Catalyzing Success - Part II
Overcoming Resistance and Building Momentum in Life Science Strategy Implementation
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As I mentioned in part I, “Catalyzing Success: How to Create and Put Your Life Science Strategy Into Action,” [1] the beginning of a year (calendar or fiscal) is a natural point to create and implement a strategic plan. Now that you followed my guidance to create a strategic plan, break it into actionable steps, and using those steps in your planning. You may find some resistance to the strategy, especially if it takes your company in new directions. In this article, I’ll summarize advice from an excellent book on obtaining buy-in and share some tips for how to make steady progress using an innovative mindset, success celebrations, and scheduled strategy reviews. Together, this approach can help you build your leadership capacity, reframe your company, and accelerate your progress.
“A plan is only useful if it can survive reality. And a future filled with unknowns is everyone’s reality.”
—Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money
Obtaining Buy-In
Whether you are a solo entrepreneur or leading a Fortune 100 company, gaining buy-in from investors, your employees, and the public is a necessary skill you will use repeatedly. Your core strategic directions and action plans should move you and your team out of their comfort zone, and there will be resistance. This pushback is often clearest when the strategy is a significant shift from the past. You will need to directly address the opposition’s arguments and secure your team, customers, and investors’ buy-in. How you do this can make the difference between the success or failure of your change initiative. Here is my three-part plan for consistent buy-in success.
Step 1 – Be Authentic
The first step of buy-in is your authenticity as a leader. With authenticity, your credibility is sound, and others trust you mean what you say and follow words with aligned actions. There is no magic here; you build authenticity best over time through many interactions. Listening to others, valuing what they say, creating a safe environment for healthy debate, remaining calm in the face of challenge, and sharing your enthusiasm and confidence contribute to your constructive presence. In some instances, you will not have the opportunity to build that base with your challengers, especially when your introduction is the change. Your best approach is being authentic from the start. You also must believe the post-change situation will be constructive. If your buy-in is weak, you won’t convince anyone else.
Step 2 – Use a Methodical Approach
The second step of buy-in is tactics. You need to publicly acknowledge and deflate objections and criticism without engaging in personal attacks. Harvard Emeritus and internationally recognized change leadership expert John Kotter and coauthor Lorne Whitehead share a practical approach in their book Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea From Getting Shot Down. [2] We’re fortunate that this book is still available, as the skill presented is essential in change leadership. Dr. Kotter points out that objections to ideas fall into one of four categories - confusion, fearmongering, death-by-delay, or ridicule and character assassination.
The book also shares 24 approaches to the most basic and confounding attacks. For example, “the only problem is not enough money” can be countered with a variation of “Extra money is rarely what builds truly great ventures or organizations.” These objections may seem unfair, but you increase the change’s support if you are calmly acknowledging and addressing them fairly.
You can prepare for a change announcement by reviewing these 24 approaches, select the most likely, and rehearse the response in your own words. During the event, keep your own pace, use clarifying and confirming techniques to engage the objector, and provide your answer using constructive language. Merely taking all criticism seriously and answering in public will enhance the plan and your leadership. You may have to repeat yourself in subsequent discussions because criticism is a common delaying tactic for change. If you have the responses in your mind, consistent delivery will become second nature.
Step 3 – Sustain the Message
The third step of buy-in is the consistency and persistence of message delivery. You need to repeat yourself and consistently deflate attacks without losing your cool. Allow time for the respectful airing of concerns, support those with constructive ideas for implementation, and then end the debate by engaging your team in action. Thoughtful public discussion can strengthen acceptance of the change plan when team members see and hear your commitment to the change and how you address concerns fairly. Don’t shrink from coaching individuals who remain persistently negative but do that in a more private setting. With time and practice, I’ve found this system very useful in supporting a calm approach to change objectors.
Obtaining buy-in for the plan is the essential first step to any successful change. As a leadership skill, defeating attacks to develop buy-in requires practice for improvement and pays dividends when used. Start practicing today using this three-part plan, and you will increasingly find your ideas will be better received.
Making Steady Progress
Recall that your strategic plan is a set of hypotheses about the core directional choices you should make in order to achieve your vision for the future. This is necessarily squishy in practice. Some choices will be relatively easy; others will be difficult and at times frightening. Adopting an experimental approach, assessing progress and realigning actions, is essential for progress, as is refreshing your strategic plan on a regular schedule.
Innovate
Permit your team to innovate and be experimental while staying true to your vision and values. Your action plans are a guide, and you may find the actual path is different once you have completed a few steps. Encourage an incremental and experimental mindset, and you may find better ways to proceed. When team members feel empowered to share their ideas, they are naturally more engaged in the goal and success. They are more likely to suggest improvements to the plan and propose new goals. Give each idea a fair hearing and strive to implement those aligned with your core directions and values. You may put future objectives and those needing additional resources in a parking lot for later evaluation. Freedom to think and adapt during plan execution will allow each team member to bring their best selves into their work.
Celebrate
Take time to celebrate the achievement of each goal. Recognize the specific contributions of each team member. Remind people of the starting point, how far you have come, and what achievement means for them and the business. Scale the celebration to the size of the goal and it’s business outcomes. A personal touch is always welcome–there are few gifts more potent than a handwritten thank you note. It’s also important to consider individual preferences when planning celebrations. Goals sometimes fail or are scrapped for better choices. When this happens, you should acknowledge the failure, mourn with your team, and recognize how the experience contributes to your growth. Consistent recognition of success will set an enduring company tradition, encouraging additional team buy-in and effort.
Reevaluate
Schedule a strategic plan assessment every six months. Circumstances will change, you will have made progress on and perhaps completed some goals, and your metrics will give you some sense of your strategy’s influence on your business. Adjust your answers to the strategy questions (What’s the Hope, What Is, and What’s in the Way) to reflect your business’s current state. (Review our Strategic Plan post for help.) Your core directions (under What’s the Plan?) are unlikely to need frequent change, but you should seriously reconsider them at least annually. The individual goals will most likely need some adjustment and possibly replacement. Review the parking lot for new goals and additional refinements.
Changing the plan can be difficult; if you have spent significant time resources, the sunk-cost bias will make you want to continue. Be realistic about the possibility of success and recognize that not all your choices will be successful. There is no more valuable leadership skill than being able to terminate useless or counterproductive projects. Decisions made with thought and planning can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Don’t fall into the trap of outcome bias when evaluating the quality of a decision. If you have used a fair process, and recorded the supporting rationale, you can assess and improve your decision-making capacity by evaluating each choice in an unbiased manner.
Your strategy is useless without execution, and your initial action plans are almost certain to need revision as you and your business change. Furthermore, resistance is likely. Communicate the changes constructively and consistently, listening to and acknowledging opposition. Take an adaptive approach to your goals by permitting innovation and experimentation to develop new ideas, celebrating successes and recognizing losses, and regularly refreshing your strategy. A regularly scheduled strategic plan review will realign you and your team with the business vision and values and refresh your goals. Consistent application of these principles will lead you and your team to business success.
As you put your life science strategy into action, remember that success starts with a compelling vision and a clear set of directional choices. By breaking down your goals, fostering buy-in through authenticity and thoughtful engagement, and adapting your approach as your business evolves, you set the foundation for real progress. Together, the methods and mindset from both parts of this series provide a roadmap for strategic planning and practical leadership—helping you and your team move boldly from idea to impact.
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Reference
[1] “Catalyzing Success: How to Create and Put Your Life Science Strategy into Action.”
[2] Kotter, J. P., & Whitehead, L. A. (2010). Buy-In: Saving your good idea from getting shot down. Harvard Business Review Press.
Working with life science startup companies to solve problems, strengthen systems, and build capacity is what I do. If one of your companies or clients is struggling, reach out to me to discuss how I can help your team refocus and emerge triumphant.