“Buy-in” is one of those phrases that we hear all the time. We know it’s important, but given time constraints, heavy workloads, and all those other lovely things that come along with managing projects, it’s easy to put it on the backburner in the name of expediency.
Last week my teenage son came home from school, practically simmering with indignation and frustration. A few short weeks ago, his much-beloved teacher had left and was replaced by another. To further exacerbate the feelings of loss surrounding this change, the teacher started instituting a new process for secondary research collection in the middle of an ongoing project. She asked them to put each source on an individual notecard, include a concise summary of the article, and turn their sources into her in stages—two for the first week, another three the following week, etc. Previously, each student was allowed to use an individualized method of collection and would turn that in at the end of the secondary research phase.
Needless to say, there was much breast-beating in my house that night about how the focus should be on the creativity of the project and things like research citation and note taking should fit the individual’s needs. Finally, my son exclaims, “If I just knew why she wanted us to do this, I would be much more inclined to do it. I don’t have to agree with her reasons, but knowing that there are reasons would make it easier.”
It had never entered his mind that this approach might make her job easier: allow her to break up the secondary research phase into small, manageable chunks, equitably compare the work of different students, and help her keep track of where everyone was so she could provide assistance. All he could think about was that it wasn’t the way he liked to do things, that it would take more time, and that the teacher didn’t understand what worked best for her students.
So what does this have to do with buy-in and the business world?
If you replace my son’s teacher with a new leader or a project manager in an organization and the students with employees, it’s an all-too-familiar story.
3 Questions that affect buy-in for BPM change
As we all know, change is hard—be it a business model shift or the adoption of a new process. So change is often met with resistance because employees don’t understand:
- why the change is necessary,
- how it will impact their day-to-day routine, and
- how it benefits them.
If employees don’t understand why the change is necessary or see its benefits, they are more likely to resist and ultimately negatively impact their productivity. For example, many of my son’s classmates decided that they wouldn’t adopt the new process. This impacted their productivity, because not only did they waste time doing things the “old way,” they had to spend their free time during the week converting their notes to the new method.
Leaders can make change easier if they think strategically about its effects and map out what they need to do to get people onboard. In other words, create buy-in.
Yet we still have several questions left unanswered. What does buy-in actually mean? And more importantly, what are the challenges surrounding it and how can you overcome them?
APQC’s Business Excellence team has just finished a new research collection that to provides structure and context around this nebulous concept. You can read more about buy-in, its common challenges, and solutions in APQC’s collection Creating Clarity on Buy-In.