Summary: Buy-In

Review and Analysis of Kotter and Whitehead's Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Publisher: Must Read Summaries
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9782511022160
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Processo decisionale
• Index: Business

The must-read summary of John P. Kotter and Lorne A. Whitehead's book: `Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down`.

This complete summary of the ideas from John P. Kotter and Lorne A. Whitehead's book `Buy-In` raises a fundamental question: `How do you get people to buy-in to your brilliant ideas, suggestions and proposals?`. In their book, the authors reveal that in order to do this, you should start by explaining your idea to other people and then use a simple four-step strategy. This summary explains each of the steps involved and provides a new method for getting everyone to see things your way.

Added-value of this summary:
• Save time
• Understand key concepts
• Expand your knowledge

To learn more, read `Buy-In` and discover the key to spreading your ideas and getting people to agree with you.

Summary of Buy-In (John P. Kotter and Lorne A. Whitehead)

Step 1: Take stock of the situation

Take stock of where you are first:

• Double-check your plan has no obvious flaws.
• Ask whether feedback has been factored in.
• Check people understand what you’re suggesting.
• Determine who needs to buy-in and where they are.
• Develop your elevator pitch version of your idea.
• Talk to your supporters.
• Prepare a communications plan.
• Prepare for face-to-face meetings intensively.

What you’re really doing here is ensuring your idea has been communicated clearly and thoroughly in the first place before you attempt to generate buy-in and stop anyone derailing what you’re trying to get done.

Before you start doing all the hard work of securing buy-in for your idea and then acting on that idea, pause and make sure you haven’t forgotten anything obvious:

• Double-check your plan. Is it logical? Does everything make sense? Will the payoff far outweigh all the various costs? Do a gut check and make sure your plan sounds logical.
• Look at all the feedback you’ve received thus far. Have you incorporated any good suggestions into your plan? Have you taken on board the advice and other bits and pieces which could be helpful.
• Review how you’ve communicated your idea to others who are involved. Have you spread your idea through one-on-one meetings, in larger group settings, by e-mail or through memos? How well have you done in explaining your idea and what level of buy-in have those initial efforts generated? More than likely, you will overestimate how much people understand what you’re talking about so be very careful in analyzing how well you’ve communicated. You probably have not done enough.
• Do you currently understand who needs to buy-in to your idea for it to move forward? Have they already indicated they’ve bought in? What concrete evidence is available that the right people are becoming aware of your idea and are starting to move to make something happen along those lines?
• Can you pitch your idea succinctly in thirty seconds or less? Have you thought things through clearly enough so you can express the essence of your idea in just a few sentences? To do this, you have to be crystal clear about what’s on the table. Are you at that stage of clarity and conciseness?
• Have your marshaled your allies and talked to supporters yet? Sometimes people will wait to see how your ideas fare before coming out in public support. Are any of your supporters in a position where they could better deflect an attack than you and if so have these people been asked to do so? You can’t assume they will get on board unless you clarify their intentions.

It’s amazing how many people trying to generate buy-in for their new ideas end up shooting themselves in the foot by leaving blatantly obvious points uncovered. By taking stock and double-checking you’ve covered all the bases, you avoid an early exit.

“The competent creation and implementation of good ideas is a basic life skill, relevant to the twenty-one-year-old college graduate, the fifty-year-old corporate CEO, and virtually everyone else. This skill, or lack of it, affects the economy, governments, families, and most certainly our own lives. The challenge is that the amount of thought and education put into creating good ideas is far higher today than the knowledge and instruction on how to implement those ideas. In the world of business, for example, the field of strategy has made huge advances in the past twenty years. The field of strategy implementation, in contrast, has made much less progress.”

– John Kotter and Lorne Whitehead

“Never forget that a good rule of thumb is that it’s impossible to overcommunicate, using different settings and using different modes of communication.”

– John Kotter and Lorne Whitehead

Step 2: Watch for the four basic attacks

There are really just four strategies people will use to try and attack your idea:

1. Fear mongering
2. Death by delay
3. Confusion
4. Ridicule

Watch out for them and determine what kind of attack strategy is being used here.

In practice, there are four ways to kill a good idea.

1. Fear mongering

Someone can raise anxieties about your idea to such a degree it becomes impossible for you to explain it calmly and...