Generating Buy-in for Your Change Initiative

18 Coffees has written a lot about the importance of actively managing change, from how to build a change team to identifying risks. We see change management as a must-have skill for today’s leaders, and after years of work in this space, we still consistently receive one question from client leaders who understand the importance of proactively managing disruption within their organization: how do I get internal buy-in for my change initiative?

We know that successful organizational change can’t be navigated alone – ensuring the support and engagement of key stakeholders is critical to success. In fact, one of the most frequent obstacles to change initiatives that we see from organizations we work with is a lack of executive support or engaged buy-in from key stakeholders. Just as executive support can help set the right tone to mobilize and inspire teams, the opposite is also true: absent or unengaged stakeholders often indicate to employees how big a priority change initiative is or isn’t.

So, what can you do to get key stakeholders on board from the beginning? Here are some steps and considerations to take when generating buy-in for your change initiative:

Provide a compelling “why” 

It sounds simple, but this is one of the first steps change leaders can do to create buy-in. It’s important to share the big-picture impact on the business benefits of course, but here’s a little secret: creating buy-in is really about relationship management. To kick off your change initiative, you have to figure out how you’re going to answer what each stakeholder who hears about the initiative will instinctively ask, “What’s in it for me?” 

Why should leaders be motivated to contribute to this change process? What benefits will they directly reap? How is their department impacted? To pinpoint these questions, it’s helpful to put yourself in the mindset of your different stakeholder groups using tools like the stakeholder empathy map from our Changemaker’s Toolkit or Prosci’s model for creating and communicating your “why”. Prosci’s process includes four distinct categories — logic, emotion, visualization, and story — in the communication process, leaving you with a clear roadmap to package your initiative and generate stakeholder buy-in.

Use empathy to connect with stakeholders

Prosci’s second step in its model taps into a key insight we’ve found to be critical in successfully motivating stakeholders – empathy. Often, change leaders share the ‘what’ and ‘how’ about an initiative, but it’s equally important to consider how they feel. Tuning into how key stakeholders may feel is what enables a change effort to gain traction. 

The ability to use empathy to connect with and motivate stakeholder engagement is an incredibly valuable leadership skill. If you need ideas and tools for how to incorporate empathy in working with your teams, we’ve got you covered. Check out: Three Tools to Foster Empathy Among Your Change Team.

Tailor your communications

Both exercises above help get you in this mindset, but it’s important to understand that every stakeholder group in your change effort is different. Therefore, the role of each stakeholder group within your initiative will also differ as you consider each group’s influence level, interest, engagement, and risk to your organization’s progress. Each group’s importance may continue to ebb and flow over the course of the effort, so communications to these groups should be adapted as each group’s needs, reactions and engagement also shift. Be prepared to speak and engage with different groups at different times to increase support or minimize resistors.

Prove your point

Leaders who are hesitant to invest in change management initiatives are often concerned about budget and the impact on the bottom line. But change management enhances ROI, ensuring the right people are in the right places and working on the right things. To effectively make the case for your initiative, flip the script — without allocating resources to change management initiatives, what would maintaining the status quo ultimately cost your organization? Plainly outlining the tangible impact that factors like risk mitigation, cost avoidance, speed of adoption, and team morale might have on overall business performance is often the key to bringing those final resistors on board.

While the considerations above are helpful guidelines, every organization is different — buy-in should always be tailored to unique needs, structure, culture, and sensitivities. 18 Coffees works strategically with our clients to understand their organizations and where they are now — their current challenges, prospective obstacles, and corporate culture. We prioritize a collaborative partnership with our client teams to ensure change initiatives are customized to ensure success. If you need help driving executive stakeholder buy-in for your next initiative or would like to learn more about how we can tackle your organization’s unique challenges and goals, let’s chat.