The fallacy of "buy in"

Michael T. Kanazawa is a consultant on corporate transformation and strategy execution. In his article, People Don’t Hate Change, They Hate How You’re Trying to Change Them, he explains the problem with "buy in:"

Today, buy-in looks like a cycle where executives, often with the help of systems or business process consultants, decide what changes to make to the business. They may poll a few people in advance, but already have a complete change decided upon. At some point they realize that everyone in the company will need to do things differently for their changes to produce results, and decide they need to go generate "buy-in."

The problem is that the programs are billed as open input and feedback sessions, but, truly, all of the decisions have been made and what is really desired is for people to just accept the changes and move on. It becomes an exercise in building a compelling story and communications program to convince people that the decisions are right.

However, even if people accept the changes, they are often not operationally sound, due to the fact that the people who have to implement the solution weren’t really included in the design up front. There are often simpler solutions to meet the same objectives that weren’t considered. People who speak out at that point are labeled as non-believers and trouble makers....

Successful companies engage people much earlier in the front end of the planning process. When people are engaged up front and are a part of generating the tactical plans, there is no need to get "buy-in" at any point. The ideas are already theirs. This does not mean opening up the strategic direction to a company-wide consensus process.