How to change your boss’s mind

Everyone has something they want to change. Employees want to change their boss’ mind and leaders want to transform organizations. Salespeople want to win clients and marketers want to change consumer behavior. Startups want to revolutionize industries, and nonprofits want to change the world.

But change is hard. We push and pressure, and persuade and cajole, but often nothing happens. Could there be a better way?

It turns out there is a better approach. Successful change isn’t about pushing harder or exerting more energy. It’s about removing barriers. Overcoming resistance by reducing the obstacles or hurdles that impede action.

As I talk about in my new book, The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind there are five key obstacles that often prevent change. Whether you’re trying to change your boss’ mind, your colleagues perspective, or your clients’ opinion. Five roadblocks that come up again and again. 

One of them is Uncertainty. And to see how to mitigate, or ease uncertainty, it helps to visit a place where even the best new ideas often have trouble getting traction. And that is at the office.

***

The new project seemed doomed. As Jacek Nowak walked out of the meeting, his colleagues’ voices kept ringing in his ears. “Why does this matter?” one said. “This is a waste of time,” barked another. Even if they did all the work to implement the program, there was no guarantee that customers would care. That clients would actually appreciate the effort they went through. Things were generally going well, so why change?

Jacek had worked in banking for more than a decade. He started in customer service, supporting administrative processes in a bank branch, and worked his way up from there. He had conducted workshops, coordinated training programs, and helped shape recruitment processes. Eventually, rather than training new hires himself, he was responsible for managing a team of trainers. As a branch office manager at Santander Bank, he was responsible for customer service at multiple branches. He managed training and development so that employees would provide the best experience possible.

But some recent mystery shopper research had shown disappointing results. Things were satisfactory—fine, even—but something was missing. Most employees had worked for the company for a while; they knew the products and procedures inside and out. But after repeating the same activities again and again, year after year, the implementation had become mechanical. Staff smiled at customers, just like the handbook suggested, but it was out of obligation rather than any real warmth. Employees stood up when clients came in, as they were supposed to, but briefly and without conviction.

Standards were technically being met or even exceeded, but a closer look revealed troubling patterns. Key performance indicators, like sales of larger loans, insurance, or longer loan periods, were lower than they should have been. Too many people were closing accounts and switching to the competition. Clients were generally satisfied but didn’t trust employees enough to talk about their real needs.

Jacek knew that a change was needed. He wanted to improve customer experience. To deepen relationships. To encourage customers to see employees as advisors or helpers rather than as salespeople.

He surveyed best practices from different industries and found that many improvements in customer experience involved some sort of surprise and delight. Surprising people with small gifts and actions made them see that they were recognized and valued. A high-end hotel, for example, greeted customers by name when they walked in and had their favorite beverage waiting in the hotel room.

Jacek thought doing something similar could help the bank. Sending customers cards on their birthdays, greeting them by name, or celebrating their important life milestones. A customer service initiative that would strengthen customers’ emotional connection and improve employee morale.

But when he pitched the idea to his boss and other members of senior management, most were opposed. As industries go, banking is extremely traditional. Formally dressed employees sitting behind large wooden desks, much as they did twenty years ago. A focus on interest rates and checking accounts rather than customer experience or employee engagement.

Sending customers handwritten birthday cards? The bank’s leadership was skeptical. There’s no way this will work, they protested. Branch employees were used to interacting with customers a particular way and they weren’t keen on changing. Things were going well enough already, and senior management didn’t see the need to mix things up. Any change was seen as a threat.

Jacek tried providing more information. He shared research on customers’ feelings and preferences and offered data suggesting that price was not the most important thing when people make decisions. He even had an outside consultant specializing in customer experience come in to talk about the latest tools and approaches.

But still people objected. Things are different in banking, his boss said. Customers care about quick, efficient service, not building relationships. Sales are sales. This might work in some industries but not here. Not with us.

***

This response is something people often get from their bosses. No, thanks. Maybe later. That’s great for a different organization, but it won’t work here.

It’s almost as if bosses come preprogrammed to say no. Not only are they busy, but they usually have a clear agenda set out before them, and they’re not interested in deviating. They see their path to promotion as doing things as they’ve always been done, so anything that diverges from that is seen as an unnecessary risk.

Jacek needed a way to get people to come around. A way to convince management, and employees, that this new initiative would actually work. A way to reduce their uncertainty about this new initiative he was proposing.

But the more Jacek tried to persuade people, the more pushback he got. The more opposed to the project they became.

Frustrated and discouraged, Jacek tried one last approach. Working with a small team, he got to know more about each branch employee and their life, even his boss and the other members of the senior management team. Birthdays and wedding anniversaries, but also more unusual things like their dream holidays and when they started working at the company. Positive things like their favorite foods, but also more challenging things like family illnesses and other things they were struggling with.

Then, using this information, he created a unique experience to surprise and move each person. For a branch manager’s birthday, they organized a treasure hunt throughout the city, creating various activities at different sights and locations. Two people going on a difficult hiking trip were sent warm hats. A senior leader was sent a handwritten note celebrating her ten-year service with the company and noting, “You have been with us for 3,650 days, which gives a minimum of 5,256,000 of your genius smiles, without which our work would not be half as pleasant. Thank you.”

Others received special gifts, gadgets, or caring expressions of support. Always personal, always tailored, and often highly emotional.

One employee’s son had been in a car accident, so Jacek’s team founded a Facebook group and took up a collection for treatment. In a few hours it had thousands of members, and soon they had the necessary sum to pay the hospital.

Anyone would be happy with a huge television. That would be easy. But to write a few words, personally and accurately, was what generated the most emotion.

Recipients were stunned. All were surprised and many were deeply moved. Touched that someone had taken the time to care.

A few weeks later, Jacek began the normal senior leadership meeting with a question: “How did you feel when you received that thoughtful, compassionate expression of caring?”

The answers were clear. The gestures had made a huge impression on everyone.

Now Jacek’s team could talk about the importance of emotion, outline the new initiative, and discuss the value of customer experience. All without fear that someone would say it wouldn’t work. Because it had already worked for everyone in the room.

***

Years later, the initiative lives on. Employees not only celebrate client birthdays and weddings but they approach customer interactions with empathy. They are committed to discovering each client’s unique, individual needs and eager to look for unusual solutions.

Things went so well, the board of the bank started a new customer experience management team and appointed Jacek as its manager.

More importantly, though, Jacek had taken a project that seemed on the brink of failure and turned it around. He not only got his boss to believe in something the boss was initially against but got him to embrace it wholeheartedly.

Rather than trying to convince senior management how important customer experience is, Jacek eased their uncertainty. Not by pushing or providing more facts and figures, but by being a catalyst and enabling management to experience it themselves. By lowering the barrier to trial and helping senior management try out what he was suggesting.

And through these efforts, Jacek did something that often seems impossible. He changed the boss’s mind.

***

As I talk about in The Catalyst, Uncertainty is one of the five common barriers to change. The others are Reactance, Endowment, Distance, and Corroborating Evidence. Organized into an acronym they spell R.E.D.U.C.E. which is exactly what great change agents or catalysts do. They REDUCE roadblocks. They don’t push harder, or provide more facts and figures, they figure out what is preventing change from happening, and they mitigate it.

Understand the five factors that impede change, and how to mitigate them, and you can change anything.

Jonah Berger is the author of The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind, from which this article is adapted.