The three phases of getting buy-in to your plan

^You can now like and leave comments on these newsletters. Let me know what you think about this weeks edition.

[Read time: 3 minutes]

Ahoy,

A quick story of how I messed up to get the week started.

This is a three phase story:

1. I messed up (more on the angry Europeans shortly)

2. I learned a really important lesson and the easy to apply solution

3. I tested it and it actually worked surprisingly well!

Phase 1

During one of my roles I worked in a team made up of 17 different nationalities…

Each had their own cultures, security practises and attitudes to work.

My task seemed fairly simple.

(That’s usually where the traps lie)

I needed to get the different nations to share information about a specific problem.

So here’s what I did:

1. Get everyone in a meeting room.

2. Tell everyone that I needed them to share this information.

3. Get shouted at in at least 3 different languages about this terrible idea.

Excellent.

It is safe to say this didn’t work.

Phase 2

The lesson:

You can not force a decision on someone that doesn’t buy into the plan.

Theoretically, if you’re in charge can you order someone to do something they don’t have buy in to?

Yes.

Practically, will that play out the way you want it to?

Absolutely not.

The team wont be engages, it won’t be given 100% effort or attention and if it doesn’t work out everyone looks at you and says “told you so”…

You might get away with this once or twice, but it is never going to be sustainable and ruins a positive culture.

The practical solution:

Ask questions until the team comes up with the solution.

This is actually surprisingly easy to implement and I used this just a little later on.

In fact, things become even easier if you start with questions to have them uncover the problem and the need to solve it first.

Phase 3

A huge mistake so many organisations make (the military included)…

It’s only a lesson a lesson learned, if you actually learn from it…

Otherwise it’s just a lesson identified. Which is not very helpful if you do nothing about it.

So what did I do? And more importantly, what can you do?

Faced with a very similar situation I decided to approach this differently.

I decided not to tackle the bull head on.

The task this time was to convince the same group (the group that had just 1 week earlier eaten me alive), to start using an IT system slightly differently to the way they had been using it…

I asked questions…

…They uncovered the problem.

I asked more questions…

…They realised they could solve it.

I asked even more questions…

…They came up with a solution.

And with a bit of prompting here and there we, as a team, had come up with a solution that everyone bought into.

So lets summarise:

The problem:

You can not force a decision on someone that doesn’t buy into the plan.

The solution:

Ask questions until the team comes up with the solution.

As always, I hope you got something out of today’s newsletter. If you did, make sure you share it with a friend. And if you are that friend, make sure you subscribe below:

If you’ve got any questions or comments, or anything you’d like to see covered in these emails, make sure you hit that reply button to let me know!

Have a great day.

Reece

P.S. You can also follow me on X(Twitter) for daily leadership tips and more stories like this one. Click the link just below to be taken to my page.