What’s In It For Them?

Change management has always shared similarities with customer relationship management. They both sought a positive outcome for the instigators, and they both tried to do so with almost a total disregard for anyone other than themselves.

True. This is a harsh conclusion to draw. But when you think about the motives behind the desired outcomes, it’s easy to understand why it looks that way.

Almost as an afterthought, both activities will consider the other parties. And that’s too bad, because if they each had asked a simple question, then they could have reached their goals with much less effort.

What is the question? It’s simply this: What’s in it for the people that you want to change? What’s in it for them? Why should they change on your say-so?

The typical model for buy-in proves that change managers have lost sight of this: Assess the situation, evaluate where your plans are likely to be attacked, create your strategies (a word that came from 19^th century warfare), and then implement them. The goal is to win.

Surprisingly, the people who are expected to change, and likely to be affected the most by it, are usually seen as the main obstacle. In other words, they’re seen to be an enemy of the organization. Of course when that happens, it also makes you their enemy. That’s an inescapable conclusion. It happens between nations all the time. When one gathers its forces along the border, the other automatically places itself on full alert.

So when employees behave in exactly the same way towards you, why are you surprised?

What should happen?

The first thing must be to get your people on your side. You may win the battle, but you’ll lose the war if you fail to do it. This is one of the primary reasons why more than half of all change management initiatives fail. It’s also the main reason why so many mergers and acquisitions also fail. The cultures of the companies involved are rarely considered in the equation. Instead, the focus is on the expected, but inflated financial benefits which, in most case, fail to materialize.

What does it mean to get people on your side?

It doesn’t mean to threaten them with certain consequences if they don’t fall in line. It doesn’t mean to tell them how much better off they’ll be if they do what you want. It doesn’t even mean to waive so-called incentives before their eyes in the hope of bribing them to see things your way.

What it does mean is that they decide to change because they understand what’s in it for them. They agree to do it because they want to do it. And they want to do it because they have a vested psychological interest in doing so.

You see, people will always do what is consistent with how they’ve thought about things in the past. It’s a well-known sales principle.

If you’ve persuaded them at one time or another that you’re the enemy, that you don’t have their best interests at heart, then it’s unlikely that they will trust you to keep your word. It would be inconsistent for them to think otherwise.

And the same thing is true of you. If you have felt that your employees always obstructed the changes you wanted to make, then it’s just as unlikely that you’ll always see them that way.

So before you even begin, you’ve drawn up the battle lines.

It’s incumbent on you, therefore, to lay down your arms, to begin with peace in mind, to embrace their interests from the outset, because if they don’t know what’s in it for them, they won’t care what’s in it for you.