Sharon Drew Morgen

Let’s say you were going to a wedding. You had the gift, decided on the outfit, picked a time to leave to get there on time, decided to use your car rather than you’re spouse’s, because it was more comfortable. Then you had to plug in the directions to your trusty GPS system.

What does your GPS system do? It gets you from here to there without any input other than coordinates. It knows you must go left one mile, and then hang a right at Route 26. It knows you will drive about 40 minutes. It knows there is one alternate route. But it doesn’t need to know what you are wearing, or the gift you brought. It doesn’t need to know that there was an accident ahead that would cause you to slow down. It knows how to get you to where you want to be: it does not concern itself with the details of your personal issues.

Why am I putting sales and weddings and GPS systems in one...

In order for any change to occur – whether it’s a decision to purchase a product, or an implementation to add new technology - whatever touches the ultimate solution must buy-in to the change.

Often our focus is on getting the end-result we think we want. We forget that without buy-in from the necessary  people and policies that maintain the status quo, we face the high cost of the resistance eminating from pushing change into a system that believes that it’s fine, thanks.

I’d like to share a story about how I helped my own tech guys shift their project work and our revenue as a result of having decision facilitation skills. At the end of the day, unless there is a decision – one person at a time – to adopt to, know how to, and be willing to change, there will be resistance and possibly failure.

FIRST SIGNS OF...

Would you buy a house without discussing it with your wife or family? Would you even know all of the buying criteria without their input?

Would you bring in a leadership training without getting the buy-in from the people who would be trained? Or know their criteria without their voices?

Would you choose a web designer without getting the buy-in from the current design team and the techies? Would you know what they would want included until they offered their opinions or knew what parts they wanted to do themselves?

Why not?

I recently had a coaching call with a SVP at a well-known CRM Management company. The man had a Harvard MBA, had been a partner at Accenture, and now was running the Texas sales operation for this CRM company. This is not a stupid man, obviously, but a man steeped in the ‘sales’ thinking modality.

During his session he wanted to put...

Recently, my wonderful neighbor Joe mistakenly left my spigot on while wrapping my pipes. He didn’t leave it on a little so it would drip: he had it running full force. And I have no independent water source — only rainwater collection.

By the time I got to my place (it’s my second Austin home – my country think-house), there was no water (went through 20,000 gallons of water, but who’s counting – except that it’s around $100 per 500 gallons to purchase, and we get very very little water here) – the UV light was out ($100 annually, and I had recently purchased it), the pump ($750) was making weird noises, and there was no water pressure and no water. No water to drink; no toilet and no washing facility. And my pond/fish need water.

I called the local water/rainwater collection folks and told them of the problem. It took them a few days to get back to...