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How to Get Employee Buy-in for New Initiatives

General

Strategies for Securing Employee Buy-In in IT Projects

One of the greatest challenges managers, business owners and leaders face is how to get wholehearted engagement from their employees on new initiatives. It would be nice if the sheer brilliance of your every thought and idea captivated your workforce so completely that they naturally felt compelled to respond with 150% buy-in and effort. After all, you are the leader for a reason. You know what to do, how to do it, and you are an exceptionally good problem solver. Unfortunately, things do not work this way in the real world. 

New initiatives that span functional areas are especially challenging because the workload and benefits often fall differently to different groups – one group ends up doing the work while another group benefits. An initiative, for example, to have your engineers change documentation habits to make billing more efficient benefits accounting, but the engineers are doing the work. Unfortunately, the maturity required for engineers to understand that making the company better helps everyone is too often lacking. 

So, sadly, the response to something new is typically, “Really? I don’t have enough to do already? Now you want me to do more? Sure, I’ll get riiiight on that.”  

Unfortunately, failure to get buy-in from the negatively affected group can ruin even the best initiatives. So, getting buy-in is essential. The best way to get buy-in and commitment from those that work for you is for them to think that any new idea was theirs to begin with. One way is to let employees devise their own solutions. The problem with this approach is that they often fall short of the mark due to not seeing the big picture. Additionally, the penchant to look everywhere but the mirror for the source of problems pollutes any potential solution. 

Aware of this, the truly wise and humble boss will devise their own solution and then give credit to others. This approach is better but suffers due to employees’ uncanny ability to smell manipulation from a mile away. 

And truly, the best solutions do not come from one person – they come from the marketplace of diverse ideas and opinions that get negotiated to their final optimal form through discussion, compromise and trial and error. 

Engaging Employees: A Methodical Approach to Boosting IT Project Success

At my former MSP we employed a methodology that worked – it resulted in excellent initiatives. The solutions were well crafted, effective and had employee buy-in from day one. It unquestionably slowed the design stage of the process down, but it guaranteed success by ensuring a broad information gathering process and buy-in from all parties ahead of time. 

There were five steps to our process, but you can adapt what we did to your own unique culture and size of the problem to be solved. Interestingly, we devised this approach with broad employee input, practicing what was being preached. 

  1. Envision. The goal of this stage is to clearly identify the problem to be solved, an outline of the solution, and what the expected benefits of implementing the solution will be. This stage includes several representatives from each area of business that will be affected by the change. In this envisioning meeting the problem to be solved is presented by the leader or the person/department most affected. Then, through discussion, the problem, overall goal and expected benefits of potential solutions are documented. It is possible the nature of the original problem will change or expand as different viewpoints are considered. That is healthy and gets people on board as they see their opinions considered. The ultimate solution must link to the company’s vision and mission and be consistent with its values. As the leader, you may have a solution in mind to begin with but resist the temptation to present it. However, feel free to guide the discussion to an outcome that you can support through asking questions and making occasional timely contributions. 

  2. Plan. Once the problem, solution and goals are defined, it is time to do real planning. This is done with a smaller group of one, or at most two, representatives from each affected business area. In this stage, the detailed planning is done and the who, what, where, when and how is nailed down along with clearer definitions of success. It also includes a communication plan so no one is surprised. This is also where the project is rationalized to determine whether the expected result is worth the investment. This is critical to decide with the group because this is where they really commit to doing the work. 

  3. Prepare. Collect resources, provide needed training and coaching, communicate to all parties, and create any needed metrics. 

  4. Execute. Execute the plan. 

  5. Evaluate and celebrate. Evaluate results, reward contributors and tweak as needed. 

As noted, using this approach is much slower than just issuing an executive fiat, but the quality of the final plan and the positive impact of executing it with an engaged workforce far outweighed the lost time. 

We encourage employing some form of this approach when adopting our software. In fact, many pieces of our software were created using this approach. Our software lives in the Important but not Urgent Quadrant that is vitally important to pay attention to. It is the quadrant where execution pays the biggest dividends but where it is hardest to execute due to lack of urgency and resistance to change. We can help you through this process. It is a wonderful way to learn the new method and simultaneously increase the chances for success.