Buy-In

John Kotter: I've been studying leadership in change for many years now and trying to dip deeper and deeper into various aspects that seem to be becoming increasingly important and when you're trying to make especially large scale change, one of the pieces is always getting buy-in and support for whatever your idea or your strategy is and sufficient support that when things start to go difficult, as they do when you're trying to implement something, you'll have people that'll actually be there and not away at a meeting to help you out. I get questions about that all the time, people who are running into problems, and after you get about 130 questions you begin to think, "well this is a topic people don't entirely understand," and then that's what guides my book so I said why don't I dip into it and see if we can learn some things that would be useful, and that led to this book.

Rachel Salaman: So in your experience this is quite a big problem in the business world?

John Kotter: Oh yes. You see the number of good ideas that float around an organization, government, business, it doesn't matter, if you had some way of gaging, nobody does, is a lot of bad ideas but a number of good ideas is at any one time very large, but the number that actually make it to fruition and help the organization tend to be very small and often it's because you don't get enough support and often it's because the subtitle of the book which expresses some of the substance of it is saving your good idea from getting shot down. I mean we've all been in that situation, we know the idea's great and you put it out there and before you know it it's got six bullets in it and it dies which is either aggravating or is just disheartening. Well, that happens we found constantly in life and people aren't very good at dealing with it.

Rachel Salaman: Why does it happen, why is there a tendency to shoot down good ideas?

John Kotter: I think there isn't a single reason. It goes all the way from the kind of innocent person who doesn't even realize that they picked up a gun, they're trying to just clarify something, but it comes out as a bullet, a good bullet, and we found 24 common bullets that people use to people who are feeling insecure about this and so they maybe unconsciously are kind of throwing grenades at you to people who are jealous of you and don't want you to get more praise because you came up with something good and was supported to people who are just nasty folks. So I think insecurity comes often, people are afraid if this happens what's it going to do for me and when you add up all of the different motives it's a very long list and that means because those motives are floating around all the time that the number of times that an idea gets attacked is always... I mean we're taught in education always the focus is on analysis in finding the right idea. Okay, that's fine, that's good, but that's only one piece of the equation. The other is actually having it come alive and making an organization bigger and at least at the Harvard Business School we spend I think at least 80 percent of our time or 90 percent of our time by getting the answer right and 10 percent on how do you actually make the organization better with it and there are some good reasons. It's not like the faculty are stupid, there are some good reasons about the nature of education but I think then people come out and they're not equipped to deal with that hence once again if that's an issue and it gets in the way of something that's increasingly important we dip in and try to study it and look at what people do and then eventually of course write it up like in this new book.

Rachel Salaman: And the book is in an unusual format. The first half is a kind of parable-style narrative and the second half is full of the tips and tricks, if you like, that draw on the story. Just to put it in context can you briefly describe the fictional story.

John Kotter: Yes, it's a group of people who are trying to help out an organization. It's the town library that has old computers, they desperately need new computers, there's no money in the budget and somebody comes up with a clever deal with the local computer store that for every three or four computers that get sold the computer store will donate one to the library for a specific period of time, three or four months, and everybody's got their own motives but you put them together and it's a great deal but just the form that the town takes which is like any organization, you've got to get approval somewhere and they do in a public meeting and so our poor hero has to get up in front of these folks and we take the extreme case, he is shot at from every different direction and the whole name of the game is... I mean it's comic at times but it's real. Every one of these you can either pound or laugh but you've seen it and he has to deal with it. It sets the stage I think very nicely because we can relate to it, to then talking more analytically about what did the shooters do and what did he do to duck the bullets or the like and there clearly is a pattern and it's not that complicated. It doesn't have to be spelled out in 123 points and it's something that once you... I mean I've been using it more since I've studied it. My 20 year old daughter read a draft of it simply because she understands writing and to make some comments about the writing and she came back a month later all excited because she'd used it in a class project. A draft of it was given to an Executive Committee and one of the key people had a huge important conversation he was going to have with his middle management and he flipped through this and I think he knew intuitively everything we were talking about but it brought it to the surface and made it much easier, he told me, to actually get more support than he would normally get. That's precisely what he needed for it, an idea that would have been tricky to implement.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned before that the book identifies various attack strategies and within that various bullets you called them that people use. There are four kinds of attack strategy that you pull out and the first one is called Death by Delay. What are some of the specific attacks to look out for as part of that strategy and how can you counter them?

John Kotter: How you counter depends upon the specifics but we've all seen the way that people shape the bullet. The one that I've heard so many times I want to scream and throw chairs I must admit is somebody who very rationally comes up with the reason that this is of course a marvelous thought and we should assemble a task force to look into it fully knowing that by the time they assemble the task force, the task force hasn't enough time to meet because everybody's busy, then they have a way to get back to the people that any momentum that he's built or she's built for this idea will be dead or the timing is past. This thing has to be done in May and you know the task force isn't going to get back till June. Governments do that all the time with we'll set up this commission and two, three years later of course everybody's forgot the idea, it's irrelevant by then. That's the most classic one that we've all seen and, like I say, it just makes you want to rip your hair out.

Rachel Salaman: You say the answer to some of these depends on the various situations but can you share a few tips of how people could respond to for example the idea of a task force being set up that would delay things?

John Kotter: Well one of the things that we discovered is, as I say, there are 24 most common generic specific comments or questions that people use and can be used because of their generic nature nearly everywhere and when we were writing this we were thinking in a list of 24, human beings, at least I do, have terrible trouble with more than seven things or three things I think is the latest brain research. Where does that take you at 24? Well, what we discovered is that people who handle this very, very well, it's not like they memorize the 24 answers and the 24 responses but what they have learned is that a little bit of preparation helps and they either have their own little cheat sheets around from what they've found in the past are the most... and what they've used in the past and of course because very few people have their cheat sheets that's what we have personally in the second half of the book so even I discover when someone's asking before a meeting, I just say I haven't memorized them. I deal with this too and I get it wrong but it takes no time to flip through and say for example one that is a delay one to find a few examples of it and then a few examples of how people come back at you. So if I pick up the book I have to flip through here. Well, here's a good one, no-one else does this do they and if nobody else does it there has to be some reason that it's wrong and then somebody else in the audience says we should check that out and all of a sudden we're back to the task force game or here I can do it and get back to you soon. Of course they get back to you in six months and everybody's forgotten about that.

Rachel Salaman: So what should you say when someone says "oh let's look into that, let's see why other people haven't done it before?"

John Kotter: Well first of all we'll never be able to know if somebody has done it before. I mean be realistic, we can't scour the world for 16 years and so what. I mean we're clever people, we've studied this. It's not just me that has the idea, I shared it with others. Why are you assuming that we're such an incompetent or uninnovative enough organization that we can't come up with something that's new, I think we're pretty terrific and we can. I mean what do you say back to that, "no I think we're pretty incompetent."

Rachel Salaman: That's one attack strategy, Death by Delay. Another one you look at is Confusion, so what kind of comments come at you when people...?

John Kotter: I love confusion because I've grown up in an academic environment and I think the more we educate people the more we're teaching them the confusion strategy. Not because we want to but because anybody that's smart can take anything that you say and start saying "but what about this aspect and this aspect and don't you remember back then?" and after about five minutes everybody's totally lost track of what the idea is, what this guy is saying. So your mind wanders, you start to get a headache and all of that is drawing away from any building feelings you have that this is terrific and I ought to support it. The classic is somebody who looks so sincere and they may be, that's the difficulty with this, and they start "but what about this" and as soon as you get half an answer out, of course they've got, they say "but what about that" and after about the seventh one people are trying to keep this all in their heads and it starts to blur out or the classic again is to make a speech and you use jargon that half the room doesn't even understand. You demonstrate your own pompous knowledge of language in your education references to what Churchill did in 1938 and after a while you can't even understand quite the question and where people get into trouble is they to respond logically to that and so their logical answer comes out long winded, let me respond to each one of those, and they can't. Who on their feet is smart enough to clearly respond to 18 things and it all kind of gets smoky and it just reduces the credibility of the entire idea.

Rachel Salaman: So what should they do instead?

John Kotter: Well almost all confusion strategies, the kind of strategy has to be to not make it more confused because that's what the person is consciously or unconsciously trying to do is suck you into this and one of the aspects of really just five points that seem to work on anything is to find a way to respond that is clear and simple and kind of sweeps away all of the cobwebs and the fuzz and the smoke that are coming at you does not contribute to it but goes to the heart of the matter. Maybe the person didn't even say that very clearly but it has so much common sense in it that your response is understood by the audience and they end up if we had a video right now the audience would see what you're doing which is just nodding your head and so it's simple straightforward common sense responses just can smatter these confusion tactics.

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Rachel Salaman: What about Fear Mongering because that is the third attack strategy, what does that sound like?

John Kotter: Well it means kind of raising anxieties among the group and there are all kinds of ways to do this. A number of years ago they had a project that sounds something like this and it led to lay offs and people are still worried because of the economic environment and could that apply to me and so the attack is well didn't we try something like this before back seven years ago, you remember the da-da-da, and often he or she doesn't even have to refer to the lay offs, it's already in people's heads, anxiety goes up and they're creating fear in the audience which of course starts reducing the support for your idea very quickly. Even language can do it, in the United States I always laugh, if you can get into an attack the word "lawyer" about three times everybody kind of freaks out and wants to leave the meeting and go somewhere else.

Rachel Salaman: So what's the answer, what can you do to dissipate the fear?

John Kotter: Now here again it's going to depend upon how it's served up. The last thing you want to do is respond to it in a way that keeps that incident that they're talking about. Just say well there weren't that many lay offs which is an accurate point maybe, it's 20 percent less than you... but you've been sucked in and the whole point of lay offs is still out there and everybody's still nervous. One way to deal with that is simply no, no, that was then, this is now, it's a different situation and it's a situation where frankly I think the issue is it's not hazards, it's opportunities. Let me talk about, remind you, of the critical opportunity that this goes after. So you flip it to something that kind of reduces the fear and starts picking up, again it's critical that it's honest, some legitimate optimism in people which puts the fear stuff out.

Rachel Salaman: And the fourth attack strategy is Character Assassination. Could you give us some examples of this?

John Kotter: Well the most common is a lightweight form of that which is kind of ridiculing you and it can be done with humor and it's usually served up in a light way but nevertheless it's served up in a way that makes you look lesser. "Harry, this is an interesting point, now you will remember four years ago. Oh no, no, you weren't here four years ago, you've only been here three months, yes." That's such a subtle thing but it's just reminding, it's saying how could you be so silly after three months to be proposing this to all of these people who have more experience. It's just a little jab but it is ridiculing in this case the notion that you would pop up with something when you haven't earned your stripes so to speak and character assassination it really can, and you don't see it too often, but it really can go something like "George I'm sorry to have to bring this up but you've often said we should be candid in these sessions and if you'll excuse me a candid obvious question is, and I'm sorry to have to bring this up, but the last three times that you've proposed an idea to this group how many of those have really worked out well, I'm sorry to bring this up." So you're drilling a hole in the guy but doing it in a way that doesn't feel... I mean it's a lie that he doesn't want to bring it up, of course he does, that's the whole point, but done well everybody starts thinking, remembers one of those three at least and says "yes, maybe there's something wrong with this guy."

Rachel Salaman: So what can that guy do to keep his idea alive?

John Kotter: Well again it depends on which of the 24 and how they're worded but one simple one is you come back and say "George, you know that hurts a bit, I'll be honest with you, and I don't think it's completely accurate but the past is the past. Now in this situation it's not just me remember," and then you start listing a number of names including some people who have a great deal of credibility that you know have looked over this idea and have said... and in this case among others Nigel really has studied it and thought it's a great idea and everybody likes Nigel, that's why you pick the name. So you almost flip it back with the implication that this guy's attacking Nigel who is so respected and liked which makes him look like he's being nasty and pulling out his gun.

Rachel Salaman: Your book includes a really useful Appendix that explains how the work in the book fits into the context of large scale organizational change. Could you explain the connection between what we've just been talking about and large change projects?

John Kotter: I've been studying large scale change for some time because the data is overwhelming that the environment is moving faster. One of the implications of that is to keep up, you not only can't do things the way you've done them before but you've got to make serious changes that keep up and that organizations are very bad at this. Certainly for some of the cases of large scale change any number of studies have shown in one way or another fail, 20 percent do okay, 5 percent really work, and when we've studied the 5 percent we've found this kind of pattern and I talk about it in terms of being steps of how they make it work and the fourth step is taking this... it can be as grand as a big vision or can be as small, it's just an idea for how we improve the way we work in the office and communicate it and get enough support. So it's one aspect of something that I think the data suggests is overwhelmingly becoming more important and when enough people have asked me questions about that that's the way I work. Now people ask me questions, you know, "how do you?" I say well this must be on their minds, let's drill in and try to study it and give them something that's useful which is what this book is all about.

Rachel Salaman: You focus particularly on communication as a key factor in buy-in for change. What do people tend to get wrong in their communication in this context?

John Kotter: First of all the book doesn't deal with everything that has to do with communication, to get by in it. The focus is on one thing that we found people are particularly not good at, they haven't been trained to be good at. Universities certainly don't help them much, I can say that without sounding negative because that's where I've grown up. So that's why focus on... the subtitle of the book again is saving your good idea from getting shot down. People aren't good at it hence focus on it and these are the strategies that use against you, these are the most common comments that manifest them. Here are good answers and here's the reason why, here's the overall response strategy that you can use, that's it.

Rachel Salaman: Your book is written from the point of view of the person with the good idea but often we're on the other side of the table, we're the people being presented with an idea. Do you have any advice for people charged with assessing the viability of a new idea?

John Kotter: Well I think corporate cultures, university training etc, drills you with that so much that we didn't want to add one more piece to it. The amount of noise, I mean that's not fair, let me say information that the average person gets about evaluating, analyzing any proposal and trying to therefore use that to logically pick out the best or to go backwards, here it is, just through the analysis does this fit the proposal, that comes at us all the time. Not to say that we can't become better at that, everyone can but the ratio if you will of how good we are at that versus how good we are at ... good ideas do not stand on their own, it would be nice if they did but the reality in the real world if you study it is they don't. So we've focused on the piece that seems to be the most vulnerable piece given what the average very competent person has been taught along the way. We relegate what you're asking to the 20,000 universities on earth and all of the good advice that's offered in organizations, we won't try to add to that.

Rachel Salaman: John Kotter, thank you very much for joining us.

John Kotter: You're most welcome.

Rachel Salaman: John Kotter talking to me in London. The name of his book again is "Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea From Getting Shot Down." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then goodbye.