Blog Post

Creating Buy-in

Rich Hagberg • Sep 14, 2020

Getting Buy-in For Your Initiatives

Creating Buy-In

There’s a common understanding that executives are hired to make decisions. True enough. But they are also hired to insure that the decisions are implemented. Coming to a decision – choosing a direction, formulating a strategy or deciding on an action plan – is difficult enough in these complex times. Getting people to buy in – to understand, accept, and align behind the plan - is another matter.

Nobody creates a successful business alone. 
No matter how brilliant or visionary you are, how innovative your ideas or your product, you need other people to help you transform your vision into reality. Leaders get results by working through others. 

You need cooperation and support for your initiatives from investors, employees, and other stakeholders if you are to lead successfully and accomplish your goals. 

The authoritarian leadership style is a dinosaur
We no longer live in a world where the person at the top can dictate terms to followers and employees and automatically get his or her way. It doesn’t work like that. Leaders on every level operate in a complex web of relationships and inter-relationships. They have to work with people who have differing agendas, viewpoints, and leadership styles, and need to find ways of working together to achieve common goals. 

So you need to create buy-in.
One of the ongoing challenges you will face as a leader is creating buy-in – getting the people whose support you need as fired-up as you are about what you are creating together. People who take on your vision as their own, who will enthusiastically put in the hours and the focus because they believe in you and your objectives and truly want to see your idea come to life. The more your agenda becomes theirs, something they want to achieve because they believe in it, the better your chances of success. 
   
How will you do it? 
This will not happen by itself. How will you light the fire that will make people passionate about building the organization needed to realize your dream? How will you enlist the cooperation of those who are not passionate, but whom you need on your side? 

And how will you avoid the pitfalls that get in the way? 

Here are some ideas that are relevant both for specific projects that you want to pursue, and for the overall success of your organization. 

Steps to create buy-in

Determine what you want 
Creating buy-in first requires knowing what you want (your goals, priorities, and needed resources). So, before trying to present your idea or suggest an action, it’s important to carefully think through your proposal. Ask yourself: 

  • What is most important to you in this situation? 
  • What is your primary goal or core agenda? 
  • What do you need others to agree to or support, both immediately and in the future? 
  • What actions or changes do you want to see? 

Determine what you can give up
Differentiate between your “A” priorities and your “B” and “C” priorities. 
What are you willing to give or trade to get what is most important to you? 
Be clear about the relative importance of getting the current task accomplished or initiative supported, versus maintaining or building a long-term relationship with those you are trying to influence. 

Prepare the ground – do your homework
If you need an individual or group to buy in to your idea or initiative, set up a meeting and prepare for it carefully. Don’t impulsively jump into action before you have your plan thought through.
  • Know what you want to achieve. 
  • Get clear what points you want to make, and how you want to state them. 
  • Make whatever notes you may need so you can give a thorough, cogent, and persuasive presentation. 
  • Get your facts straight and know the details.
Do your homework so that your argument has credibility. This is how you want people to see you: “She is so knowledgeable that her ideas and proposals have immediate credibility.”

Anticipate the opposition 
Before you meet, make a list of all the people your proposal will affect. Talk to key players to find out how they think and what they want: 
  • What are their concerns, agendas, and motivations? 
  • What do they care about the most?
  • How are they likely to react to your proposal? 
Try to anticipate likely disagreements or any opposing views you may face. Adjust your presentation accordingly.
  
Try to understand the person or persons you want to influence
One factor that inexperienced leaders – and some who should know better – often fail to take seriously is learning all they can about the people they wish to influence. It’s a common, and very natural mistake to feel that your vision, your personal persuasive powers, and your position authority should be enough to bring others into alignment with what you want. But it isn’t. 

Before you aim directly for buy-in, try to understand the situation from the point of view of the people you’ll be addressing. When you talk to them, explain your ideas but be in a listening mode. Pay attention to what they say, and adapt your approach based on what you learn they want and what the forces are that are acting on them. If you understand their world and have a bit of empathy for what they are facing, you will be more likely to see them as allies rather than as the evil opposition.

Clarify what you have to offer in exchange
The unspoken question people will almost always have when considering whether to buy in to someone else’s initiative is, “What’s in it for me?” So before you try to influence and persuade, it’s important to clarify not just what you want, but what you have to offer. What can you trade for something they want or need? Important: This is likely to be different for each stakeholder, so you need to get to know your people. It’s not always about money. 

Here are some things people value:
  • Meaning: Being involved in a project that has broader meaning and significance
  • Challenge: The chance to work on a demanding, stimulating project or problem
  • Money: Making more of it
  • Growth: Expanding their territory of influence or their level of responsibility
  • Learning something that is useful to their career advancement
  • Acknowledgement or praise for their accomplishments, competence, or knowledge
  • Being listened to – feeling that their ideas and contributions are appreciated
  • Getting support for a pet project in the form of financial or other resources such as staff, equipment, or office space
  • Greater visibility in the organization, profession, or industry
  • The opportunity to work with a person they admire or respect 
  • Receiving coaching or mentoring
  • Feeling that they are a valued part of a group or team

Action Plan for Creating Buy-In

Build consensus with key people
Identify the stakeholders whose buy-in you most need, whose input may influence or even change your approach or your course of action. That usually means all of your direct reports and your peers, and if you're the CEO, your board members. 

Talk with them, and listen to what they have to say. You want key players to get behind you, but the process of persuading almost always involves listening to their concerns before you try to convince them of your rationale. They may have insights you don't have or concerns you don’t know about until you reach out to them. 

Note: Pretending to listen – going through the motions with no intention to take the other’s ideas seriously – is not listening. Most people can spot a phony. 

Line up your support
In their book, Influence Without Authority, educators and consultants Allan R. Cohen and David L. Bradford suggest that you consider starting with
  • People you know or are pretty sure are supportive. “Early wins help.”
  • People whose support will bring others along with them.
  • People whose expertise can improve your case.
  • People who are likely to oppose you if you do not incorporate their demands. 

Connect with employees and direct reports
Ultimately, you want buy-in from everyone, not just critical stakeholders. Depending upon the size of the company you may or may not have sufficient time to establish relationships with everyone, but do the best you can. 

Easy ways to create rapport and build support
Preferably before you need people to support an initiative: 
  • Invite people for a one-on-one, perhaps for coffee or to share an informal lunch. 
  • Pause at somebody's work area and ask what they're working on, what is exciting to them, and what frustrates them. Ask: “How can I help? What do you need?” 
  • If they are new in town – perhaps they’ve moved in order to work with you and your team - ask if they are comfortably settled, and how partners or family members are. 
  • Take a minute to find common ground in personal interests – sports teams, music, etc. – and share your enthusiasm. “Did you see the game last night?” “Have you heard the new song?”  
It doesn’t take a lot of time to show interest or say a kind word. Fostering positive, trusting relationships is an investment in creating buy-in. 

On the other hand, if you only show up when you want something they will quickly get onto it, and their trust level will be damaged. 

Influence, don’t push
The tendency among entrepreneurs is to focus almost exclusively on pushing their idea. But forcing things tends to create resistance. Creating buy-in is ultimately about influencing others, not making demands on them. It may require a little time to truly listen and take others’ concerns into consideration, but if you need to build support to get something done, or must work collaboratively with others over the long haul, it’s worth the investment.

Involve people in decision making
An effective way of creating buy-in with your team is to involve them in problem-solving and decision-making. Not every decision or problem requires consensus but involving people in problem solving, whether it's gathering relevant facts or getting suggestions for potential actions or approaches, is very useful. People love to feel that their opinions and insights are valued, i.e., that they are respected members of the team. 

Keep people in the loop
Explain your decisions and share the rationale for your conclusions or actions. This helps people understand how you think about problems and empowers them to develop capability for independent decision-making. The more they can do that, the more you can trust them and the less you will feel the need to micromanage. 

Inspiration generates buy-in
People need to know where the leader is leading them, and they need to feel that the destination is meaningful and attainable. Visionary Evangelists have a natural gift for painting a verbal and conceptual picture of their vision, delivered with enthusiasm, that draws people to want to follow their lead and makes them feel, “We can do this!” 

Share your vision and keep it fresh
You have the big picture, and at least a partially developed long-term strategy, and you know what you need to have happen as you go forward. Your employees do not have this vision or understanding, unless you share it with them. One of the most powerful ways to generate buy-in is to paint that big picture, and repeatedly remind them of where you are going as an organization and how they can help. 

Create an atmosphere of openness, not fear
If a leader is autocratic and intimidates or bullies people, it fosters the development of a culture of yes-men. Then you’ll never know what people are thinking, or what is really going on in your organization. If you want to elicit people’s best thinking and most committed action, you need to allow others’ voices to be heard. Create an atmosphere where people will bring forward their ideas. They will do that, if they believe you are really listening. 

Try to take time for your people even when you feel you don’t have any
A critical factor facing the entrepreneur that others may be blissfully unaware of is the sense of urgency he or she likely feels because funding is limited, the fuses are burning, and the runway is getting shorter. With this kind of pressure – with so much to accomplish in a short time frame – it feels impossible to take time soliciting people’s opinions and building support. Try to do it anyway. 

Apologize if you screw up 
If you snap at someone because of the pressure, apologize as soon as you can. “I’m sorry, the time crunch is getting to me. You didn’t deserve that. You’re doing a great job.” This will go a long way to soothe hurt feelings and build a stronger relationship with your team. 

Model the values you expect others to follow
Creating buy-in starts with the first people you hire, and continues through all phases of the organization’s growth. You need to be sure that all the individuals are in alignment with the values and goals of your company. You can’t expect this to happen unless you make those goals and values clear, explain why they are important, and demonstrate them in your own behavior and relationships. 

People will buy in to the project or plan if they trust the leader’s sincerity and are convinced he or she has the right people, resources, expertise, and managerial skill to bring the vision to life. 

Integrity counts
People are naturally drawn to support and get behind a leader of integrity, who is trustworthy and respected. If a leader intentionally misleads people, chances are very strong that the truth will eventually come out, and from then on, trust and credibility will be damaged and the leader’s ability to get people to buy in will be undermined. Not being truthful and transparent, taking the easy way out of a difficult situation, may seem expedient in the moment, but this behavior ultimately amounts to self-sabotage.  

People are not just “resources”
Many entrepreneurs are lacking in social awareness and may not consider the needs of others when they make decisions, or the impact their decisions will have on people. They see their employees as means to an end, as “resources,” they see them as part of a numbers calculation, but not as people. This may work for a little while, but it will fail in the long run.

Followers will be much more likely to buy in to the goals you set for the organization if they feel you are committed to their personal growth and advancement. 

Be sure employees and team members are buying in from the get-go
Generating commitment and dedication will be an ongoing challenge for you as your organization evolves, new initiatives are on the table, and new people start appearing. It begins with finding, hiring, and inspiring the right people. For a startup it will be up to the entrepreneur, the one with the vision and passion, to craft a core leadership team whose members are not only expert in their area, but who share the vision and are on board with the goals and values that drive the company. 

As you expand and need to take on more people, ask yourself:
• Do they care about the company’s mission? 
• Do they understand the exceptionally hard work and long hours that will be required? 
• Do they see value in what the organization wants to create in the world? 
You need to hear unambiguous Yes’s to these questions!


Obstacles to Creating Buy-in

Communication Breakdown
One of the chief hang-ups preventing buy-in is that one or more of the parties has not clearly heard or fully understood the others’ position. From your side as the leader, you need to be sure 
  1.  that your communication is clear, logical, data-driven when possible, and conveys the value of your initiative for all concerned, and 
  2. that you have truly listened and understood the opposing or counter-argument. Often, simply clarifying positions resolves opposition. 

Clash of values/desires/expectations
If the positions are understood yet there is still a problem, look beneath the surface for different or opposing values, desired outcomes, or expectations. Clarify these as much as possible (this will require some time), and negotiate, trying to find ways for all parties to get something they value. 

The hard sell doesn’t work
Most entrepreneurs are very strong-willed people who can be far more forceful and intimidating than they realize. Pushiness and bullying don't capture people's hearts, and without that deeper commitment, you can’t get the kind of motivation you need to sustain an effort. 
Forcing compliance may work in the short run but not in the long run. Not only will people not put forth their best effort, they may come to resent you if they sense you are just pushing your own agenda. 

Authoritarian leadership is a dinosaur
With reference to the Three Pillars model, creating buy-in is primarily a Relationship Builder skill set. Leaders who are accustomed to making demands without listening to their peers and subordinates are not good at it. If you don’t relate to people with at least some degree or warmth, caring, and approachability, you may find it hard to elicit support for your ideas, projects, and goals. Good relationship builders do have a natural advantage, but this is a skill that can be learned. 


Summary and Recommendations for Creating Buy-In 

It’s not all about them
Contrary to what you might expect, creating buy-in is not only about persuading people to adopt your agenda. It actually starts with you: who you are, how you present yourself, and how you treat others. It requires knowing what you want - your goals, priorities, and resources. 
Her combination of friendliness and professionalism helps her win over everyone. 

Be clear on who you are and what you want. 
Before trying to present your idea or persuade others to get onboard with a plan or strategy, ask yourself, what is most important to you in this situation? Keep in mind your primary goal or core agenda. What do you need them to agree to or support, both immediately and in the future? What actions or changes do you want to see? What are your priorities? Think about what you are willing to give or trade to get what is most important to you. 

Consider others’ needs, values, and priorities. 
Be aware that you may be working with people who have different goals and measures of success. Find out what they want and need. Learn what is driving them. Invest in understanding their needs and motivations in order to gain alignment and find mutually beneficial solutions. 
He includes us at the inception of new initiatives. He really wants to know our thoughts.

Earn trust. 
If people sense that you are manipulating them and just going through the motions of openness to their input while pushing your own agenda, they're going to be much less likely to trust what you say. You build trust by being trustworthy – truthful, consistent, and ethical. 
He is someone you feel you can trust. He has a reputation for sound decision-making and judgment. People just believe him.
He has earned the loyalty of his team by being clear, consistent, open, and reliable. 

Listen and Adapt. 
Take the time to listen to your main stakeholders, discuss your proposed initiative, and reach consensus. You may need to adapt your approach based on learning what others want and what the forces are that are acting on them. Try to understand what is driving them and what or who may be influencing their goals and concerns. 
He talks with all of his partners one-on-one on virtually every critical issue affecting the organization.
Her approach is very consultative, and she makes sure that she hears all viewpoints before she decides her next steps.

Ask for their support. 
Rather than make demands, ask for the support of all involved. Let them know that the success of what you are trying to achieve depends on their active and enthusiastic participation. Be sure they fully understand why this initiative is important, what is at stake, and how achieving the end you are proposing will benefit them as well as the organization. 
I have seen him create buy-in by creating a sense of ownership in the whole project. Everyone feels they have a stake in the success of the project. 

Do your homework
Be prepared. Before talking to individuals or groups, think things through, know what you want to achieve, try to anticipate the opposition you may face, and make whatever notes you may need so you can give a powerful and persuasive presentation. Know not only what points you want to make, but how you want to state them. Get your facts straight and know the details. 

What are you offering?
In return for their support and participation, what are you offering in exchange? Try to clarify what you can put on the table that may be of value, before sitting down to try to influence them. What can you trade for something they want or need? It could be expertise, information, or knowledge; it could be appreciation, gratitude, recognition, assistance, or support for a pet project; it could be financial or other resources like staff, equipment, or office space. Work toward a win-win solution. 

See the Big Picture.
 Various stakeholders within your organization will have diverging agendas and demands. The bigger the organization, the more complex this becomes. You have to be the one who takes all the factions and points of view into consideration in order to come up with the solution that will be best for everyone. Don’t just charge ahead with your own plan before you truly consider what outcome the others are looking for, and what they will accept if they don’t get everything they want. And that goes for you, too. 

Take a long-term view. Weigh the relative importance of getting the current task accomplished or initiative supported versus maintaining or building a long-term relationship with those you are trying to influence. You don’t want to win the battle and lose the war, alienating the other person or group. If there is a lot of opposition, ask yourself if you really need to win this one. They may be holding on to the status quo or have some other agenda that you need to overcome, or they might actually see consequences that you don’t. Be open to their input. It will help a lot toward creating buy-in and achieving a positive outcome if you can show that you understand where they are coming from. 

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These were not decisions about what color chairs to buy for the conference room, but major decisions such as whether to launch a new product or service, change the structure of the company, enter a new country, or acquire another firm. They also looked at the results, the outcomes of these decision on revenue, profit, market share and return on investment. Lovallo and Sibony also asked the teams to describe their decision-making process: how they went about making the decision. For example: Did the decision-makers consider multiple points of view Did they recognize what they didn’t know and what was uncertain Did they include participation from a range of people with differing views on the desired outcome and how to get there? Did they search for evidence that contradicted their beliefs? Did they include in their discussion points of view that contradicted the senior executive’s perspective? Did they elicit participation from a range of people who had different views? What they found was that the decision-making process that the teams utilized was far more important than analysis and having the right data – astonishingly, by a factor of six! Having the right data clearly matters, but it’s not enough. In other words, good analysis in the hands of smart people won’t always lead to good decisions. Even though detailed analysis is important, the decision-making process itself was six times more crucial to successful outcomes. When the decision-making process was improved there was a statistically significant improvement in financial results. Why should this be? They concluded, "An unbiased decision-making process will do a lot is ferret out poor analysis. The reverse is not true; superb analysis is useless unless the decision process gives it a fair hearing…”. So, how can the leader ensure that a fair hearing is given to all the facts, relevant factors, and alternatives? How can we attain that level of objectivity and fairness required to minimize biases, challenge assumptions, and as much as possible neutralize all the other ways we tend to blind ourselves, distort our perspective and sabotage? One way to overcome bias and a tendency to jump to conclusions, is to explore multiple options to avoid focusing on conclusions that are too narrow, biased or reactive. A single individual may have trouble doing this effectively. Utilizing outside input from experts or using your team in a brainstorming session can usually generate numerous possible approaches. This can also help you avoid recency bias. Recency bias occurs when a leader or team puts too much emphasis on recent events and give less weight to those that have happened in the past. It skews perception toward short-term thinking. Another way to sidestep bias is to invite team members to challenge each other’s assumptions and ask disconfirming questions, such as: What could go wrong if we do this? What is the biggest potential obstacle you can see in the solution we have proposed? If you follow my proposed approach, what might happen that we haven’t thought about? What haven’t we considered, what are we missing by taking this approach? If we follow this plan, what problems might arise? How many leaders – especially if they have an idea of where they want to go on a specific initiative – are willing to ask themselves such questions and subject themselves to input that might cast doubt on their decisions? Yet questions like these, if taken up by the group, can yield insights that might avoid hidden danger and difficulty. Leaders often deceive themselves by thinking that they are gathering information when they are actually fishing for support their idea and trying to be right rather than trying to uncover the facts. If you want to get to the best answer rather than seeking confirmation of your viewpoint, invite the perspectives of people who have diverse backgrounds and experience in different domains and different companies. Don’t be afraid to spark constructive disagreement. In fact, encourage it. Ultimately you will create a more effective decision-making environment if you use your team, and this is particularly important around strategic decisions. The value of active participation in a disciplined group process Not all decisions require involvement of your team. Some decisions you may need to make by yourself. Some require you to consult with others who have a useful perspective and unique insight into the problem you are trying to solve. Some are best delegated to others who have demonstrated good judgment and capability. However, when you have the time, need alignment, buy-in and support for your decision, need to generate multiple creative alternatives, and functional or domain knowledge, involving your team may produce a better decision. Of course, this requires good team communication, effective collaboration and means you must actively facilitate a disciplined process. But the synergy of effective team problem-solving and lively discussion can bring exciting results and higher levels of acceptance of the ultimate decision. 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Here are some of the key findings: The higher the level of team member participation in decision making, the more ideas were generated, and innovation and risk taking increased A higher level of participation by team members leads to greater alignment and a sense of ownership on strategic decisions A higher level of participation by team members means that they have an opportunity to openly share their views, reducing the chances of political maneuvering behind the scenes The higher the level of participation by team members, the greater the spirit of collaboration, communication, and coordination that is created on the team The higher the level of participation by team members, the more adaptable the organization The higher the level collaboration between team members, departments, and groups, the better the financial results The more team members were willing or able to challenge outdated assumptions and ineffective practices, the better the results The higher the level of cooperation and team spirit, the easier it was to retain top talent The more the organization’s leaders demonstrated trust in team members, the more likely the organization was to retain top talent The more conflicts were addressed directly and not swept under the rug, the more likely it was to retain top talent When team members have active input in decision making, they take pride in the decision, and feel more engaged with the company. When they are directly involved in the creation of strategy, for example, they have a deeper understanding of what the strategy is, and are more aligned, inspired, and motivated to work toward achieving whatever the plan is. Employee loyalty increases. When the players are more aligned, the team and the organization as a whole becomes more agile, able to adapt more quickly and move more coherently. Not surprisingly, financial results improve. Team participation in making important and critical decisions stimulates useful dialogue. The input from team members with different domain knowledge can lead to exploration of creative alternatives. This will take more time than a decision handed down from above but will likely yield higher quality solutions and produce greater buy-in and support for the ultimate decision. This collaborative problem solving/decision making process requires the leader to facilitate effective communication and skillfully guide the team to systematically work through the problem. But the leader must also be willing to share power and give up some degree of control. The dynamics of group decision making 1. Brainstorming : The decision-making process moves naturally through predicable phases. It begins with some version of brainstorming, in which ideas are generated and put on the table (or the whiteboard, or a digital equivalent) for consideration. In this stage, the goal is to come up with as many ideas as possible, not to censor some ideas as “unworkable” but rather, to encourage the ideas to flow. It is a process of divergent thinking, aiming at an expansion of possible options. 2. Getting closure : Brainstorming alternative solutions inevitably leads to the need to bring all the ideas to closure. Your task as leader is to help the team hold an in-depth discussion of the alternatives, and to provide some structure for selecting the best of them. The purpose of the discussion, of course, is to reach some sort of consensus, to narrow down the options in order to go forward toward a solution and then a plan of action. 3. Exploring differences : In the conversation, those who favor an approach or a solution have a chance to advocate for it. The job of the others is to listen respectfully and consider the idea with as little bias or prejudgment as possible. Typically, many ideas are put forward, without a clear solution emerging. 4. Getting bogged down : At this point, the team may struggle to comprehend the wide range of ideas that have been generated and reach consensus or at least a workable conclusion. This can be difficult and often leads to arguments and stalemate. The team may become bogged down in competing viewpoints. No way forward seems clear and obvious. Frustration mounts. There may be irritation or anger. Why does the team get stuck? Group members have different agendas, needs, biases and frames of reference. Often the discussion reveals that people don’t really understand one another. Some members push their own agenda aggressively. Some interrupt while others go on and on repeating their point of view. Some dismiss the ideas of other members. Some members attack, while others get defensive and withdraw. Some lose patience with the whole process, which can lead to frustration, and dysfunctional conflict or the adoption of suboptimal solutions that are a compromise, false consensus, or groupthink. If the trust level of the team is low and there are conflicts and tensions between team members, it is common for members to misinterpret or misrepresent each other’s ideas. Overcome the conflicts or stalemate : In order to break through the logjam, the team leader may need to switch styles and help the team engage in convergent thinking, in order to move together toward a decision. Convergent thinking is applying logic to evaluate options and narrow down to the best answer or alternatives. The leader needs to help the group develop a common understanding, generate alternative solutions, sustain motivation to work through the issues. and then integrating divergent into a mutually acceptable solution. The process of working toward a solution can be greatly aided by a leader or outside facilitator who is skilled in facilitating group discussions. This is an art that requires both learning and practice. As the leader, you may choose to find and hire such a person as a consultant when difficult or crucial strategic decisions need to be made. Or you may take it upon yourself to play that role. If you do, keep in mind the following basic guidelines: Don’t panic . Recognize that you or your team is stuck, and that it is a necessary stage in the transition from divergence (throwing out a multitude of ideas) to convergence (choosing the most viable solutions and formulating a plan). Encourage full participation . Get everyone involved in the dialogue. Foster an atmosphere of safety and respect. Draw people out. Ask team members to speak in order to be understood rather than to win an argument. Promote mutual understanding. This begins with listening. Encourage people to try to walk in each other’s shoes, to really understand what others are saying rather than looking for weaknesses or holes in their argument. Ask people to define their terms and explain their thinking and their conclusions. Work toward an inclusive solution . Avoid “my way or the highway” thinking and look for ways to incorporate everyone’s interests in a workable plan. With those basic principles in mind, consider doing some of the following: Confirmation and Sunflower Bias : Be aware that these biases are real problems in creating an atmosphere of open discussion of alternatives and reaching conclusions about what to do. As the team leader, be careful not to unduly influence the group or manipulate them into supporting your biases. Relinquish the desire to control the solutions and instead, allow all ideas to get a fair hearing, so that the facts can win. It’s often wise to speak last. Psychological Safety : Throughout the discussion, remember the importance of creating an environment of psychological safety for open dialogue to really be effective. People need to feel comfortable and safe enough to freely express their views. Be alert to the fact that not all team members may be putting their cards on the table. Despite your effort to encourage psychological safety, not everyone feels safe in expressing what they really think, want or fear. They may feel it is too risky, so they hold back. Try to draw out team members’ concerns in open discussion but also consider having each member anonymously write down anything they haven’t said on a slip of paper. Encouraging Participation: Try to listen to all points of view by drawing out team members, summarizing or paraphrasing their points. Each team member has a unique set of interests and concerns and needs to have the time and to feel safe to express them. Watch out for team members withdrawing or shutting down Digging Deepe r: Do your best to help team members develop a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives. Encourage them to ask questions to clarify their understanding when other members’ ideas are confusing or complex. Remind team members that their goal in this phase is to understand one another, not to win arguments or points. Actively facilitate communication : This means you may need to play communication traffic cop or referee to make sure members are listening and really understanding other’s points of view. Sometimes this means providing some structure for the discussion such as setting a time limit for each team member to express their point of view, and/or encouraging other team members to ask the speaker to clarify what they mean or to give further explanation of key points. Then, ask any members who have asked questions if they now understand the speaker’s point. Look for patterns or ways to categorize the options or ideas that are generated that can help bring coherence to the discussion Clarify differences : When there is a misunderstanding – and there will be – try to clarify differences and see if there is a common ground. At this point your goal is to promote accurate understanding, not to resolve conflicts between members. Surface different assumptions, motivations and definitions : Be alert to team members having different assumptions about the problem, the meaning of various terms, the risks, the importance of different issues, and so on. Members may assume, rightly or wrongly, that other members have hidden or unexpressed motives for proposing a solution. Part of your job is to help members explain the real meaning of statements they make to one another so unspoken assumptions are really understood. Call out disruptive or non-collaborative behavior : When team members interrupt or are overly aggressive, dismissive or confrontational, the leader must firmly call out these behaviors. Separate facts from opinions : It is important in discussing the details of a problem or solution to separate the facts from people’s opinions, interpretations or speculations about the meaning of the facts. Before trying to explore the viability of different solutions, it is wise to list facts and opinions separately to help the team distinguish one from the other. Don’t allow false consensus: Once the team has begun to narrow down their options, ask each member to express their concerns about each proposal. In an effort to try and get the decision made, it is easy for the leader to assume agreement with a solution. This may result in hidden concerns masquerading for consensus. False consensus often sabotages real alignment and creates fertile ground for later problems in implementation. Resistance often has its roots in fears about how the implementation of a proposal may impact the individual team members or their teams. This is related to group think. A pparent tangents or wild ideas can be gold mines : Be alert to the fact that some members’ ideas or proposals may initially feel like they were off topic or represent a distracting tangent, when they actually might represent a subtle or new issue that others have not seen. If you explore these topics the team might develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding or better solution. Revisit original goal or decision criteria : Once you have narrowed down possible alternatives to a reasonable number, consider going back to your original problem definition and goal, and evaluating each alternative against your decision criteria. Ask the team to consider what are the most important elements of an ideal solution. It might be cost, ease or speed of implementation, fit with your strategic objectives, consistency with your core values or any other thing the team considers crucial for the proposal to be successful.
By Rich Hagberg 11 Feb, 2021
Your Decisions Create Your Future There is an old saying, “Leaders are paid to make decisions.” Whether in business or any other field, making decisions is one of the most critical things leaders do. Look at any company’s performance, and you can immediately see the results of its decision making. It is not an exaggeration that the success of your team or your organization depends on whether your decisions enhance your chances of success or set you up for failure. You are creating your future, one decision at a time. The results you get reflect the effectiveness of your decision-making. Take a quick look at your own past decisions, both personal and professional, and you will have to concede that your track record is far from perfect. Sure you will see smart, timely, effective decisions that got you where you are today. But if you look objectively, you’ll see over the long term the impact of decisions you made that were impulsive, where you trusted your gut, or you made decisions in the heat of emotion, or you had strong beliefs that got in the way of the facts, and you shaped the analysis to fit the mental model that you already had in your head. Improving your capabilities as a decision maker involves understanding and making use of what research has discovered about the decision making process, as well as understanding your own tendencies and the things in your behavior and your problem-solving process that can lead you astray. The fate of companies rises or falls based on the wisdom and efficacy of the decisions that are made. And so do the careers and destinies of the deciders. The Pressure to Make Important Decisions---Fast As all leaders know, the pressure of decision making is great, and gets greater the higher up you go. The torrent of problems requiring solutions and decisions is relentless. “This is the terror of being a founder / CEO,” said Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz. “It is all your fault. Every decision, every person you hire, every dumb thing you buy or do — ultimately you’re at the end.” The list below shows just a fraction of the key decisions that entrepreneurs, for example, have to make: • Should I raise more capital to fuel growth but reduce equity? • Do I have the right people on the bus? • Do I have the right people in the right seats on the bus? • Should I change my role or my job? • Is it time to lay people off? • Is it time to give up and throw in the towel on this project? • Is it time to sell the company or should I go for an IPO? • How should I deal with this new competitive threat? • Should I pursue this merger opportunity? • Is it time to expand or should we stick with what we know? • Is it time to raise funds? • Should we make this huge capital investment? • Should we go all out or conserve cash? • Should I accept a term sheet now or hold out? “If There Is Time To Reflect, Slowing Down Is Likely To Be A Good Idea" Daniel Kahneman How do you make decisions of this importance? Do you take enough time to gather data and carefully weigh all the options, the pros and cons? Do you seek input and feedback from your team and/or your peers and mentors? Do you go with your gut? According to futurist Stowe Boyd, “There is an enormous lie underlying business, the lie that decisions are made rationally, applying logic and expertise, sifting evidence, and carefully weighing alternatives.” The reality, he says, is quite different. “The science is clear: in general, we don’t really make decisions that way.” [Source: “How to Untell the Lie at the Heart of Business”, quoted in “Don't Fail At Decision Making Like 98% Of Managers Do,” Eric Larson, Forbes, May 18, 2017] Most people are not totally rational when they make decisions. Far from it. According to Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli-American economist awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his work on the psychology of decision making and behavioral economics, “irrationality often trumps rationality in the human decision-making process.” Kahneman’s findings on the prevalence and influence of cognitive biases challenged the assumption that human rationality was the key factor in decision making. His book, Thinking Fast and Slow (2011) was an international best-seller. Most people are not totally rational when they make decisions Because of cognitive biases, impulsiveness exacerbated by time pressure, failure to do due diligence and get all the relevant facts, and overconfidence regarding our brilliant decision-making ability, a disturbingly large number of our decisions turn out to be faulty. Most people are not totally rational when they make decisions. And because we are unaware of what we don’t know, key information may be lacking. Yet in order to make effective decisions, we need all the information relevant to the problem, viable alternative viewpoints, and we also need a process that minimizes the impact of our biases and blind spots. Ninety-five percent of our decisions use irrational mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that cloud our judgment and impair our decision-making. “The brain,” Kahneman wrote, “is a machine for jumping to conclusions”. Entrepreneurs are Wired to Move too Fast Hagberg research (and others) shows that leaders are often optimistic and self-confident risk-takers, who have strong opinions and a bias for action. These are valuable qualities in leaders, but they are a two-edged sword: This confidence, along with a forceful personality, action orientation and clear points of view can lead to a failure to consider what might go wrong, and that they themselves might be wrong. They over-trust their intuition and jump to conclusions, and are therefore more vulnerable to making bad decisions. The Impact of Biases on Judgment--200 Ways to Make Your Company Fail Cognitive biases are systematic mental shortcuts in thinking or judgment, mental models or rules of thumb that influence how we evaluate our experiences and make decisions. They can be helpful, in that they make our thinking and decision making faster and more efficient. But they can also lead to faulty judgment, illogical interpretations and irrational choices. Close to 200 cognitive biases have been identified and explained, many of them by the American-Israeli psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Over 40 years of research, Kahneman found that 95% of our decisions use irrational mental shortcuts that cloud our judgment and impair our decision making. As a leader, it is vital for you to be aware of these biases, which color not only the attitudes and behavior of team members, but also influence your own. But Kahneman’s later research suggested that this is very difficult and almost impossible for most leaders. “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” – H.L. Mencken, American journalist and social critic Kahneman’s research makes it crystal clear that if we want to make better decisions, we need to develop preemptive “workaround” strategies that enable us to make decisions that are more rational. One of the best strategies for this is group decision making, where all members of the team weigh in with their insights and perspectives. As you learn about cognitive biases, you will be able to spot team members falling prey to them in meetings. And if you have built an environment of trust, in which your people can speak freely without fear of retribution, you can use the collective intelligence of your team to help you uncover your own faulty thinking and thereby enable better decisions. Common Biases That Derail Entrepreneurial Leaders Sunflower Bias : People lean in the direction in which the leader is leaning, as sunflowers pivot to face the Sun. Groups tend to align themselves with the views of their leaders, whether overtly expressed or assumed. If a team knows your position on a decision, or believes they know it, the team is likely to be an echo chamber. As Kahneman said, the decision-making process becomes contaminated when people believe they know the leader’s preference. Confirmation Bias : Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and remember information that affirms our prior beliefs or hypotheses. (Remember this bias the next time you do a Google search. Are you looking for info that supports your position or your hunch, or are you truly looking to learn?) In the same way, people often discredit information that does not support their views. Overconfidence Bias occurs when a person's subjective confidence in his or her judgments is greater than the objective accuracy of those judgements, i.e., you think you’re smarter or more savvy than you really are, or you’re certain that your plan will bring great results when you really don’t have the data to back up your belief. In tests comparing confidence to actual ability, research data regularly show that confidence often exceeds accuracy, that is, people are more sure that they are correct than is warranted. Optimism Bias is at play when we overestimate our likelihood of experiencing positive outcomes and events and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing negative events. People with this bias are sometimes quite unrealistic about what might go wrong when making a business decision. When a leader’s subjective confidence in their own judgments is regularly greater than the facts would suggest, disaster could be right around the corner. Action-Bias : This is the pressure or tendency to take action NOW, without doing adequate research and/or taking time for analysis and reflection. “Let’s just get the deal done.” Thus we don’t consider all the possible ramifications of our action. When you have this bias, you will tend to overestimate your odds of a successful outcome, and minimize or discount the chances of failure. Bernard Baruch, American financier and advisor to several 20th century presidents said, “Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in public and private life, have been the consequences of action without thought.” Other Common Biases That Can Damage Your Judgment Affinity Bias : The tendency to be biased toward people like ourselves, with similar backgrounds, interests, skills, and affinities. This is a common temptation in hiring but may not result in building the strongest team. Blind Spot Bias : This happens when you are able to recognize biased thinking by others, while failing to see the impact of biases on your own judgment and decision-making. This is extremely common: In one study of 600 Americans, more than 85% believed they were less biased than the average person. Status Quo Bias : Directly opposite the action-oriented bias, status quo bias is an emotional or unconscious preference for maintaining the current state of affairs. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This is not based on analysis that shows the current state to be objectively better, but is simply an attachment to the way things are and have been. Sticking to what worked or works now is fine if a rational decision-making process shows it to be the best alternative, but status quo bias can interfere with openness to new ideas, new technologies, and to progress in general. Effective team leaders need to be willing to change as the company scales. They often hold on to practices that worked when the company was small and flexible and everybody was in one room, but all of a sudden they have 4,000 employees and holding on to what worked for a dozen or twenty just won’t work. Anchoring bias : This describes the tendency to base a decision on the first piece of information we receive; it makes a strong enough impression that we become “anchored” to it This happens consistently when making budgetary predictions and financial plans. When considering a decision or course of action, the decision maker gives undue weight to the initial input or information received. These initial impressions, estimates, or data anchor subsequent judgment or analysis. Self-serving bias : We believe our failures are due to external factors, that it is “their fault” when things go wrong, but we believe we are responsible for our successes. Framing : Frames, according to cognitive scientists, are the different perspectives through which we look at the world. They are mental models that simplify and guide how we make sense out of a complex reality. They limit the effectiveness of our decision-making. This happens when making decisions with a multi-functional or multi-cultural team who have a variety of perspectives based on their background. Marketing, finance, engineering, product, sales, human resources, operations and so on have very different perspectives on many other issues. They look at different factors, and see different risks, opportunities, and potential outcomes, and are driven by different values and interests, all of which frame their decision making. They may have competing perspectives and concerns. Team members from different countries and cultures see the world differently due to their differing values. “Mental models are deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior.” - Peter Senge Trusting Your Gut or Systematic, Reasoned Judgment In his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman distinguishes between two broad categories of decision making. Fast decision making is essentially intuition-based, and involves feelings, beliefs, hunches that come readily to mind, require little effort or gathering of information, and result in on-the-spot decisions. Slow decision making, on the other hand, is based on reasoned judgment, and involves decisions that take time and effort to make, require careful information gathering, generation of alternatives, and evaluation of the alternatives. “If there Is time to reflect,” says Kahneman, “slowing down is likely to be a good idea." Rapid decision making can be based on too-little data and too-little time to analyze it, increasing the odds of making miscalculations and mistakes that can have company and career threatening consequences. The antidote would seem to be to slow down, yet business and technology today are moving at warp speed, and leaders of fast-scaling companies must make multiple decisions every day. Not only that, but even the best-reasoned decisions come face to face with randomness and unpredictability. The challenge is to balance speed with the best possible judgment. Hiring Mistakes Caused by Trusting Your Gut A prime example of how biases can interfere with wise decision making is in the hiring process. An interviewer who makes snap judgments and lets his or her first impression cloud the interview can make critical hiring mistakes. You think you don’t do this? Guess again: A study from the University of Toledo found that the outcome of an interview could be predicted by judgments made within the first 10 seconds of dialogue! Interviewers then subconsciously spend the rest of the time seeking new information to confirm their first impression, rather than objectively assessing the person in front of them. What this means is that your initial or gut reaction isn’t always a product of hidden wisdom! It may be a result of unacknowledged biases that can lead you to overlook strong candidates or choose those who are less qualified. Example: Giving more credence to the fact that the candidate graduated from the interviewer's alma mater than to the applicant's knowledge, skills, or abilities. Studies and surveys over the last 50 years have shown that 80% or more of the hiring decisions from traditional interviews are based on rapport and likeability and often miss competency, accomplishments, ability, and potential. In short: We like to hire people who are like us, who share our interests, values and style. But they are not always best for the job. Hiring mistakes can be very costly. A common rule of thumb is that a hiring mistake ends up costing about 15 times the employee’s core salary, including both hard costs and lost productivity as you bring the new hire up to speed. That means a hiring mistake with a $100,000/year employee can cost you $1.5 million, or more. Another thought provoking statistic is that the success rate for hiring at senior levels is estimated to be about 50% - half of all executive hires do not pan out. According to Marc Bennioff, CEO of Salesforce, “Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was – and still is – the most important thing we do.” We Are All Blind to Our Biases and Mental Models You have probably recognized many of the biases and mental mind-sets described above, and no doubt you can see how they can and do interfere with clear thinking and thus to making the best decisions. However, it is not enough merely to understand the nature of various biases. Kahneman and other decision-making researchers have concluded that it is extremely difficult to eliminate your cognitive biases by yourself. They are too subtle and wired in. It’s like asking a fish to describe water. In addition, awareness of the effects of biases has done little to improve the quality of business decisions at both the individual and the organizational level. To combat the negative effects of bias on team performance, active steps need to be taken. Catalyzed by the research of Daniel Kahneman and many others, we now know vastly more about how the decision-making process operates, why it so often leads us astray, and what we can do to become a more effective decision maker. I will summarize some of that research in this and follow-up blog posts, with a special angle: much of the existing research concerns how individuals decide. In today’s corporate universe, an enormous number of decisions every day are made in a group setting by teams of various kinds, a far less studied field that I will look at in addition to discussing individual decision making. Evaluating Your Decisions Ask yourself : • Did you do enough analysis? • Did you follow a disciplined process to get all the right facts and views on the table? • Did you avoid letting your strong viewpoint influence your team and narrow the options that were considered? • Were you overconfident? • Did you make assumptions that were wrong? • Did you miss options that might have improved the results? • Did you miss the big picture? • Did you focus too much on short-term rather than long-term implications? • Did you let pressure and stress influence your choice and end up compromising your standards or violating your values? • Did you act impulsively without validating your intuition?
By Rich Hagberg 14 Sep, 2020
Psychological Safety and Open Dialogue. Good communication is vital for effective functioning of any team. However, if you have ever been on a team where the team leader openly criticizes team members, aggressively interrogates them to pick holes in their ideas, dismisses member’s contributions or plays one off against the other, you have witnessed how a leader can stifle open communication and create an atmosphere where people feel unsafe to say what they really think. A leader can destroy trust and openness by reducing the level of psychological safety and in turn, weakening the overall performance of the team. In the absence of psychological safety, people learn to keep quiet and avoid disagreeing with the leader and are reluctant to be honest and direct about their views,
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