Change Management (CM) processes seek to modify something that has worked well-enough for some time and has been habituated into the daily norms. Unfortunately, these processes sometimes fail to incorporate the systems involved:

• when change is approached without understanding the risks involved;
• when leaders assume they know the problem without involving the voices of the folks with firsthand, in-depth knowledge of the day-to-day activities;
• when folks with the closest association to the problems aren’t asked to offer ideas during goal setting;
• when new activities are mandated to people who’ve had no voice in generating them;
• without including specific implementation practices that incorporate the new into the full set of elements that define the culture;

projects may not proceed as intended. Too often leaders merely try to change behaviors without changing the underlying system that generated them.

CHANGE MUST INCLUDE THE WHOLE SYSTEM

A request for change represents a threat unless it’s accepted and conforms with the norms of the existing system. It’s not as simple as merely doing something different.

Unfortunately CM initiatives focus on altering the problematic behaviors/activity without ensuring the values, beliefs, norms and mental models of the existing system that generated them are addressed. But with a shift in thinking it’s possible to prevent resistance and encourage buy-in and new, creative ideas.

THE RISK OF CHANGE MUST BE IDENTIFIED

Before agreeing to any sort of change, and to ensure buy-in and implementation, it’s important to understand the systemic elements that must be addressed:

How will the new match the existing beliefs, values, norms, rules, routines? Are they compatible? Are the core beliefs/values of the group maintained?

How will daily tasks and working/reporting relationships change?

How are individual ego beliefs and job identity factors managed? Are the folks most affected by the new included in information gathering and goal setting at the beginning so they have input around their own (new) jobs? Do these folks get a voice in generating the goals and outputs for a new solution? In sharing their unique experiences to best understand the problem?

What must be relearned and in what time frame?

Will the new represent the output needed by those most affected? Have their voices been included from the beginning and have a say in the change process to avoid resistance? How will resistance be managed?

Unless there are answers to questions like these; unless the risk of the proposed change is known, understood, and managed; unless the stability, beliefs and norms of the system are agreed-upon and maintained by those with the greatest proximity to the solution, change becomes a threat to the system and folks will resist doing anything different.

THE STEPS OF CHANGE

In my work developing systemic change models for sales, leadership, change management and System Dynamics, I’ve unpacked 13 Steps of decision making and change, some of which must take place before a problem can be accurately diagnosed or the goal defined. Here are the main categories:

1.   Where are you? What’s missing?

The voices of everyone who touches the existing problem and will be involved with the new solution must be heard from before the problem is defined or goals are set. Starting a project with partial information and flawed assumptions automatically triggers resistance and failure.

2. What caused and maintains the problem?

The originating system must recognize an incongruence and understand the risk of change or it won’t consider doing anything different, regardless of the need or efficacy of the solution. Since whatever is in place has been working well-enough for some time and a part of the system, it’s necessary to examine:

• What is keeping this problem in place? (rules, beliefs, norms, activities, jobs, culture)
• What has prevented this problem from being resolved already?
• What beliefs/values/norms of the existing activity must be retained?
• Is there anything we already have that might solve our problem if used differently?

3.   Brainstorming

Brainstorming sessions to discuss ideal outcomes and the risks of each must take place before goal-setting and include the voices (or their representatives) of the folks familiar with the originating problem:

• The foundational beliefs/values incorporated into the current activities that must be retained in the new;
• Ideas for solutions from each department/working group;
• Understanding the elements holding the old in place and what would change if it’s altered;
• Understanding the risks to making, or not making, a change. Is the risk of change more/less than maintaining the status quo?
• Possible solutions including potential workarounds) must include all voices and potential danger signs brainstormed.

4. Managing risk

The risk of change must be equal to or lower than the risk of staying the same. Change can’t proceed successfully unless the risk of change is understood and approved by all. Problems crop up:

• Without a full complement of accurate data: flawed assumptions get made that will affect the long term success; goal-setting might be biased; resistance and time delays may result; unknown risks may cause inadequate buy-in.
• unless the core beliefs and values of the company or team are factored in during goal setting.

5. Implementation

Implementation is a ‘how’, not a ‘what/why’:

• What/Why are information focused; How is implementation focused.
• What/Why are content based; How is systems based.
• What/Why resides in the conscious mind; How gets generated from the unconscious brain.
• What/Why captures information; How processes and manages risk.
• What/Why is tactical; How is strategic.
• What/Why requires information gathering and research; How requires buy-in and an understanding of the risk of change.

Too often CM practices focus on the rationale – the What and Why – behind a change and fail to understand the strategic nature (the How) of the change and how closely tied it is with the culture. If a system believes the risk of change is greater than the risk of staying the same, they will do nothing.

Sample

HOW TO VS WHAT/WHY TO

If you’re a leader or outside consultant helping clients through a CM initiative – a seller, consultant, System Dynamics practitioner, coach, OD consultant – remember: Change is strategic, not tactical.

I’ve invented a wholly new form of brain-directional question that works with the Stategic and the How to locate the origination point of the problem; a new form of listening that avoids bias; and a change model that includes 13 steps specifically designed to make it possible to define the proper goal, understand the risks, garner new ideas and buy-in, and implement.

Should you wish to learn the elements involved in systems management or help your team through the implementation process I’d love to support you. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_______________________

If you’re enjoying these Monday Articles, please subscribe to make sure you get them delivered to your inbox on Monday morning. I use no cookies, they’re free, and I never use the database to market. As an original thinker I offer these to share out-of-the-box ideas as part of my life’s work. And I’m always eager to hear your thoughts and start a conversation: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. Enjoy.

_______________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

The post Project Management: How to reduce resistance, optimize buy-in, and ensure risk-free change, by Sharon-Drew Morgen appeared first on Sharon-Drew.

“Hi everyone. I’m so happy we’re together! I’d like to begin with a warning: I use confusion as a teaching tool. Confusion is merely your brain not finding an existing circuit to accept new information. During the first day I will be keeping you in confusion a lot to make sure there’s a way to retain new knowledge to supplement what you already know. So when you’re confused, I’m  SO happy!”

The participants laugh uncomfortably. But then it becomes a sort of gentle contest – who can be the MOST confused. Invariably someone says

 “Sharon-Drew, you’ll be SO proud of me! I’m SOOOO confused!”

And everyone laughs together and claps in knowing agreement.

WHY IS CONFUSION DEEMED BAD?

I wonder why confusion is something to be avoided. Why do we all have to ‘know’ everything? Why can’t we delight in the mystery, the jumble, the dark moving spaces that bring that slight bit of discomfort, a touch of fear and dollop of curiosity?

When we think we ‘know’ something, it’s because we’re using circuits that already exist in our brains. Sadly, we assume what we ‘know’ is accurate, even if it ends up being inaccurate or biased; even if it means we dismiss new content that might be more accurate; even if it means we restrict learning anything new.

Old beliefs, previous knowledge, habits and assumptions become concretized over time, and new ideas become suspect because there’s no precedent for them even if the new ideas are more cogent. Our brains just love our status quo. Simple. Stable. Quick. Reality? No such thing.

How do new ideas get into the world when they’re contrary to existing myths and norms? Why isn’t ok to be confused and then curious to research, think, debate new ideas?

Entire fields remain committed to researching within the confines of perceived wisdom, even when they suspect, or when they’re known to be ineffective. How does something new enter if confusion, or the ‘unknown’, isn’t considered?

Remember flat earthers? What about radio waves? Did you know only a few of Cezanne’s paintings were purchased during his life? Or that it took 40 years after the invention of the telephone to begin broad use – using Morse Code instead? Are you aware that initially Bill Gates told his team that he wasn’t convinced the internet had value? Seriously.

LISTENING IS PART OF THE PROBLEM

One of the initiators of our confusion is the way words enter our brains to get translated. You see, when we hear someone speak, our brains don’t accurately translate what the speaker intends to communicate!

In fact, we end up accurately hearing a maximum of 35% of what a speaker intends, causing us to unwittingly revert to what we’ve heard before, making learning and retaining something new quite difficult. When we feel confusion, it’s an indication that our brain is having difficulty translating the incoming content. So confusion is a great indication we’re trying to learn.

Sample

I adore confusion. It means I’m creating new circuits. It means I’m learning!

WE COULD ALL USE A BIT OF CONFUSION

Our brains are the problem. Indeed, because of the way we subjectively interpret new ideas we end up restricting our lives. Indeed, everything, regardless of what science thinks, or what our spouses or bosses want us to believe is true, is a subjective interpretation!

What we read or enjoy; the colors we see and the words we hear; the friends and jobs and neighborhoods we choose; are restricted to the circuits that already exist in our brains – what we agree with and the worlds our brain circuits have created for us – obviously a carefully calibrated world view; obviously restricting a whole lotta world out there we don’t recognize or enjoy or share. We could all use a little confusion now and again.

To reconsider confusion, to learn, change, and be enriched, here are some questions:

• What would you need to believe differently to be willing to rid yourself from some of your biases? Do you know which ones you’d be willing to part with? How do you know your answer isn’t biased?
• How would you know that any confusion is worth the cost of ‘not knowing’ and being uncomfortable?
• What issues come up for you when you face the prospect of being confused in an area you’re expert in?
• Are there any areas of your life or work knowledge that you protect, that you prefer not to feel confusion around because you believe you have all the knowledge you need – and it’s accurate? Would you be willing to examine these to see if there is anything new to learn? Any areas for you to rethink?
• Think of a topic, an idea that runs counter to your beliefs and spend time with it. No, really. Spend enough time to understand it, and know precisely how it differs from your beliefs. See if you can find any fragment in there that confuses you that you’d be willing to think about for a day or two.

We live our lives, work our jobs, vote and go to neighborhood meetings, accustomed to having an automatic answer, knowledge at the ready that has been vetted by our brains, accepted and comfortable. But to gain new knowledge, reconsider old opinions, mature your beliefs and self-asessments, you can create new circuits, and then have a whole new knowledge set.

All you need is some curiosity and the willingness to be confused for a bit of time. You’re worth it, no?
_______________________

If you’re enjoying these Monday Articles, please subscribe to make sure you get them delivered to your inbox on Monday morning. I use no cookies, they’re free, and I never use the database to market. As an original thinker I offer these to share out-of-the-box ideas as part of my life’s work. And I’m always eager to hear your thoughts and start a conversation: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. Enjoy.

_______________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

The post The Importance of Confusion, by Sharon-Drew Morgen appeared first on Sharon-Drew.

Unfortunately for sellers, because these tasks are cultural and idiosyncratic, they have nothing to do with selling per se, and aren’t affected in any way by the sales process. Sellers need a different goal and new facilitation tools to find and connect with potential prospects going through their Pre-Sales decisions that are beyond the scope of sales.

Indeed, the Buy Side and Sell Side are wholly different: one manages risk and change; one sells solutions.

Buying is a change/risk management problem (Buy Side) before it’s a solution choice (Sell Side) issue. By overlooking the (Buy Side) Buying Process and narrowing the search for buyers to those who’ll listen to product details or seem to have a ‘need’ (the Sell Side); by ignoring the necessary risks and change management that all potential buyers must address on the Buy Side; the sales industry overlooks the 80% of potential buyers who could use help managing their internal issues during their risk management and buy-in processes.

As a result, sales closes a small fraction of possible buyers, not to mention having a longer-than-necessary sales cycle  the sales model overlooks the skills needed to facilitate the Buy Side, leaving as prospects address their internal issues privately.

I believe the field is using the wrong metric and chasing the wrong target (‘Need’). Not to mention missing the unique skills necessary to facilitate change.

Read Sample

LOOKING FOR PROSPECTS IN THE WRONG PLACE

People become buyers when they can’t resolve their own problems AND have buy-in for change AND can tolerate the risk of doing something different (a purchase); if the disruption, the change involved with bringing in something new/different is too high they’ll stay the same regardless of need or the efficacy of your solution..

People don’t want to buy anything, merely resolve a problem at the least risk to the system.

A ‘NEED’ FOCUS CAUSES FAILURE

A major problem for sellers is the criteria used to define a prospect: Need. But need is a flawed indicator. People buy when

• stakeholders agree there’s a problem that needs resolving;
• they’ve tried to resolve it and nothing worked;
• they fully understand the risks – the cost – to the system and find them manageable;
• everyone who will touch the final solution buys in.

Not only is it impossible for prospects to understand their full set of needs unless all of the above are completed, people can’t buy unless they understand the risk of change. Buying is not about their problem or the efficacy of your solution. Until or unless they’ve gone through all their change management steps they are not buyers, regardless of what you think they need.

Remember: Selling doesn’t cause buying.

STEPS TO BUYING ARE CHANGE MANAGEMENT BASED

Until they realize they cannot fix the problem themselves AND everyone recognizes that the cost of the fix is less than the cost of staying the same, people will not buy. And when you don’t hear back, they’re not facing indecision: they’re merely involved in their change management process and not yet buyers.

Sellers can help would-be buyers traverse their Buy Side Buying Process before trying to sell. Otherwise you’re selling to the low hanging fruit, the 5% who have completed their internal process, rather than actively facilitating the 80% who need help managing their Buy Side process.

I’ve invented a Pre-Sales decision facilitation model called Buying Facilitation® that first seeks out folks on route to solving a problem my solution can resolve, facilitates them through assembling stakeholders, understanding risk and getting buy-in, and then uses the sales model to sell my solution. It’s an add-on to sales, and enables a 40% close rate instead of 5%.

Below I’ve included a few articles I’ve written on the subject. Go to www.sharon-drew.com, read the section Helping Buyers Buy, and go to the categories Sales, Buying Facilitation® in my blog section and start reading. Then contact me with questions: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. I’ll teach you.

‘No Decision’ is not Indecision

What is Buying Facilitation® and What Sales Problem Does it Solve

The Real Buyer’s Journey: the reason selling doesn’t cause buying

How, Why, and When Buyers Buy

A View from the Buy Side

For those teams or individuals wishing to discuss Buying Facilitation® training, contact Sharon-Drew at: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_______________________

If you’re enjoying these Monday Articles, please subscribe to make sure you get them delivered to your inbox on Monday morning. I use no cookies, they’re free, and I never use the database to market. As an original thinker I offer these to share out-of-the-box ideas as part of my life’s work. And I’m always eager to hear your thoughts and start a conversation: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. Enjoy.

_______________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

The post The Two Buying Processes: the Buy Side and the Sell Side, by Sharon-Drew Morgen appeared first on Sharon-Drew.

CREATING A SAFE PLACE FOR NEURODIVERSE EMPLOYEES

Historically, diversity, generally confined to as race and gender diversity and included in most hiring practices these days. Recently, standard practice is to specify inclusive hiring practices for neurodiverse people in their job specs and include requests for applicants to state their needs for the interviewing process.

But companies without specific neurodiversity hiring practices may not know the ND employees already working for them, making the problem of self-disclosure and individual support a big one for both the company and the employee: ND folks are often afraid of losing their jobs or facing discrimination if they self-disclose and, because there’s no structure for it, may not get the services they need to be as successful as they otherwise might be.

To find and serve these highly creative, hard-working individuals, to ensure they’re accepted and integrated, your company culture must embody inclusion so they’re accepted and integrated onto teams; given work that matches their unique skills; and get supervised by managers who know how to communicate with them – all areas fraught with obstacles unless there are accepted practices in place.

The question for the HR professional is: are you willing to create an inclusive workplace environment – a culture – that offer unique hiring methods? In which NDs are offered supervision or needed allowances? Can choose to self-disclose? In which communication practices are shared and discussed? Where everyone can learn from each other and thrive?

CULTURE CHANGE

ND people think, understand, act, and communicate differently from their neurotypical (NT) colleagues. And because they are in the minority it’s been left up to them to fit in – challenging since their needs may defy standard practices.

Creating a culture in which neurodiverse employees not only fit in but are active, successful, accepted members of the community takes work. It’s not merely doing a few things differently but having a commitment to an inclusive workplace where everyone thrives, welcomes diversity, and collaborates. It means a culture change.

TO DO’S

Here are some specific suggestions if you currently have no dedicated plan (or want to add to what you’re already doing):

• Rethink hiring practices. Some neurodiverse people may be overwhelmed during standard interviews. Ask applicants to provide examples of their work on email; ask them how they’d like to communicate with interviewers.
• Discover the barriers to inclusion within the company. You can use confidential surveys, questionnaires, suggestion boxes to gather information and suggestions from current ND employees, including what they would need from HR or their managers to have a safer, more comfortable situation so they can succeed. It’s a good idea to use a consultant to assist you with these as they know the best vocabulary and topics to include.

Doing this puts out a clear message to all employees that you’re taking ‘workplace inclusion’ seriously. And don’t forget to publish the findings from this outreach so everyone is working from the same fact pattern.

• Inclusive communications. Employee communiques must be written clearly and directly with a visual component if possible. In written communiques there is sometimes a note at the bottom that invites anyone seeking clarification to contact the sender.
• Internal campaigns: Begin running internal campaigns targeted to inclusion: stories from leaders about how they learned to be better at providing directions for their ND team members or what they learned from their ND employees; great ways to manage problems that might arise; or stories from disclosed NDs themselves on best practices for collaborating with colleagues. This not only provides stories for other leaders and folks with neurodiversity but plainly affirms the company’s dedication to inclusion.
• Questionnaires: Send out questionnaires that request employees share what they need from management to be even more successful. Make sure they’re unmarked and unnamed so undisclosed NDs can respond without fear of discrimination.
• Management training: bring in consulting firms (Orchvate https://www.orchvate.com/) that specialize in best practices (integration, sensitization, awareness) on communicating with NDs. These could also be taught by ND employees who have disclosed and are willing to share their personal knowledge. Btw the secondary gain here is that all your employees will communicate – collaborate, ideate, work – more successfully.
• Time management training programs for all employees. This will naturally include ND folks but would be useful for all. ND folks have strict time issues – always on time, very organized to get stuff done on time, etc.
• Physical issues: Neurodiverse people have a greater sensitivity to their surroundings – overhead lights, noise – than neurotypical folks and may have physical challenges that require flexible work arrangements and accommodations. Provide Quiet Spaces for anyone who needs them.
• Advertise inclusive job opportunities in other departments: i.e.’ Seeking folks with strong pattern recognition, or great job for people who enjoy hyper focusing.’
• Hold frequent discussions via intranet, bulletins, house organs written by NT staff about their resolved work challenges or great conversations.
• Peer coaching: where possible, set up peer coaching relationships between self-disclosed ND folks and those who have not yet self-disclosed, or between managers who have ND employees and want to support and learn from each other, or…
• Publish corporate guidelines on inclusion: by clearly stating in all corporate communiques that the company has a culture of inclusion, it becomes obvious to employees and potential hires that all are welcome, regardless of difference.

NDs may be overlooked and burned out – certainly not contributing fully. Doing this lets all employees know they must be more accepting and learn new skills.

These practices will generate trust: trust that the culture has changed; trust for NDs to self-disclose without discrimination; trust that the company values their input; trust that any existing problems will be resolved.

CONCLUSION

Neurodiverse employees offer great advantages. In addition to being loyal, hardworking, relentless, creative, and honest, they bring new points of view otherwise not considered that stimulate creative solutions and outside-the-box thinking,

Create a culture in which they want to work, and once employed, to thrive. Find those in your company and serve them. Generate a culture of inclusion and acceptance. Design hiring and outreach procedures that find people who would not only fit but be an asset.

_______________________

If you’re enjoying these Monday Articles, please subscribe to make sure you get them delivered to your inbox on Monday morning. I use no cookies, they’re free, and I never use the database to market. As an original thinker I offer these to share out-of-the-box ideas as part of my life’s work. And I’m always eager to hear your thoughts and start a conversation: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. Enjoy.

_______________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

The post Are you supporting the Neurodiverse Employees in Your Workplace? by Sharon-Drew Morgen appeared first on Sharon-Drew.

While researching my book What? I discovered that there’s a high probability we aren’t accurately understanding what we think we heard: due to the way ears ‘hear’ (not very well) we only accurately understand less than 35% of what’s been said.

Since our listening is subjective, and there’s a high probability we’ve misunderstood what’s been said, any assumptions we make must be subject to self-doubt.

Sample

Listening is a brain thing. Turns out we don’t have choice over how our brain (mis)translates incoming words:

1. We only retain words we hear for approximately 3 seconds, and since spoken words have no spaces between them, our brains must also listen for breaks in breath, tone, and rhythm to differentiate words and meaning.
2. Spoken words, as sound vibrations, go through several rounds of deletions and distortions on route to being translated into meaning in a neural circuit, causing a maximum of 35% accuracy in understanding what was intended.
3. Spoken words get translated by already-existing circuits for translation ensuring we ‘hear’ what we’ve already heard before, most likely misinterpreting the new content.

A simple example of this just happened today when I was introduced to someone:

Joe: Hey V. I’d like you to meet my friend Sharon-Drew.

V: Hi Sharon.

SDM: Actually, my first name is Sharon-Drew and I always use both names.

V: Oh. I don’t know anyone who calls themselves by their first name AND last name.

SDM: Neither do I.

V: But you just told me that’s how you refer to yourself!

Because she had no existing circuits for my double first name, her brain used an existing pathway and misinterpreted my name. Her assumptions overrode both Joe’s introduction and my correction.

This type of thing happens daily. We believe what our brain tells us, make follow-on assumptions then act on them, and never doubt ourselves. Unfortunately, because what we think we’ve heard may not be the Speaker’s intended message and our interpretation is inaccurate, we often assume we’re ‘right’ and end up being wrong.

ASSUMPTIONS RESTRICT AUTHENTIC COMMUNICATION

Brains are set up to routinize and habituate most of what we do and hear. It makes the flow of our daily activities and relationships easy.

But there is a downside: because our brain is mechanical, electrical, meaningless, unconscious and automatic, it doesn’t consider ‘meaning’ during the electrochemical process between a Speaker’s words and a Listener’s understanding and we end up making faulty assumptions.

Years ago, when I asked a magazine editor to correct the name Charlotte Morgan that appeared under my photo instead of my actual name, he replied (and I can’t make this stuff up!): “I didn’t get it wrong. You must have sent it to me wrong.” True story: he’d rather assume he got it right and I sent him an incorrect name instead of my actual name!

THE COST OF ASSUMING

Assumptions are a natural part of how we think. But especially in leadership situations, they can cause harm:

• Sellers assume prospects are buyers when they ‘hear’ a ‘need’ based on their biased questions and end up wasting a huge amount of time chasing prospects who will never buy;
• Consultants assume they know what a client needs from discussions with only a few top decision makers causing resistance to change when they implemented to people not included.
• Decision scientists assume they gather accurate data from the people that hired them and discount important data held by employees lower down the management chain, inadvertently skewering the results and making implementation difficult;
• Doctors, lawyers, dentists sometimes make flawed assumptions when they hear issues similar to other patients they’ve had potentially causing harm – especially when these assumptions keep them from finding out the real problems. They also offer important advice that clients/patients don’t heed when the patients themselves hear inaccurately;
• Coaches assume clients mean something they are not really saying or skewering the focus of the conversation, ending up biasing the outcome by leading clients away from the real issues that never get resolved;
• Influencers and leaders offer their solutions then blame the Other for resisting, ignoring, or sabotaging, when the assumed solution procures resistance.

To have more personal choice around when, how, if you make assumptions, ask yourself:

• How do I know if my assumptions are accurate? And if they’re inaccurate, how will I know?
• What would I need to believe differently to ‘assume’ I might not be correct, and be willing to ask clarifying questions to elicit accurate data?
• What is making inaccurate assumptions costing me or those I’m speaking with?

Assumptions are costly when they’re inaccurate. How will you know the difference between accurate ones and faulty ones?

____________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

The post Assumptions: Why being right may be wrong, by Sharon-Drew Morgen appeared first on Sharon-Drew.

On Sunday mornings in summer I sit on my deck with my coffee, a few feet from the river, watching the sun come up and listening to the dozens of different birds singing. Glorious.

This week I was given a special treat: after a flurry of splashy activity, I watched a family of five river otters emerge from under my house and jump onto my nextdoor neighbor’s deck. What fun they had playing, fighting, squealing and rolling around each other! In my 10 summers here, I’ve never actually seen them, although I’ve seen their footprints around my deck. Apparently there’s been a family of them under my house for years!

Minutes later a mother duck swam by with her 11 half-grown ducklings! Eleven! That means there were probably 13 in the original brood! And an hour later, I noticed a heron on the neighbor’s roof cleaning its wings.

Living here is always filled with surprises; I live in the middle of a ‘river walk’ of things that fly and swim: the fat beaver, sitting calmly munching a tree bark on the levee, fattening itself up for the winter. (I’ve wondered if it’s the same beaver that’s been munching the logs that hold up the dock near my deck!) Regular readers may remember Gwendolyn, the duck that came annually for 8 years to lay her eggs in one of my planters. Once I came home (I have a bad habit of leaving all my doors open in the summer) to find two geese enthroned comfortably on my two couches on the goose-down cushions (irony??). It took two neighbors to help me get them outside again as we chased them around the house. And for those of you who think geese are cute, think again: they hiss and spew and try to bite. But that was easier than getting out the swallows that made filthy nests in my eaves and threw their sick nestlings onto my deck for me to throw into the river to die. Or shutting up the goose that arrives at my neighbor’s door daily at 1:00 PM honking for a treat (so loud!). And I can fish for dinner (crawfish, perch, salmon, and sturgeon we must throw back) from my deck. I can tell when they’re running when I see the cormorants diving. Sea lions swim by in the spring, sometimes in pairs playing.

My fun isn’t only in the summer. This past winter I had weekly visits from Henry, a white/brown spotted mouse who I thought was cute until I realized Henrietta and the kids undoubtedly lived nearby. I then caught him in a living trap and brought it to a different part of the river so he could delight others. I must admit feeling guilty for leaving his family behind.

AUSTIN TEXAS AND TAOS N.M.

I’ve lived with nature in other cities as well. In Austin I had an off-grid weekend retreat about 20 miles from my downtown loft, relaxing except for the nasty armadillo whose sole job seemed to be to dig up my lawn. I wasn’t afraid of it, but I never knew what to do when I was confronted by the thick brown snake near my back door. With its raise head ready to pounce, we had many standoffs. He always won: not knowing if it was poisonous, I had to wait until he slithered away to get into the house. He was so much bigger than the water snake in my pond. And talk about my pond! I tried keeping it stocked with goldfish – but they were obviously providing dinner for somebody (The heron? The snake?). Thankfully, the adorable cottontail rabbit who lived under the gazebo didn’t dig up anything!

My biggest and scariest surprise was when I lived on a small ranch in Taos, N.M. (I even had a coy dog – half coyote! And was she smart!!!). One winter morning I opened my door and there, on my porch and six inches from my face, was a fully adult – HUGE!!! – bull!!! We looked at each other for a moment, and I quickly slammed the door and called my neighbor. ‘I think I have something that belongs to you’. “Oh dear,” he said. “I wondered where he went!”

I’ve lived in cities – London, New York, Austin, Boulder – and of course they were exciting and fun. But living with animals and trees, flowers and water, kayaking before work and hiking after work gives me the calm heart to do my writing and thinking. I’ve provided homes for otters, mice, snakes, ducks, swallows, river rats (!) and woodpeckers. They’ve enriched my life – and it’s all been a blessing.

__________________    

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

The post Living in Nature, by Sharon-Drew Morgen appeared first on Sharon-Drew.

• Sellers offer content details as their primary tool but overlook the decision process and risk management issues buyers must navigate before buying;
• Healthcare providers spout viewpoints and directions but overlook the internal belief change processes necessary for patients to make permanent changes;
• Leaders lead from their ideas and assumptions but overlook the need to include and facilitate stakeholders to buy-in to values-based change to avoid risk and resistance;
• Coaches pose questions from their own assumptions that fail to uncover the client’s unconscious values-based criteria necessary for change;
• Trainers offer great content, but don’t address how learners hear or retain what’s been said;
• Questioners formulate questions from guesses, needs and assumptions without understanding or considering the responder’s needs or reality.
• Companies and retail stores only think about their bottom line and forget to account for customers.

Standard models assume that whatever Influencers share will be

–      heard as intended,

–      appropriate for the situation,

–      accepted as fact,

–      executed as specified.

But none of that is true: these one-way models generally:

• fail to address the core choices and feelings, understanding and beliefs, management of personal and cultural risks and reactions that need to be addressed for real change;
• don’t get heard accurately: due to the way incoming words are translated by the brain, people can’t accurately hear what was said. Filled with distortions and deletions, the brain’s ‘listening’ process causes people to accurately hear less than 35% of the intended message;
• make it difficult to assess mutual understanding or acceptance;
• are driven by the needs and assumptions of the Influencer and don’t get buy-in because all stakeholders aren’t represented.

Sample

RESPONDERS MUST BE INCLUDED

We forget the importance of giving Others their own agency. When new sellers are hired they’re taught details of their product – and overlook how buyers buy (the Buy Side addresses Pre-Sales, non-solution oriented change management issues). Coaches are taught to ‘actively listen’, and pose ‘powerful’ questions – but ignore their client’s sometimes unconscious risks of change (a separate calculation from the problem to be solved).

Trainers are taught instructional design and engagement methods – and don’t include how learners learn (a separate activity than acquiring new content). Doctors instruct patients on what they must do differently – and fail to account for a patient’s internal calculations for habit change (without which the instructions won’t be executed). Leaders form their goals from their own assumptions and fail to include the stakeholders (who then resist because they’ve been ignored).

Most influencers don’t even consider the ‘other side’. And when they fail, they blame the buyer, the client, the student, the patient forgetting that real communication is not one-sided but circular.

Indeed, when there’s only a Sender, there’s no way to know how or even if the Responder has understood, is confused, or is willing to make a change. When both Sender and Receiver are involved, problems, needs, resistances, areas of confusion, beliefs, fears, or understanding can emerge.

WE EACH LIVE IN DIFFERENT REALITIES

As outsiders we’ll never understand another’s unconscious, internal triggers – but we can help them find their own to make changes appropriate to their own beliefs.

I believe our job as Influencers is to guide Others through their own discovery and change process without perscriptives. Ultimately the end result will meet the Influencer’s objectives, but not necessarily conform with the Influencer’s suggestions.

Below is a great example of how it’s possible to enable Others to discover their own best values-based criteria to solve a problem where Influencers believe a change is needed – and how the doc’s directions actually kept his patient from discovering her own choice criteria and achieving her goals.

And note: this Change Facilitation process can be used in any profession, but it requires a different goal (facilitate Others to their own answers) and different skills (i.e. listening without bias, Facilitative Questions that get to specific internal triggers, etc.).

A PATIENT-LED CASE STUDY

Maria came to my house crying. Her doctor had told her she was borderline diabetic and needed to eat differently. He gave her a printed list of foods to eat and foods to avoid and sent her on her way. She tried to follow the list for months, lost some weight, but finally gave up and went back to her normal eating habits and gained back the weight. But she was fearful of dying from diabetes like her mother did. Apparently something beyond the fear of death was holding her back from changing her eating habits. She asked if I could help. Here was our exchange.

SDM: What has stopped you from following the doctor’s food choices?

Maria: I want to keep my family’s love. (Seems it was a highly valued criteria that surpassed death.)

SDM: I hear you’ve combined food and love.

Maria: Of course (A very strong belief that needed to be included for any change to occur.)

SDM: How are you currently using food in a way that causes love, and how does that affect your weight gain?  

Maria: I make 150 tortillas each morning and hand them out to all my children and grandchildren who come by on their way to work and school in the morning. Then Joe and I eat the rest. My family loves my tortillas. I know they’re bad for me with all the lard in them, even though I eat them. But I get to see my whole family every day! When the doctor told me I can’t eat them anymore, it felt like he asked me to not love my family.

SDM: So I hear that handing out tortillas has kept you connected with your family. Since they’re unhealthy for you, is there any other way you can be connected through food without putting your health at risk?

Maria: Hmmmm… I could make them frittatas, but they’d take a lot longer. But I’ve got an idea…

Maria invited her entire family for dinner and told them she couldn’t make tortillas any more due to health reasons. She presented her daughter Sonia – the new Tortilla Tia – with her tortilla press outfitted with a big red bow, saying Sonia would be making their morning tortillas Monday through Thursday BUT to come by her house on Friday’s and she’d have frittatas for them.

This simple switch incorporated her idiosyncratic, and very real, need to link food and love, and begin a healthy eating plan AND meet her criterria to connect family love with food. It also inspired her to research food substitutions she could easily make to avoid a chronic illness. Eventually, she lost 40 pounds and had a food plan more closely aligned with what her doc suggested. And of course, she could still make her family happy with her food and meet her beliefs.

A DIFFERENT HAT

As you can see, entering the problem with a goal to enable Others to figure out their own route to change instead of trying to drive it with personal assumptions and instructions, and using a different curiosity and a different questioning system, it’s quite possible to guide people to discover their own best choices that are congruent with who they are.

Trusting Others have their own answer is core. But that means Influencers must be willing to forego their need to be right, give up their top down control, and trust Others have their own idiosyncratic and belief-based criteria for making a change.

We must be willing to go beyond our own side of the equation. With the high fail rate in each industry, I would think there’s a realization of the necessity to include Others in the calculation. After all, if buyers don’t buy, patients or clients don’t change, and resistance impedes success, we’ve failed at our job.

Seems to me we should be considering doing something different. If you’re interested in learning the Change Facilitation model and new questioning system, please contact me. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

____________________    

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

The post Selling, Coaching, Leadership, Training, and Healthcare Models Overlook Buyers, Clients, Stakeholders, Learners, and Patients, by Sharon-Drew Morgen appeared first on Sharon-Drew.

I contend that current Behavior Mod approaches are not only faulty, but seriously harmful to a large population of people who need to consider permanent change.

CAN’T CHANGE BEHAVIORS BY TRYING TO CHANGE BEHAVIORS

Behavior Modification cannot permanently change existing behaviors. In diet, smoking cessation, and exercise maintenance alone, there is a 97% failure rate for ongoing adoption of altered behaviors. You see, it’s not possible to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior.

If you’ve ever tried to keep lost weight off, or habituate a new exercise routine, or stop smoking, or… you’ve probably tried to modify your current behaviors by doing something differently without making the necessary structural changes to hold it in place.

Conventional thinking usually explains the WHAT and WHY. But permanent change needs the HOW – HOW your brain causes your behaviors, and where the inflexion points are so you can intervene and generate new ones (or lead your patients and clients through to their best choices).

This essay explains what behaviors are, where they originate from, and the elements necessary for permanent change. For this, I must take you briefly to the source – into your brain – to not only explain why you behave the way you do or resist new behaviors, but HOW to actually elicit the behaviors you want. I’ve made the brain explanations brief. But if you want to understand precisely how to facilitate permanent change from the source, it’s worth the effort. Enjoy.

BEHAVIOR

There are two major problems with Behavior Modification:

1. Behavior 2. Modification.

I suspect most people haven’t considered what a ‘behavior’ denotes. Behaviors are the way we exhibit our identity, our beliefs, our history/norms/life experience.

In short, behaviors represent us. They’re our beliefs in action – the demonstration, the expression, the external actions that portray our internal essence and morals. Like an autobiography is the written representation of a life but not THE life. Like going to church represents us practicing our faith but not FAITH. Behaviors are the visible depictions of each of us.

Behaviors don’t occur without a stimulus, some sort of input. Nor do they operate in a vacuum – they don’t arise from the sea like Venus. And they are always, always congruent with our beliefs. You know, without asking, that someone wearing a bathing suit to a wedding most likely has different beliefs than the other guests. It’s not about the bathing suit.

Behaviors are automatically and unconsciously triggered from our neural circuits – the end result of a series of automatic and meaningless chemical signals that face congruency checks before taking form into action. In other words, behaviors are the result of risk-averse neural activity – not actions that show up on their own.

Sample

Below is a greatly simplified summary of what happens in our brains that ultimately lead to behaviors. It’s here you’ll understand what’s needed to make permanent changes and why Behavior Modification isn’t able to accomplish it.

HOW TO CHANGE BEHAVIORS PERMANENTLY

Here are three of the key elements involved in how we choose to behave differently  – the modification portion of change. It’s systemic.

SYSTEMS CONGRUENCE. Systems are the glue, the conglomeration of mental, physical, emotional, physiological, neurological elements make us human. I am a system. You are a system. Your family is a system. And everything we do, think, notice, are curious about, follow the unique rules of our individual, idiosyncratic, and historic systems. And our individual systems define our status quo.

Ultimately the job of our status quo is to maintain Systems Congruence, or balance, so we can wake up every day being who we were yesterday – to know to brush our teeth each day and be kind to the colleague we don’t like.

One of the important things to know here is that systems don’t judge our behaviors. Whether we’re fat or controlling or mean, our neural systems only work with electrochemical signals and have no meaning. So it doesn’t care if you lose weight – just that it remains congruent.

All day, trillions of signals enter into our brains and trigger us to behaviors that have met our Systems Congruence criteria. Indeed, our brains check all incoming signals for incongruence before behaviors are agreed to and triggered, making sure we remain in balance. Without doing so we’d be at risk for incongruence.

Any time you try (and try and try and…) to behave in a way that unconsciously causes imbalance within you – when you push against an existing habit or action to try to get a different behavior – you’ll experience resistance or sabotage because you’d be trying to disrupt your system.

Unless we change the system that holds our problematic behavior in place, it’s not possible for permanent change to occur. For any proposed change, to maintain congruence, your system must agree, Buy In, in a way that matches your beliefs, identity, and norms. And it’s physiologic, chemical, automatic, and unconscious. Our brains do this for us every second of our lives.

Behavior Modification attempts to replace this process, trying to change the final output (like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube) without making the changes in the system that would hold the new in place permanently and maintain Systems Congruence.

When something ‘new’ hasn’t been vetted and agreed to, your putting the system at risk and generating an imbalance. And the system will ultimately reject it.

INPUT. Any new input for change will only become a permanent behavior if it’s congruent with the person’s system. To change a behavior, it’s necessary to 1. find an existing neural circuit, or generate a new one that accepts and triggers the new request, and 2. input a message that will be acceptable.

Let me give you the simple version of how I lost weight and kept it off. My original message to myself was:

‘I want to lose weight.’

While the words requested a different behavior, they’re merely behavior-change focused and didn’t get to my specific neural circuits to trigger a change or get agreement from the rest of the system that had maintained it for some time. In other words, that input message caused me to do what I’d always done and end up maintaining the weight because there’d been no circuit change to trigger different actions.

After failing for decades (pictures of skinny women on my fridge, dozens of diet books) I changed the input message to include my identity and beliefs, precise action required, and precise goal.

Starting with a newly expanded ‘identity’, I became a ‘healthy person’ and gave myself a new rule that I had to be healthy mind, body, and spirit. With that rule, I began studying nutrition and discovered I was eating foods that were unhealthy for me and changed the way I was eating entirely. Here is the message I eventually came up with:

‘I am a healthy person who seeks to find the best nutrition and exercise protocol to get to the best weight for my body’

That did the trick, and I’ve eaten my revised food plan (and kept the weight off) for 30 years.

TRIAL LOOP. This one needs some patience. Here you’ll need to try different input messages to find the one that incorporates the right systemic elements that will cause a permanent change. But note: if at any point a risk is determined to put the system out of balance, it will reject the new behavior. Not to kick a dead horse, but Behavior Mod does not address this at all – the reason behavior change attempts fail so often.

I’ve developed a model for this to lead you through the steps if you’re interested in the entire process.

There are plenty of uses for this. Think of enabling patient Buy In for obesity or cardio clinics, to help patients design a work-out regimen for heart health. Or for diabetes sufferers to design a healthful food plan for life. Or athletes trying to change an inferior swing, or develop a new pattern to their feet differently to run faster. What about helping yourself meditate daily or organizing your life. Or to get more sleep.

We can help people alter their behaviors in a way that’s not only congruent with who they are, but helps them make their own best choices. But not with Behavior Modification alone.

If you’d like to discuss any of the ideas in this article,  please contact me at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_____________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

The post Why Behavior Modification Fails to Modify Behaviors and What to Do Instead, by Sharon-Drew Morgen appeared first on Sharon-Drew.

While trainers assume their content will be heard per their intended meaning, learners may be hearing something different; they might have no way to accurately translate it or retain it. Learning is a brain change issue.

Current training models, while certainly dedicated to imparting knowledge in creative, constructive, and tested ways, may not develop the necessary neural circuitry for Learners to fully comprehend, retain, or retrieve the new information.

WE CAN ONLY ‘HEAR’ WHAT WE’VE HEARD BEFORE

The primary problem is how brains ‘hear’. Due to the nature of how brains handle incoming words (puffs of air that face distortions and deletions before being translated into meaning by neural circuits), an instructor’s content may be mistranslated, misunderstood, or misappropriated. Certainly there is no way to retain it as intended unless the learner has precise circuitry that matches the instructor’s content.

Let me say this another way: because incoming content/words (Initially meaningless sound vibrations.) face so much distortion and deletion during the brain’s automatic, habituated, physiological, neurological, electrochemical, biological listening process, and because incoming content can only be translated by existing/historic circuitry, we basically only ‘hear’ what we’ve heard before.

For those interested in learning how brains ‘listen’, my book WHAT? explains it all (with lots of funny stories and learning exercises) and offers workarounds.

Sample

Our brains are the culprit: they construct the way we make sense of the world – without our agreement or knowledge. Unfortunately, we don’t question what shows up as our ‘reality’, but our viewpoints, interpretations and assumptions, what we believe, what we think we hear and even what we’re curious about, are unconsciously biased by our history. Indeed, our ability to accurately act on and understand incoming information is unwittingly restricted and misconstrued.

WE EACH INVENT OUR OWN REALITY

Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains how we invent our own reality in The Brain:

“Each of us has our own narrative and we have no reason not to believe it. Our brains are built on electrochemical signals that we interpret as our lives and experience… there’s no single version of reality. Each brain carries its own truth via billions of signals triggering chemical pulses and trillions of connections between neurons.” [pg 73-74]

In an NPR interview neuroscientist Stephen Macknik says:

“Most of the world is very real. You’ve just never lived there. You’ve lived a perception of that world in your mind that’s been filtered by a bunch of salt water sacks, proteins and electrochemical signals that can’t possibly be making an accurate determination of what’s actually going on. The brain actually receives very, very little accurate information.”

For the 10% of students who have been involved with similar training, or who already have circuits for similar ideas, accepting and understanding new content is easy as there’s an existing translation point.

For those who don’t have existing circuits, the brain chooses a ‘similar-enough’ circuit that, while historic, may not be similar enough, causing misunderstanding and failure to learn what’s being offered – or worse, the assumption that what’s ‘heard’ is what was intended. Following a lecture, professors who study with me ask their students what they heard, and each student hears something different.

LEARNING FACILITATION

It’s possible to design programs that help students generate new circuits specifically for the new knowledge before offering content. This ensures the information will be accurately heard and retained.

As an original thinker who’s been inventing systemic brain change models for decades, I’ve developed a Learning Facilitation model that first trains the brain before presenting the core content.

I presented my Learning Facilitation model at the Learning Ideas Conference in June 2024. Here is a link to the full one-hour presentation. Enjoy.

If you have questions, or want to learn the process, please get in touch: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

____________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

The post Design Training Programs to Retain Learning, by Sharon-Drew Morgen appeared first on Sharon-Drew.

SELLING VS BUYING

My new role taught me the differences between selling and buying. I hadn’t realized the complexity of the Pre-Sales activity necessary to become a buyer. Indeed, there were two buying processes: the buyer’s side and the seller’s side.

As a sales professional my ultimate job was to place solutions; as a buyer, my main focus was to get buy-in and avoid risks while creating and maintaining Excellence.

As a sales professional my job was to get folks to make a purchase. Even as a successful seller I struggled to say/offer the right thing, at the right time, to the right prospects, in order to convince, persuade, and build relationships to close; as an entrepreneur and potential buyer I had to continually manage any necessary change we needed using the most efficient, integrous, and least disruptive route to success to maintain happy employees and clients, and continue to develop a great product.

As a sales professional, I sought to find and influence people who ‘needed’ my solution; as a buyer, I couldn’t fully define my needs, or recognize the best way to resolve problems until all voices (stakeholders) and impediments to change were factored in and until we were absolutely sure we couldn’t resolve our problems internally. We certainly couldn’t make any changes until we fully understood the risks that any change would generate.

Selling and buying, I quickly realized, involve two different activities: different goals, different behaviors, different communication and thinking patterns, different types of responsibility.

Before becoming a buyer myself, I hadn’t fully appreciated how severely the sales model limits who will buy by seeking only those with ‘need’ – the low hanging fruit, those who had completed their internal change management determinations and bought-in to any risks, any disruption, a new solution would bring to their environment.

In other words, folks who might eventually buy weren’t interested in speaking or reading about my solution until they managed their internal issues, regardless of their ‘need’ or the efficacy of my solution.

The act of making a purchase, I realized, was a risk/change management problem before it was a solution choice issue. Any needs I had as a potential buyer were secondary to maintaining consistency and team agreements. After all, we were doing ‘just fine’ without bringing in anything new. And because the sales model focuses on selling to ‘need’, it could only seek and close those folks who considered themselves buyers already (the low hanging fruit), overlooking those who could become buyers with some risk/change facilitation.

My book Dirty Little Secrets lays out all the steps people must take before self-identifying as a ‘buyer.’

Sample

THE JOB OF A BUYER

As a buyer, the ‘cost’ of a fix had to be lower than the ‘cost’ of maintaining the status quo. So (hypothetically) if I needed a CRM system but had to fire 8 people to buy one, I had to weigh the ‘cost’, the risk, of the change. And the time it takes to make this calculation is the length of the sales cycle. Unfortunately, the sales model does not offer tools to address this.

As a seller, I had never realized that my sales biases – biased questions (to ‘uncover needs’ of course), or listening specifically for where my solution could be pitched – were restricting my success. The sales model just didn’t offer the tools to facilitate prospects through what they must complete before they even self-identified as buyers.

As a seller, I limited my search to folks with ‘needs’ and overlooked an 8x larger audience of folks in the process of becoming buyers but not yet ready. Not to mention that my definition of ‘needs’ was often biased by my own needs to sell, and didn’t necessarily mean the person was a buyer.

As a buyer, I had more to worry about than solving a problem. I had to take into account

• the need for buy-in by all who involved in the ultimate solution,
• the risk a change would bring,
• the rules and brand of the company,
• the well-being of the employees and staff,
• how the problem got created to make sure it didn’t recur,
• the integrity of the product or service provided,
• the congruence and integrity of the status quo,
• the needs of the customers.

As a buyer, my challenge was to be better without losing what worked successfully, to ensure

– everyone involved agreed to a common solution,

– there was consensus and a route through to congruent change,

– we were all absolutely certain we couldn’t fix the problem with something familiar,

– the risk of change was less than the cost of maintaining the problem.

As the Managing Director/Founder, I had a well-oiled machine to consider – great staff, great clients, fantastic ROI – one that had a few problems, but did a lot successfully; I didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

WHAT I NEEDED TO KNOW BEFORE BECOMING A BUYER

Here’s what I needed to know as an entrepreneur before I began looking ‘outside’ for answers:

– Who did I need to get agreement from? And how would their combined voices inform our needs or a resolution?

– What would the ‘cost’ be to us, the downside, of bringing in something external? Was the downside worth the upside and could we recover?

– How could we fix the problem ourselves? At what point would we realize we couldn’t and needed outside help?

– How could we be certain upfront that the people, policies, rules, and goals we had in place would fit comfortably with anything new we might do, any solution we might purchase? And was it possible to know the downside in advance?

– How could I determine the risk of change before I brought in a new solution?

I had to make decisions that didn’t cause too much disruption and garnered buy-in.

Eventually, as my business grew, I began annotating the change process I was going through. Eventually I realized everyone goes through the same change management process.

13 STEPS OF CHANGE

As someone trying to solve problems without causing disruption, my decision making process had very specific activities, from understanding the elements of a problem to ultimately ending up with a resolution. Turned out there were 13 steps for change, and people didn’t self-identify as buyers until step 10!

In other words, when selling focused only on those with need, they restricted their prospects to those who had already done all their risk management and gotten buy-in – overlooking those who were on route to becoming prospects…. and sales offers no capability to help them get there.

I used these steps to design a Change Facilitation model (Buying Facilitation®) as a new sales tool kit to lead potential buyers through their risk issues. Indeed, with a Buying Facilitator hat on, I could identify folks who were on route to becoming buyers on the first call.

As a seller I ignored the personal issues people had to resolve before buying. In fact, with all my awards for being a top producer, I never realized selling didn’t cause buying!

I taught Buying Facilitation® to my sales staff so they could help people on route to becoming buyers to

• Assemble all the right people – decision makers and influencers of all types – to get consensus for any change at all. It was quite a challenge to figure out every one of the folks whose voices had to be heard.;
• Enable collaboration so all voices, all concerns, approved action by a consensus. This was a systems-change issue, not a solution-choice issue;
• Find out if there was a cheap, easy, risk-free way to fix problems with groups, policies, technology we had on hand or were familiar with;
• Discover the risks of change and how we’d handle them;
• Realize the point where there was no route to Excellence without bringing in a new/different solution;
• Manage the fallout of change when bringing something new in from outside, and determine how to congruently integrate a purchase into our status quo.

And our sales increased by 600%!

For those who want to understand the process, my book Dirty Little Secrets lays out the 13 step Buying Decision Path or go to my site www.sharon-drew.com where I not only explain it but have hundreds of articles on the subject.

The time it takes buyers to navigate these steps is the length of the sales cycle. And buyers must do this anyway – so it might as well be with us. 

BUYING FACILITATION® FACILITATES THE BUYER’S JOURNEY

Buying Facilitation® eschews trying to sell anything until or unless the buyer knows exactly how – not what – they need to buy. After all, you’ve got nothing to sell until they have something to buy.

Here’s what we don’t know as sellers:

1. Where buyers are along their decision path.
2. How many, or if, the requisite Buying Decision Team is in place, and ALL appropriate voices have been heard so a full evaluation of the upsides and downsides to change can be considered.
3. Until ALL voices have been heard, there is no way to recognize or define ‘need.’ As outsiders we can NEVER know who belongs on the Buying Decision Team because it’s so unique to the situation.
4. Who is a real buyer: only those who know how to manage change, and get consensus that they cannot fix the problem internally are buyers. Need doesn’t determine ability to buy.
5. The fallout of the risk factors, and the ability for any group to withstand change.
6. The types of change management issues that a new solution would entail.

For less time and resource, we can actually lead buyers down their own change route; and we can easily, quickly, recognize who will, or won’t, be a buyer. In one conversation we can help them discern who they need to include on their Buying Decision Team; if we wish an appointment, the entire Decision Team will be eagerly awaiting us.

And with a Change Facilitator hat on, on the first call it’s possible to find buyers at early stages along their decision path who need our solutions but aren’t yet ready to buy. We just can’t use the sales model until after it’s established who is actually a buyer.

Let’s enter earlier with a change consultant hat on, to actually facilitate buyers to the point where they could be ready to buy – and THEN sell. We will find 8x more prospects, immediately recognize those who can never buy, and be true Servant Leaders. Otherwise, with a 5% close rate, we’re merely wasting over 95% of our time and resource seeking the low hanging fruit, and missing a vital opportunity to find, and close, those who WILL buy. And more will buy, and quicker. Help people become buyers. Then sell.

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

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