Don’t Try to Convince People of a Change. Enable Them to Convince Themselves.

Often, leaders spend a lot of time trying to craft the perfect argument to convince their teams of the need to change. And based on how much leaders complain about responses to their change proposals, they aren’t achieving their desired objectives. 

Announcing change is like proposing marriage. If you’re not 100% sure of the response before you start talking, you haven’t done the work needed to be successful.

The problem is not with leaders’ arguments. Rather, it’s with their approach. It’s hard for people to accept change and the hard work necessary to create change unless they convince themselves the change is necessary. 

Hence, your role as a strategic leader is not just making a convincing argument. It’s also giving people the information and time they need to convince themselves of the right answer. 

How can leaders enable others to convince themselves of change?

Avoid solo strategizing. Trying to come up with the strategy by yourself means you’re not leveraging the insights of others. Importantly, it also means that when you come up with the “right answer,” it won’t be obvious to others because they will not have had access to your thought process. 

Always-on context sharing. When you learn something interesting from an important stakeholder, share it. When you observe a competitor making an interesting move, share it. When a critical deadline is missed because of a gap in how two teams are organized, flag it for those teams. 

All of this context sharing closes the gap between what you know and what everyone else knows. And in that way, it closes the gap between what you think the strategy should be and what they think it should be. 

Share the questions you're wrestling with. I mentioned this in the first post in this series. Practically, sharing your questions means that when you do announce a change, it won’t be the first time people are considering the idea. 

More importantly, sharing questions empowers everyone on the team to contribute their ideas to the solution, which makes strategic change something they are driving instead of feeling it’s being done to them.

Create inclusive, strategy-rich organizational routines. The best place to drive this strategy work is within existing organizational routines—e.g., the weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings you already have to discuss results and plan for the future. 

These forums are particularly fruitful for context sharing because they usually include several levels of the organization. 

When you design these meetings to raise strategy questions, it creates opportunities for everyone to engage in setting the direction of the organization.