In most companies, most of us spend most of our time trying to to get buy-in. What if we approached every stakeholder seeking to build a map that included not only our piorities but theirs too?
My fail tale (or, how not to get buy-in)
In 2017, Zendesk acquired Outbound, the marketing automation company that I had cofounded five years earlier. Our product, which automated email, SMS, push and web notifications, promised to take Zendesk beyond its roots in email and chat into an omnichannel world. When the deal closed, I was ready: let’s scale this thing!
I was in for a shock. I spent my first year at Zendesk learning to build and edit slide decks, endlessly rephrasing and tweaking the vision for a product suite that could go toe-to-toe with Salesforce. Every meeting turned up a new set of requirements and stakeholders. The obstacles seemed endless. My cofounder and I pitched our vision, but it remained just that: our vision. Two years into my tenure, it was clear that Zendesk was doubling down on its core product rather than growing new products like mine.
What prevented me from getting buy-in?
It wasn’t the destination. I never got pushback on the vision. Everyone wanted to win against Salesforce.
The pushback was about getting from here–this architecture, this security process, this team structure, this incentive plan–to that other, far-off place where each one of those elements is different. “Now I have to do this and I have to do that. That’s crazy. I have no idea how that world would even work!”
I was asking stakeholders who didn’t share my priorites to do the hard work of translating and moving their world to match my vision.
What creates buy-in?
Decisions are made for many reasons. But we can all find reasons to do or not do something. On fundamental question: “Is this worth it for me?” generates the reasons to buy in or push back.
The main lesson I took from my experience at Zendesk is that the most effective thing I can do to advance my priorities is to show that I am seeking to understand: 1) the priorities of my stakeholders; and 2) why those priorities are relevant to them. Yes, there are times when incentives, power struggles or interpersonal issues pose deeper obstacles to buy-in. But even these cases are usually the result of missed opportunities to demonstrate trust.
At Zendesk, I did think about my team’s roadmap. I didn’t think about the connective tissue between my roadmap and each stakeholder’s roadmap. I didn’t help everyone see how and where they fit; how and where they win.
When hear a plan but we can’t find ourselves in it—or we hear a totally different version of our situation in it— a kind of panic sets in. We instincively dig our heels in. “Woah, you don’t get me or my situation at all.” I’ve done this too. It’s survival instinct.
The reverse is equally true: something special happens when you see yourself in the plans. “Oh, there’s the big picture, and there’s me in it, right now. Yep, that looks right. Now you’re saying if I take steps X and Y, I’ll be over there. I can see where I’ll be and where you’ll be and that makes sense.” We exhale and relax.
Then we sit back and think about everyone on the map. “Okay, so you want to go over here and I need to get there. Where do our paths intersect and where do they need to diverge?” Now we are leaning in, ready to help build the thing that is bigger than our thing.
Give them the floor… and a door
What do you do when someone shows you a photo of a group, and you know you’re in it? You find yourself. It’s natural.
So how do we make it easier for other people to find themselves, help them feel assured and ready to start working with us?
Ideas float in and out of our brains all day long as untethered bits of information. We sort all of it by relevance. Relevance is determined by whether the information helps or hurts our priorities. The strength of our reaction to relevant information depends on how important the affected pioritiy is to us.
In other words, buy-in depends not on the content of the information we share with colleagues but on how it relates to the outcomes and experiences they care about. Recall the feeling of impatience while someone drones on in a meeting. “Get to the point!”, we fume.
What is the point? Relevance. “What do you want from me? How does it change my world?”
Try this: instead of asking people from whom you need buy-in to digest your agenda and infer what you are asking of them, instead start by getting really honest:
“I’m talking to you because I want your buy-in on something important to me. But I know this collaboration is only going to work well if what I’m doing makes a signficant difference to your most important priorities. So let’s set aside my ask for a minute. Can you tell me your key priorities? Then I want to undersand if and how they connect to mine. If they do, awesome. If they don’t, I want to know that. Okay?”
If you think this is crazy, it is. In sales, this is called an upfront contract. It transformed my dread of sales at Outbound into one of my biggest strengths. This kind of upfront contract will shock your stakeholders because:
- It establishes relevance by outing their piorities and yours;
- It shows deep respect by giving them the floor first in your meeting;
- It creates agency by admitting that they have a choice.
This will blow their minds–no one is used to being able to just say no. It’s also terrying. What if they do say no? You still have to get the thing done, and you need them to do it.
This is the magic sauce: instead of refusing to acknowledge that your stakeholder has the option to say no, you’re giving it to them straight away. Instead of saddling them with the usual work of smothering your unwanted project with quiet neglect or backchannel maneuvering, you are letting them just come out and tell you if they are willing to back you–after you’ve given them the floor to share their priorities so that you can establish relevance.
This is not clever reverse psychology. You’re not trying to downplay what you want. You’re naming the situation exactly as it is.
There is never a guarantee that another person will do what you want. But is that really what you want? Do you want someone else to compel you?
The next time you need buy-in, create the best possible conditions it to emerge by giving your stakeholders the floor and a door.
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