“What’s In It For Me?” How Do You Answer This Often-Asked Question?

Many people faced with the need to change often ask the question “What’s In It For Me?”?It’s stopped many a change effort dead in its tracks.?More than a few of my clients (who love acronyms) have even shortened it to WIIFM – What’s in it for me?

It sounds like a selfish question.?People see changes being made benefiting the customer, suppliers, even others in the organization.?So, why not me? That showstopper question often crops up as needed changes are introduced – What’s my payoff for getting on board the change train?

The typical response??Leaders and changemakers try to convince people of the benefits awaiting them once the new vision is realized.?The voices of these fence-sitters get drowned out by the drumbeat of the change program.?A campaign extolling the virtues of a new way of doing business gets driven home time and again; with the best of intentions. This approach has a costly unintended consequence.?You’re basically telling these “resistors” they are wrong.?That they don’t get it.?Why can’t they see the upsides of the changes far outweigh the downsides??Management’s frustration is in the perceived challenge to authority and wisdom. ?Otherwise, why would you be making the changes in the first place??The resulting frustration in both groups is not a promising path to building ownership and alignment in all team members.

I once worked with a client that had been losing market share steadily for several years.?It was obvious that changes needed to be made.?The senior executives decided to “clean sheet” the company’s strategy going forward.?The company already had a bad track record in the change arena.?Their go to strategy??Build a case for change and create a burning platform to motivate people to make the needed shifts.?These choices fall under the “If we recite the party line long enough, they’ll give in,” approach.?If these options don’t work, rely on the old standby: drive the changes through the organization whether they’re welcomed or not.?

When I began my work with this organization, the senior team had already started down this familiar path of developing – and eventually implementing – the new strategy.?Once again, even early in the process, the typical resistance, arguments and chorus of “What’s in it for me?” comments were beginning to be heard echoing through the halls of their offices.

The senior team could have continued sitting in a room alone and created a path forward for the enterprise.?After all, they were being held accountable for the company’s performance.?They were the ones feeling pressure from the board.?The last thing they wanted to do was slow down the effort.?

The plan was to announce the new strategy at a town hall meeting and teams were expected to immediately begin planning how to implement it. You can imagine the coming crescendo of complaints about “What’s in it for me?” after the meeting and for weeks to follow.

Before we began our work, I shared with the executive team that I believed the expected problem in this all-too-common situation occurred much earlier in the story.?Far before the quarreling began. This statement got everyone’s attention.

I explained to them that when you hear, “What’s in it for me?” it’s the perfect scenario to apply the lever Develop a Future People Want to Call Their Own from my new book Leverage Change.?This lever follows the mantra that we own what we help create.?Having more people engaged on the front- end planning change work ensures you’ll have a large group of committed, aligned people taking care of implementation down the line. This leads to better ways of doing business that stick. When people are involved, they make sure their own needs are met.?You, nor they, no longer have to worry about “what’s in it” for them. Engaging all team members soon after starting change work and this stubborn question becomes obsolete.?This lever, applied early, is the antidote to the showstopper of “What’s in it for me?”

After I had some conversations with the senior team, the executives agreed to take a new approach.?One with the goal of the protesting being kept to a minimum, if not eliminated entirely.?It was time to use the Design a Future You Want to Call Your Own lever.?The goal??Prevent the problem of resistance from the get-go instead of trying to find and fix them after the fact.

Following the guidance of Develop a Future You Want to Call Your Own led to a radically different roadmap for the desired change.?It meant bringing questions to the rest of the organization, not answers.?We organized a series of three 500-person meetings to help define the new strategy and how to implement it.?I can still remember the sessions taking place during the summer months, with the meetings held in a school lunch cafeteria.?It took three months to arrive at a set of decisions.?

We both know it all could have been done much faster if the executives had done the strategy development work themselves – and left the implementation work to others.?But that would have meant committing the cardinal sin when it comes to this lever:?The few designing for the many.

The payoffs of increased speed and commitment came when it was time to implement.?After the three months dedicated to developing the strategy and associated implementation plan, it took only another two months to make needed changes in structures and core work processes so they were consistent with the new culture.?The leadership team estimated that they could have developed a strategy in about a month.?Their guess at implementation timing doing their change business the old way.?They conceded that the changes they had envisioned might not even have still been relevant by the time they implemented them under their old way of doing change.?

What happened to those who spoke up the loudest about what the payoffs were in the change effort for them??An odd thing.?Those who had been the most resistant became the biggest supporters of the work.?Once involved in Developing a Future They Wanted to Call Their Own, these previous “problem employees” changed their tune dramatically.?Two of these folks even headed up a Change Support Team that sprung up on its own, a part of the work we hadn’t even envisioned when we began the project.

And as for that pesky market share problem that started this whole story??The metrics began ticking up in the right direction the very next year.

Avoid getting buried under an avalanche of “What’s in it for me?” the next time you’ve got big changes to make.?Anticipate these problems and head them off before suffering. Implement the necessary tools Designing a Future You Want to Call Your Own.?