PM-Fu: Seven Steps to Gaining Buy-in to Change

Change is exciting.  Change is the spice of life.

 Change is scary as hell when it affects your livelihood.

Change Management in the workplace is difficult.  Project Managers must deal with Change Management on a daily basis, as projects by their nature bring change to the company.  Keeping this simple list of rules in mind can help you and your organization with surviving the change you hath wrought:

1.  Control processes, not people.

You cannot control people.  You can change the rules, and leave people with the choice to accept them or not.  Get the right buy-in from executive management, and they will support the change in rules, which will help your change to occur- regardless of employee attitudes.

2.  Change people where you can.

While rules can make people adopt change, life is a whole lot easier if people will embrace change.  Try to create champions and evangelists of your change.  Use marketing and branding, not advertising.  Create a concise, clear message- a mantra, if you will, of what your change means to people, and stick with it.  Don’t get into the weeds of validating your mantra to the Nth degree; just quietly support the idea.

3.  Share your vision by letting them see it.

While you can’t over-validate your mantra, you can demonstrate it with stories, allegories, and examples.  Provide business cases, testimonies from other clients, specific use cases that show how the change will make specific, identifiable tasks that people perform every day better.  Paint the picture, then wait for them to have that “Aha” moment where they get it.  You can’t have it for them.

4.  Prepare for panic.

People will hate the change.  They will be afraid it will make their job harder, that it will cost too much, that it will take time to implement, that it will make them miss taking their extra day of vacation next week- in short, that the change will ruin their routine.  You, as an agent of that change, may even be held personally accountable by them.  Expect it.  Be patient with it.  Stick to item 2 and 3.

5. Keep it simple, stupid.

Explain the changes coming in the simplest terms possible.  All changes have many details attached to them, and that’s fine.  You do not need to present implied details, however.  You are getting acceptance, not detailing a task list.  Once the person accepts your proposed change, they will be more ready to accept the details that go with it.  Keep things simple.  Remember, sales are clear and simple, implementations are complex and detailed.  You are selling your idea here.

6. Recruit shamelessly.

Once you gain acceptance from someone, adopt them.  Make them a part of the change.  Give them some piece of the change to own and implement themselves.  Their involvement will in turn cause them to seek buy-in from others.  More voices equals more volume.  Your message will spread faster.

7. Make Benefits Personal

As much as people care about the company, they come to work for themselves and for their family.  Personal security comes before company loyalty.  Changes at work threaten personal security.  Help people to understand how the benefits are personally good for the individual first, then work up to the benefits to their team, then their department, then their company.  Let the goodness grow outward from them, not down from the company to them.  They will relate to it better.  Done right, it will even help them feel safer, not less safe, after the change.  Remember to show, not tell.

Keep these premises in mind, and you’ll find change to be much easier.

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