Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down [Hardcover]

John P. Kotter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2010

You've got a good idea. You know it could make a crucial difference for you, your organization, your community. You present it to the group, but get confounding questions, inane comments, and verbal bullets in return. Before you know what's happened, your idea is dead, shot down. You're furious. Everyone has lost: Those who would have benefited from your proposal. You. Your company. Perhaps even the country.

It doesn't have to be this way, maintain John Kotter and Lorne Whitehead. In Buy-In, they reveal how to win the support your idea needs to deliver valuable results. The key? Understand the generic attack strategies that naysayers and obfuscators deploy time and time again. Then engage these adversaries with tactics tailored to each strategy. By "inviting in the lions" to critique your idea--and being prepared for them--you'll capture busy people's attention, help them grasp your proposal's value, and secure their commitment to implementing the solution.

The book presents a fresh and amusing fictional narrative showing attack strategies in action. It then provides several specific counterstrategies for each basic category the authors have defined--including:

· Death-by-delay: Your enemies push discussion of your idea so far into the future it's forgotten.

· Confusion: They present so much data that confidence in your proposal dies.

· Fearmongering: Critics catalyze irrational anxieties about your idea.

· Character assassination: They slam your reputation and credibility.

Smart, practical, and filled with useful advice, Buy-In equips you to anticipate and combat attacks--so your good idea makes it through to make a positive change.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John P. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School and is widely considered the world's foremost authority on leadership and change. Lorne A. Whitehead is Leader of Education Innovation at the University of British Columbia, where he has also been a professor and the NSERC/3M Chairholder in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

Most people skip Prefaces (occasionally feeling guilty as they do so) because they are not particularly interested in an introduction to a book, its history, any research behind it, or the writers. If you are a skipper, just flip to page 13. And don’t feel guilty.

We have all experienced the basic problem addressed here, and in a very personal way, because it is an old, common, human, and increasingly important problem. You need sufficient support for a good idea or the right decision will not be accepted and implemented well. You or your allies present the plan. You present it well. Then, along with thoughtful issues being raised, come the confounding questions, inane comments, and verbal bullets—either directly at you or, even worse, behind your back. It matters not that the idea clearly makes sense. It matters not that the idea is needed, insightful, innovative, and logical. It matters not even if the issues involved are extremely important to a business, an individual, or even a nation. The proposal is still shot down, accepted but without sufficient support to gain all of its true benefits, or slowly dies a sad death.

You’ve been there, both on and off the job. It can be maddening. You can end up flustered, embarrassed, or furious. All those who would benefit from the idea lose. You lose. In an extreme case, a whole company or nation may lose. And, as we shall demonstrate in this book, it doesn’t have to be that way.

The argument put forth here, summarized simply, is this:

1. The competent creation and implementation of good ideas is a basic life skill, relevant to the 21 year old college graduate, the 55 year old corporate CEO, and virtually everyone else. This skill, or the lack of it, affects the economy, governments, families, and most certainly our own lives. This point may be obvious, but less obvious are two additional points. First, the amount of thought and education put into making good decisions 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. Second, and even more overlooked, is that our insufficient knowledge about how to get good new ideas accepted by others—a central piece of making anything happen--is becoming more and more of a problem as the world changes faster and faster.
2. Change is one of the most powerful forces shaping everything in the world in which we live. With change swirling around us, we need to change more often, which demands good ideas---ideas in the form of plans, proposals, or strategies. But, more so, we need effective action that can make those ideas be used. This is true regardless of the issue: from pitching an idea to obtain modest resources to exploring an innovative new product area to changing the health care system in the U.S. And one of the steepest walls which stop us from making increasingly needed ideas happen is the buy-in obstacle.
3. It would be wonderful if the good ideas you have, on or off the job, could simply stand on their own. But far too often, this is not the case. Whether it’s a big bill before Congress, an innovative corporate strategy, or tonight’s plan for dinner and the movies, sensible ideas can be ignored, shot down, or, more often, wounded so badly that they produce little gain. A wounded idea might still get 51% of the relevant heads nodding approval. But when true buy-in is thin, the smallest of obstacles can eventually derail a supposedly agreed-upon proposal.
4. The questions, concerns, and arguments that wound or kill truly good ideas may seem to be limitless, but for all practical purposes they are not. There are a few dozen arguments used against good ideas that are very generic in their form, can be used in virtually any setting, and can be very powerful. There are also a set of generic responses, all based on a single, somewhat counterintuitive method, that can build strong support for good ideas, regardless of the setting (on or off the job) or the scale of the issues (trying to get buy-in for a new corporate strategy or for a clever proposal to spend $100).
5. Although much has been written on buy-in or related topics (persuasion, communication), the method we offer here, and the 24 very specific responses to 24 common generic attacks, have a power and efficiency (buy-in achieved for resources used) that may be unique, and thus of great potential use to those pursuing innovation, strategy implementation, or simply trying to get one good idea accepted by an after-work, pick-up basketball team. In a world in which we all have limited time and economic resources, unusual power and efficiency can mark the difference between what is practical and what is not, between what creates success and what does not.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press; 1 edition (October 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1422157296
• ISBN-13: 978-1422157299
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #50 in Books > Business & Investing > Skills > Running Meetings & Presentations

More About the Author

Professor John P. Kotter

John P. Kotter is internationally known and widely regarded as the foremost speaker on the topics of Leadership and Change. His is the premier voice on how the best organizations actually achieve successful

transformations. The Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School and a graduate of MIT and Harvard, Kotter's vast experience and knowledge on successful change and leadership have been proven time and again. Most recently, Kotter has been involved in the creation and co-founding of Kotter International, a leadership organization that helps Global 5000 company leaders develop the practical skills and implementation methodologies required to lead change in a complex, large-scale business environment.

When speaking to groups, Kotter draws on the history of recent successes and failures in the business world. He explores the new rules of leadership and the importance of lifelong learning in the post-corporate world. Kotter offers the leadership tools necessary to achieve success in a business world that reinvents itself every day. He continues to speak at Harvard Business School Executive Education Programs, including the prestigious Advanced Management Program (AMP). These highly competitive professional seminars were created by Kotter to teach the important steps needed for successful leadership and change. When John Kotter speaks to an audience he speaks with one and only one goal: to motivate action that gets better results.

Kotter has authored 17 books, twelve of them bestsellers. His works have been printed in over 120 languages and total sales exceed two million copies. His latest book, A Sense of Urgency, focuses on what a true sense of urgency in an organization really is, why it is becoming an important asset and how it can be created and sustained. Just released in September of 2008, Urgency reached #7 on the New York Times bestseller list in early October.

John Kotter's international bestseller Leading Change--which outlines an actionable eight-step process for implementing successful transformations--has become the change bible for managers around the world. Our Iceberg Is Melting, the New York Times bestseller, puts the eight-step process within an allegory, making it accessible to the broad range of people needed to effect major organizational transformations. His books are in the top 1% of sales on Amazon.com.

John Kotter's articles in The Harvard Business Review over the past twenty years have sold more reprints than any of the hundreds of distinguished authors who have written for that publication during the same time period. Kotter has been on the Harvard Business School faculty since 1972. In 1980, at the age of 33, he was given tenure and a full professorship, making him one of the youngest people in the history of the University to be so honored.

The many honors won by Professor Kotter include an Exxon Award for Innovation in Graduate Business School Curriculum Design, a Johnson, Smith & Knisley Award for New Perspectives in Business Leadership, and a McKinsey Award for Best Harvard Business Review Article. Professor Kotter's Leading Change was named the #1 Management Book of the Year by Management General. In 1998, his Matsushita Leadership won first place in the Financial Times, Booz-Allen Global Business Book Competition for biography/autobiography. In 2003, a video version of a story from his book The Heart of Change won a Telly Award. In 2006, Kotter received the prestigious McFeely Award for "outstanding contributions to leadership and management development." In 2007, his video "Succeeding in a Changing World" was named best video training product of the year by Training Media Review and also won a Telly Award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rescue Plan for Good but Struggling Ideas, July 22, 2010

By 

Kevin L. Nenstiel "omnivore" (Kearney, Nebraska) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

If you ever lend a hand at PTA meetings, church, volunteer groups, or wherever good new ideas are most needed, you know how often important ideas die quietly. Kotter and Whitehead know this too, and they want to help you guide new ideas through resistance so those who need them can hear them. Though this book comes from a business press, more than just business people need what lies between these covers.

Kotter and Whitehead point out that most resistance comes not from the crowd who votes on your idea, but from a few heel-draggers. You need not to persuade this small, vocal minority, who are largely set in their ways, but to answer their objections in a way that wins the hearts and minds of your silent audience. Once you accomplish that, you have begun to win support for your idea, or at least to get it heard.

To do that, you must recognize the core attack, and how it can be deferred without sinking to your opponents' level. Kotter and Whitehead distill routine snipes and grouches into four basic angles, and twenty-four basic attacks. If you can grasp what method your opponents use, and why, you can defuse tedious baseless resistance and keep your idea in play. And if it stays in play, it has a chance of a fair hearing.

This book is not a complete rhetoric for ideological disputes. It will not teach you how to bolster weak ideas, repair flawed ideas, or defend bad ideas. It focuses on how heel-draggers quietly kill even the best ideas, and how you can keep that from happening to you. Even if you don't work in the high-stakes business world, study this book if you ever float ideas. Hey, it's better than burying one before it's truly dead!

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good ideas and tactics, but left me wanting more, September 1, 2010

By 

William W. Davis "famousdavis" - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

QUICK SUMMARY: This brief, read-it-in-a-day book identifies four general ways your good ideas get shot down, and it offers ways on how to effectively deflect challenges that arise when you present your ideas. The book is brief -- too brief -- and left me wishing it had more and better-developed content and examples of the authors' strategies put to use.

BACKGROUND: I'm a big John Kotter fan. I was introduced to him in my graduate studies in leadership, so I jumped at the chance to read and review his new book. But I was somewhat disappointed in this book because I kept thinking of ways I'd have liked this book improved. It's okay, not great, not as good as Kotter's Leading Change book.

WHAT I LIKED:

- Extremely easy to read and understand. I finished reading the entire book in 24 hours, and I'm a very slow, methodical reader.

- Identifies four general approaches that others use to sabotage your ideas, and offers helpful strategies for defending against those approaches.

- The authors used a story format for the first half of the book, reminiscent of what Patrick Lencioni did in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. I enjoyed the story in this book, but the storyline in Buy-In isn't nearly as engaging or as well-written as the storyline in Lencioni's book.

- The over-arching message is easy: always show respect to others (always!) and be prepared for how people may try to subvert your ideas. Simple (to remember).

WHAT COULD BE BETTER:

There were too few real-life examples of these defensive strategies put to use. When real-life examples were given, they were obscure examples familiar to these authors, but they did not employ people and companies that everyone has heard of. The examples given should have used very well-known people, events and organizations, so we could also use those same examples when trying to rebuff our own attackers.

Many, if not most, of the 24 attacks were explained with just too little information. Example: In Attack #2, a defense against the attack, "Money is the issue..." says to point out examples where great things were done without money, like, say, Steve Jobs working in a garage, or George Washington and an underfunded army. Well, okay, but maybe I don't know those stories well enough to recount them to someone. I wish these authors would have developed these stories they allude to with quite a few more pages, so I don't have to go elsewhere to fill-in the blanks after reading their book. I felt this way throughout my reading of this book.

I would have liked to have had a whole section at the end of the book, after they've equipped the reader, where I could read an attack scenario, identify it, then try to think through what I'd do if I faced such an attack. Tear-out cards with the 24 attacks and responses printed on them would have been a nice feature, too (although the authors say we don't really need to memorize these 24 attacks, I get the sense they really do want us to know them all).

CONCLUSION:

I like that John Kotter and Lorne Whitehead are trying to equip people to advocate and defend their own good ideas. The book has a worthwhile message, briefly delivered. If you haven't read Kotter's Leading Change book firstly, do that before you buy this book, as I think Leading Change is a much better book overall.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A method to defeat attacks and get buy-in on ideas, August 8, 2010

By 

Erik Gfesser (Lombard, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

In their preface to this book, authors Kotter and Whitehead succinctly present the challenge of implementing good ideas. The amount of thought and education put into the creation of good ideas today often outweighs the knowledge and instruction on implementing those very ideas. For example, the field of strategy has made huge advances in the last twenty years, but the field of strategy implementation has made far less progress. It would be great if good ideas that one champions on and off the job could simply stand on their own, but unfortunately this is not the case far too often. The authors remind the reader that this book is not about persuasion, general communication skills, or all the methods one might use to create buy-in.

The single method presented here to build support for a good idea is rarely used (or at least used well) and does not necessitate extraordinary rhetorical skills or charisma. The ideas that the authors offer are partially based on observations of Lorne Whitehead over the years as an entrepreneur, executive, administrator, and professor at the University of British Columbia, as well as the continuous research being conducted by John Kotter at Harvard Business School and the body of knowledge on the topics of leadership and change that has been published in several of his past works. According to the authors, the method they present is counterintuitive because it shows respect for all and uses simple, clear responses that can turn attacks to one's advantage because it focuses on capturing attention and eventually building buy-in.

The first third of the book presents this method in the form of a story - a story that focuses on a small band of individuals comprising a citizen's advisory committee in defense of an idea before a crowd of seventy-five individuals over a span of a few hours time. The authors point out, however, that there are obviously many different settings in which this story could have taken place, and they believe that the method used to defend the idea is the best regardless of situation. The second part of the book provides an analysis of this story, and later provides twenty-four responses to twenty-four attacks that will not silence valid criticism but will stop the killing of good ideas by verbal bullets.

Kotter and Whitehead are careful to point out that many of these attacks might be innocently raised by individuals who are not explicitly trying to kill the objects of the attacks, but this does not mean that they are any easier to wrestle. In outlining their method following the case study story, this reviewer was especially influenced by the assertion that overcoming attacks with tons of data, or logic and more logic, should not be attempted, and that the opposite should be the goal. This reviewer could not help being reminded by the Seinfeld episode where character George Costanza is influenced by character Jerry Seinfeld when he said "If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right". Of course, the authors are not proposing that this blind philosophy should be followed, but it is probably closer than one might think.

The authors categorize the four types of attacks as confusion, fear mongering, death by delay, or ridicule and character assassination, and they indicate that it helps the idea generator to realize that attacks boil down to this small number because individuals often get bogged down by weighty lists that try to be comprehensive but end up being unmanageable. The twenty-four attacks and responses are grouped according to the implicit attitude of the attacker, which are essentially (1) the problem the idea generator is attempting to solve does not exist, so the idea is not needed, (2) the problem that is being presented admittedly exists, but the solution being proposed by the idea generator is not very good, and (3) the problem does indeed exist, and the solution that the idea generator proposes might actually be a good one, but it will not work in the case at hand. Well recommended text. The book is laid out well, focused, and lacks the tangents that so many texts seem to possess.