Should you focus on buy-in or weigh-in to secure faster execution?

When you are driving change and asking people to do something new, difficult, uncomfortable and possibly controversial, should you get people to buy-in or weigh-in?

The water-cooler conversation at Biz Group has been all around the Super League this week.

The Super League announcement essentially created a pyramid away from the pyramid. Twelve of the “top” European clubs (six English, three Italian and three Spanish) agreed to form their own non-competitive league that would see them break away from current European competition and compete against each other without any real opportunity to win or lose. Of course, there was an incentive which would come in the form of multi-billion dollar payouts to these clubs, and this seems to have been what made the owners agree.

However, what they seemed to have dangerously forgotten was the need for fans, supporters and those involved with other non-super league teams to weigh-in. Did the fans get a chance to discuss their perspective? No. Did other clubs get to raise their concerns? No. Did these owners consider anyone or anything apart from lining their own pockets? It didn’t seem like they did.

The reaction from the fans and other clubs was arguably the most aggressive yet powerful – coming together of supporters, owners and pretty much anyone involved in the beautiful game to make their very loud voice heard.  Once this voice was raised, the “weigh-in” was more than clear, this league simply could not move any further, and the owners had made a huge error. All of this could have been avoided if it had been tackled differently.

We think they missed a fundamental leadership technique. When faced with high stakes decisions, research backs getting weigh-in in a structured way that both helps you make an informed decision and smooths the path to more effective execution. Liz Wiseman, author of ‘Multipliers: How the best leaders make everyone smarter,’ discovered that when the stakes are high, we should pull the right people into a structured debate.

Here are the steps:

1)     Multipliers debates start with framing the right question. In this case, Should we form a new Super League to address the financial burden placed on clubs by COVID-19?

This is not a brainstorm question; it is purposefully a question that has two sides only.

2)     We validate that the question is worthy of the time to debate. This decision was definitely high stakes ($6billion). It impacts the future of football, it impacts clubs, players and fans. In this stage you don't position the pros and cons of the question – just validate the fact that it is worthy of debate.

3)     Form the team – identify who should be present at the debate. This is not an elite, secret group of people. It’s people with a genuine cross-section of thinking – including all the relevant stakeholders, particularly the ones who might have objections or different perspectives.

4)     Establish how the decision will be made – is it a vote, consensus, or at times in business, the CEO’s call.  An upfront acknowledgement of how the decision will be made provides transparency. 

During a Multipliers debate, we train leaders and contributors to provide facts, data and evidence in the arguments. And most importantly, we teach them to switch, intellectually arguing for the other side. The switch technique is the secret sauce to a thorough discussion that puts all the possible facts, risks and consequences on the table. It reduces ego and enhances everyone’s ability to listen.

When a decision is made, not everyone will be happy with the outcome, but at least they had a chance to weigh-in, and there is a greater understanding of the reasons why. This leads to faster execution and adoption of the change.

I’m not guaranteeing that this approach would have mitigated the Super League uproar but it could have engaged the key stakeholders in a constructive discussion on the way forward.

The pending issue remains. All clubs, as have many businesses, taken a hit due to COVID-19, with some of the world’s biggest on the brink of financial ruin.  Football is and has been a “business” for a long time, it’s not quite the beautiful game many of us believe, but the power, as has been shown this week very much lands with the fans. Football without fans is simply nothing.

Making decisions in a small group certainly didn’t work. Perhaps owners need to engage their fans and gain weigh-in with ideas and options on how their clubs can survive.  

Either way, a powerful example of the need for weigh-in over buy-in if you want to accelerate execution.