3 Tips for Getting Buy-in for Your Idea

GETTING BUY IN FOR YOUR PROPOSAL OR IDEA

Problem statement: "I came up with a great idea. I spent a lot of time researching and developing the idea. I viewed it from all angles and was satisfied that my solution would benefit the company (cost savings, error reduction new idea, etc.). But, when I proposed it to my team/supervisor/senior management, they did not buy in. What happened?"

Does this sound familiar? My idea was good! My data was sound! Amy Gallo, writing for the Harvard Business Review says: “When you have an idea, proposal or recommendation that you believe in, it is easy to presume that getting it approved will be a breeze. If you see how great the idea is, won't everyone else? Whether an audience accepts an idea is often less about the idea itself and more about how you present it. When you need approval, don't assume that just because your idea is brilliant, others will see it that way -- convince them."

So, how do you do that? I like to say that the process starts with doing a little prework before you arrive at the proposal stage. Over this series I will relay 3 tips in getting the buy in you need. The first step is doing some prework.

TIP#1: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Who will you be talking to? Why is it important? At one of my past positions, I was new and I was asked to put together a strategic plan for my department. I was very excited and I put together, what I thought, was a really fancy, perfect plan! I had a brand new master's degree and I wanted to try out all of the best practices and information I had recently learned. I presented my plan and was very surprised to find that I did not get any buy in. In fact, some of the items I proposed the team had never heard of. I did not get the reaction I wanted and my plan was shelved. What happened?

The first thing I did, was make basic assumptions. I assumed that everyone was intimately familiar with the topics I took on and would immediately be able to connect the problems we were having with the solutions I proposed.

"Part of assessing the level of challenge requires you to think carefully about your audience and understand their needs. By listening to, understanding, and addressing these needs and concerns directly, your audience will come away feeling like you were speaking specifically and directly to them. And when someone speaks directly to you, they're a lot harder to ignore." Dean Brenner states in this article.

In knowing your audience, ask yourself these questions: Will I pitch my idea to a large team, small team? Will it be one on one? Are there any generational or cultural differences? How about differences in experience or education? Presenters should be aware of shared values of the team that may be based around age, personality and other characteristics such as profession and geography. Why? This helps you use language, examples, stories, illustrations and references in your proposal that the person or team can relate to based on their experiences. "If you address what is important to your audience, they will see you as someone who is like them, who understands them, and they will be more open and receptive to your message." says Ellie Williams in her article Effective, Persuasive Communication.

So, back to my story above. I went back and had a meeting with the major stakeholders, I sought to understand each of their pain points. While doing so, I also came to the realization that I used a lot of jargon they could not relate to. I changed my proposal and tried again. This time, I got the support and buy in that I needed. What I forgot to do initially, was learn my audience. By going back finding out where everyone was at, I was able to include them on the journey and take them with me. 

TIP#2: DEVELOP RELATIONSHIPS AND SOCIALIZE YOUR IDEA

The next tip about getting people on board with your idea is to develop relationships and solicit buy in before your proposal meeting. This behavior is natural to great communicators who have a tendency to reach out to others and talk about their ideas continuously. Do you wonder why others are successful and you struggle? A lot of times analytical communicators tend to struggle with the personal aspect and rely more heavily on data. Although, there are a lot of other factors to getting successful buy in, communication style is a large factor. It is not a surprise to know that I am a personal communicator. What kind of communicator are you? To find out your communication style, you can take a free quiz here.

Katie Bennett for the Globe and Mail states: “The enemy to establishing clear commitments is ambiguity”. When you proposal is even somewhat ambiguous, it is really difficult to get real commitment from others. “You have to push every phone call, every hallway discussion and every meeting through to crystal clear clarity.” Katie continues. A way to do this is to socialize your idea.

Socialize Your Idea

If you want to know what the reaction is going to be, toss it out there. At the water cooler, in the hall, in other meetings. Set up one on one meetings with your team, or maybe even others in different areas. Bounce your idea off of anyone who will listen. Why? It will force you to see things from other perspectives that you would never see on your own. Jennifer Leblanc, CEO and founder of ThinkResults Marketing, in this blog post says that "We all live in our own little bubbles of information and input." She also goes on to say that socializing your idea helps you get "interesting feedback and this helps to strengthen and refine your idea."

At one of the companies I used to work at, I had a manager come talk to me. He just left a proposal meeting and he was pretty bummed that no one supported his idea. It revolved around creating a new training program for manufacturing employees. I asked him what happened. He said "I researched the problem in depth. I had a lot of data and analytical information. I did a gap analysis and was pretty sure that I had found the right solution. I put the solution together and pitched it to the production managers. But, not one person bought in. They all looked at me like I was an alien."

I asked him a couple questions: "When you did your gap analysis, what kind of feedback did you get? What did the production managers, who this would affect, say when you asked them about the problem? What did the employees on the manufacturing floor or the production supervisors think?" He responded that he did not talk to anyone.  He only gathered data and presented a solution to the management team. 

Was his solution wrong? I am pretty sure he had a great idea. But, how can you convince others it is also good if you did not include them in the process? Humans interact with the problem everyday. By leaving out those the solution would affect, you may not get the buy in you expect. You have to communicate with your stakeholders, let them know that you truly understand the problem, hear them out, get people on the same page before your proposal meeting. You have to think of your solution as a project and involve your stakeholders early.

Decisions should not be made in vacuum. If so, you may get a good dose of reality later and it hijack your business case. A few years ago, when I was an HR Manager for another company, I got together with other leaders to come up with some ideas to improve employee morale. We had some really good ideas and the decision to move ahead and do some high level items was made in the boardroom. They were very good ideas using the data we had available to us and everyone wanted to see these items in action. At the end of these decisions, I had a tiny little nagging thought and I asked the other leaders in the room to put these ideas on hold, and to let me do an employee survey to ask employees what they wanted. So, after the survey, I bring in the top items that employees would like and we were shocked. A drink machine in the breakroom was #1! It was kind of funny and startling. The point is, don’t sit at your desk making decisions. Make sure you talk to everyone about the problem you identified to get their feedback and to view it from different angles.

From the Project Management Institute website:

Identify and list all possible stakeholders. Evaluate the scope of your project to assess what people and departments might be affected by both the project and its favorable outcome. The project manager and team are obviously involved. Employees and unions, if applicable, may be affected. Suppliers, bankers and customers may be other potential stakeholders.

1.    Organize your stakeholder list. Some stakeholders have more influence and their buy-in becomes crucial to the success of the project. Establish a hierarchy of stakeholder importance to focus your management efforts.

2.    Involve your key stakeholders early in the project."

Dane Howard, in a podcast entitled Socializing an Idea, talks about a mentor who gave him the advice that every time you plant an important idea into someone's head, you invite the opportunity for that story to be told and retold. It allows your story to build as you move it through the organization. Good communicators of an idea are convincing because all they really are doing is bringing consensus to things and that is not as simple as asking everyone in a room what they want and then making it happen. Your idea should be easily integrated into the broader context of what is going on in the company. What does this mean? Don't wait until you are in the boardroom to try to bring consensus to your idea.

So, why does doing all this matter? Several reasons. Developing relationships and socializing your idea will help you understand all angles and possible aspects of the problem giving you crystal clear clarity. This helps you gain a larger perspective and ultimately will help you defend your idea to leadership in your proposal meetings because you have already pitched it to numerous people and understand how they feel about it. Also, it allows others to be owners of the solution which will help pave your path to senior leadership buy in and backing.

TIP#3: EXPLAIN THE “WHY” AND HUMANIZE YOUR PROPOSAL

Explain the “Why” first

In the third and final tip to getting the buy in that you need, is asking yourself, “Do I explain the “why” when I put my proposal together? The “why” is the human part. What does it mean to me? Why should I care? A common pitfall is assuming that your audience is intimately familiar with your subject or problem and not explaining why you are there. Or, putting the “why” last. Start your proposal with background information in order to build your case. There needs to be a clear connection between the problem and how it is affecting the people in the room. What does it mean to them?

Also, don’t assume that because you/your manager have identified a problem, that it is also considered a “problem” to others. Even if you were assigned this issue to tackle, the person assigning it may not even be aware of all of the details. Sometimes you are putting together a proposal or business case for a “problem” that was handed down to you by a manager, or maybe a goal or objective put in your performance plan for the year. Just because you inherited this problem, it does not mean those above you understand what the “problem” really is. Many times we make assumptions that since it was handed down is that those above will understand the problem and all we need to do is explain the solution. More often than not, others do not understand or have clarity. You still have to make sure that you explain the “why” before you explain the “how” and “what” if you want people to buy in enough to take action.

Humanize the proposal

“Before you can get buy in, people need to feel the problem.”

John P. Kotter, Harvard Business Review 2/16/11

Many people are not able to even reach the point where they can debate the merits of their proposal. If you can’t do that, it doesn’t much matter what your proposal is. There is a good chance that people are not going to consider anything until they are convinced there is a problem that truly needs to be addressed. Think about it, managers, sr. management, etc. have budgets to manage and lots of priorities. They usually prioritize work based on the biggest problems at hand. You need to be prepared to answer lots of questions and defend your idea. That is where the communication/socialization and getting buy in stage comes in (See Tip#2).  When you have made the rounds and talked to others about it, you have answered the same questions, you have listened to issues or problems and are well prepared to defend your idea once you get to the proposal stage.

It is effective to highlight the problem and the people affected by it in a way that makes the problem feel real. What’s less effective — and far more common — is to make a dry business case that, even if correct, is usually less persuasive and less memorable than it needs to be.

STORY: “A large organization had an inefficient purchasing process, and one mid-level executive believed that money was constantly being wasted with each of the organization’s factories handling their own purchases. He thought there could be tremendous savings from consolidating the procurement effort. He put together a “business case” for change but it went nowhere. His boss said that senior executives didn’t feel it was truly a big problem, especially with so many other daily challenges taking up their time. So the manager had an idea: he collected the 424 different kinds of work gloves the factories collectively purchased and tagged each one with its different price and supplier. He carted the gloves in and dumped them on the boardroom table before a senior executive team meeting. He first showed the pile to his boss, who was taken aback by this powerful visual display of the waste inherent in having dozens of different factories negotiate different deals for the items they needed! The boss showed the CEO, who scrapped the meeting agenda to talk about procurement because what he was looking at was so memorable, so compelling, and so real. It galvanized the executives to action. Ultimately, they overhauled their procurement process and saved a great deal of money.”

“So, what is my everyday advice if you can’t always collect, catalogue, and cart around 424 pairs of gloves? One way is to highlight the real, personal consequences of the problem you want people to see, and to highlight the real people who suffer because of it.” John P. Kotter, Harvard Business Review.

Understand your premise

A common push back is “Andrea, I don’t understand why we need this [insert whatever I am asking for here] because everyone *should* be doing that already. Everyone *should* know that.” If you are hearing this, you should be ready to talk about reality and what is happening. You should thoroughly understand what you base your argument, theory or undertaking on. A lot of times senior executives, or managers, have an idea of what *should* be happening and are basing their decisions on that. It is YOUR job to not only know reality (because we got up from our desk and talked to people, right?) and to show what truly is the reality of the situation.

Be Confident!

Lastly…be confident! If you are not confident in your idea, (shock alert) your audience will not be either. 

So, go forth…do your prework, figure out who your major players are, socialize and humanize your idea and understand what is happening in reality. If you do these things, you should see a noticeable difference in your next proposal. Drop me a line and let me know how your next proposal goes.