and they learn to work together as a team, even if they include sub-groups from different parts of the organization or different locations (hence the term coalition).

Those people sound like they are an engine for change.   I love to hear it!

Administrators derive status from their organization and tend to identify themselves with it so that criticism of the organization is felt by them to be criticism of the administrator himself.  Productive people owe whatever distinction they may have to their own competence and are usually more open-minded about improving their performance.” – H. G. Rickover, then Vice Admiral, USN writing in American Education – A National Failure, 1963

When you’re driving change you’ll want to know whether you’re working with administrators or what Admiral Rickover called “productive people.”  Granted, there are shades of each on the line between the two, but to be successful you must learn to tell one from the other.

Here’s a quick way to tell the difference, at least from my experience.  An administrator will never use the word “new” as applied to information you have presented; they probably won’t talk much at all. Whether amazed by your findings or not, if they admit you knew something they didn’t then they have failed because your information would imply their organization is not today all that it could be, and if the organization isn’t all that it could be then they are not all that they can be, and their self-talk spiral goes up and up. The way to rewind the spiral is to talk about your change as opportunity to leverage the best of their organization and make it even better.  Even in the worse organizations there is a best part so you’re never lying, even when their best is everyone else’s average or worse.

A productive person however will use these words when in conversation with you, and will probably use them often: interesting, curious, challenging (in a positive way), new and different (again in a positive way).  Your problem with a productive person is that their curiosity for your information may cause you to run past your conclusions, getting you a few steps beyond the change you’ve thought out.  To keep your credibility when working with a productive person, always admit when you don’t know something and always share how far out you’ve taken your idea (e.g., we know what’ll happen in the next three months, but haven’t planned for “what ifs” past that). Always be on the look out for productive people.  They are an advantage on your good days and a treasured asset on your bad.

In the end you’ll be driving change with everyone, so talk up those administrators, care for those productive people and drive the change either way.

Did you know John Kotter’s new book, Buy-in, is out in hardcover?   As a Guiding Coalition practitioner, you can’t be surprised that I rushed to purchase the book.

Here’s an excerpt from the review:

You’ve got a good idea. You know it could make a crucial difference for you, your organization, your community. You present it to the group, but get confounding questions, inane comments, and verbal bullets in return. Before you know what’s happened, your idea is dead, shot down. You’re furious. Everyone has lost: Those who would have benefited from your proposal. You. Your company. Perhaps even the country.

It doesn’t have to be this way, maintain John Kotter and Lorne Whitehead. In Buy-In, they reveal how to win the support your idea needs to deliver valuable results. The key? Understand the generic attack strategies that naysayers and obfuscators deploy time and time again. Then engage these adversaries with tactics tailored to each strategy. By “inviting in the lions” to critique your idea–and being prepared for them–you’ll capture busy people’s attention, help them grasp your proposal’s value, and secure their commit

ment to implementing the solution.

According to my most recent update e-mail from Barnes & Noble, I should expect to see the book on Monday.  I don’t expect it to take me very long to get through it, so you should see a book report up here soon.

In a side note, today we closed out our 2010 Guiding Coalition, a group Professor Kotter has met and follows.  This Guiding Coalition’s tenure has been truly amazing.  I have the best job in the world!

Have a great weekend everyone! Happy reading!

Tomorrow we wrap up an 18-month run of a 36 member Guiding Coalition.  I’m in a state of contented bliss.  In my work, I watch people drive successful change and I watch them learn how to drive change anywhere in their lives.  It has been an honor to work with all of them, watch them grow, and grow with them.  You know, without them I wouldn’t have started this blog.

Want to know who they are and what they’re working on?  You can check out the link to videos of their “mid-term” presentations that I posted in April.  Since the presentations were taped in February, the teams have continued to work hard accomplishing either total wins or huge strides toward the win in nearly 36 of 36 attempts.

Tomorrow we’ll celebrate their wins and hear about the lessons they’ve learned in leadership and driving change. Then we’ll call their work complete.

I read recently that ownership is the demonstration of a set of behaviors of personal responsibility.  When someone is exhibiting ownership they will have a passion for their work, express enthusiasm on-the-job, drive for continuous improvement, learn from their mistakes and set the example.  For 18 months, these 36 people have set the example for how you should behave if you believe you own the future and must drive change to get there.

Congratulations to the members of the 2010 Guiding Coalition for all you’ve accomplished.

You’ve truly driven change and I, for one, am tremendously grateful!

We start all over again on October 1 when a new group of 36 becomes the next Guiding Coalition.  They’ll have the shoulders of giants to stand on, building on the 2010 Guiding Coalition.  Just imagine what we’ll accomplish in 2011.  I can hardly wait!

Think back to the last few times you’ve found out about a problem at work.  Which of these statements did you hear:

Option 1: We’ve assigned a team to fix the problem
Option 2: We’ve found volunteers who’ve formed a team to fix the problem
Option 3: We’ve assigned a person to fix the problem
Option 2: We’ve found a volunteer to fix the problem

I’m guessing that you’ve heard Option 1 most often: “We’ve assigned a team to fix the problem.”.  The assigned team concept seems to dominate most problem solving in large organizations.   If assigned teams dominate the problem fixing landscape then you would assume that they create the best results in fixing problems.  Do they?  Nope.  You can choose your source, but many say only two in ten change efforts succeed and I bet if you looked at the raw data you’d find most of those eight failing teams were all of the “we’ve assigned a team to fix the problem,” variety.

Now recently I’ve had experience with Option 2: “We’ve found volunteers who’ve formed a team to fix the problem.”  This is the Guiding Coalition method I’ve blogged a lot about.  It’s a useful method for wide classes of problems; yet even it seems to have its limitations.  For example, if you team every problem then you end up with a lot of teams; when the membership of these teams often overlaps you create individuals as constraints for multiple teams.  Another limitation of the volunteer teams method is the sheer number of people you must have, regardless of personnel overlap, to create multiple teams.  If you don’t just apply these ideas to businesses and include volunteer organizations, they often have very few volunteers to handle very many tasks. A team for each task is impossible.

We still have two options left.  Which is best of those two for achieving success?  It’s no contest; one is miserable to watch and the other is an overlooked gem.

I’ve rarely seen Option 3 work: “We’ve assigned a person to fix the problem.”  In my observations, the task is doomed from the assigned person’s first action. Nearly universally, their first action is: Delegate the task to subordinates.  What’s funny is those subordinates, again nearly universally, turn around and create their own Option 1 team of assigned people to fix the problem.  This new Option 1 team buried under Option 3 is a team more powerless and lacking of personal commitment than the worst purely Option 1 team.  These sad teams often encounter their first obstacle, stop, wait to see if anyone notices, then evaporate.

Today I’m fascinated by the practical workings of Option 4, “We’ve found a volunteer to fix the problem.”  My fascination was sparked last night as I attended a volunteer community group’s board meeting.  Half way through the meeting an appointed officer asked for the floor.  He told the board that he would love to stay on in his appointed position for another year, but he had a condition.  His condition was that he would not have a committee to assist him in his duties; he was going to be a one man show or nothing.  He didn’t offer this condition as a threat and there was no malice in his voice.  His condition was borne of knowing how he works best (he mentioned how he prefers to do his tasks sometimes late into the night or on breaks from his busy travel schedule) and breaking free of the burdens of scheduling committee meetings and coordinating others.  Those latter tasks were tasks he didn’t enjoy and he didn’t feel they were benefiting him or the community group.  You couldn’t argue with his results as the treasurer’s report showed money flowing into the organization (he’s chair of fund raising) and the board obviously appreciated his work by praising him often during the meeting.  Acting without a committee, he was proving to be a more than successful member of their team.

I’ve included all these details of his story because the detail shows you the burden of proof he put on himself to justify his “one man show” condition.  Desiring to work independently on a project is a rational position (i.e., allow me the fullest flexibility to play to my strengths and control my schedule while I commit to this duty I’ve accepted freely) yet this rational position, Option 4, is rarely taken.  Why? It shouldn’t require such a burden to prove it is a worthy choice of the four options.

Now what can you do armed with knowledge of these four options and aided by your own observations of their successes and failures (plus my two cents thrown on top)?  Next time you have a problem:

If you have enough people, try Option 2: We’ve found volunteers who’ve formed a team to fix the problem.

Then try Option 4, “We’ve found a volunteer to fix the problem,” and help them whenever they ask.

If you must, use only the purest form of Option 1, “We’ve assigned a team to fix the problem,” but look for passionate volunteers to add to their ranks as soon as you can.

And only if you don’t care if the problem ever gets solved, try Option 3, “We’ve assigned a person to fix the problem.

Pick a different option and see if your results improve. If you believe the research and your own observations, when you use Options 1 and 3 nearly exclusively, only two in ten problems get fixed.

With those odds there’s a big upside to trying Options 2 and 4  if you’re just willing to change who you send out to fix the problem.

In the end it’s up to you, but why not try?