How to Up-Sell Change
As Freud cautioned, it's insanity to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. You know things have to change. Business as usual is a guarantee to fail. Your boss supports you, but is fairly lukewarm about resources and time commitments. Your staff agrees but then claim they are too busy. Activity traps, inertia, disinterest, ambivalence, fear? people fabricate (consciously or unconsciously) lots of reasons to avoid making change. This is a frequent organizational dilemma: a needed change stalls before you even get started. Unless you're willing to wait for a crisis (that usually means someone gets fired), start thinking about "up-selling" change. "Up-selling" change means to persuade your employees that making a personal commitment to the change will reap them personal benefits. Similar to up-selling your customers by informing and sharing the value-add to your products or services, you need to demonstrate the value-add of your change initiative. Just like any business problem, you start by making the business case for change. Except in this situation, your employees become your target market. So, you better have a good answer to the "WIIFM" test - What's In It For Me? Even if you don't know the answer now, don't let that stop you. The best place to start looking for answers to that question is your employees. Go to them and get them involved in your thinking. The act of asking and listening not only engages them, but informs them as well. When people feel partially informed, not part of the "in the know" group, uncertain of what is really happening, and have no clear answer to "what's in it for me?" you are guaranteed to face stiff resistance to change. The act of engaging employees early on in the change process will accelerate acceptance and learning at a pace most managers would be thrilled to achieve. Weave people into your change plans - their buy-in, their reactions, their learning curve, their commitment (or lack of) to adopting the change. Don't bother to "up-sell" change without first administering the "WIIFM" test. The test is really rather simple. First, do a quick check of your team's vital signs. Walk around and randomly ask people questions like "So, what do you think of the changes we've been talking about?" "How do you think it will impact your job?" "Think you'll be able to adapt quickly to the new system?" You'll be surprised (and maybe pleased) with the feedback you get. If your employees can articulate a positive connection to their daily job performance, then you've passed the test. On the other hand, if you get answers that vary widely across the board, or responses like "what change are you talking about?" "I hope it's not like last time" or "we're so burnt out now, I don't think we can handle another change," you have some serious remedial change management work to do. If you pass the "WIIFM" test, then your communications have "connected-the-dots" for your team in ways they can understand and absorb into their daily job functions. If you hear resistance to the change, you need to go back and literally reconnect-the-dots for your employees so that they can clearly understand how the change directly or indirectly will impact their job. You can never over-communicate during a change initiative. Continuous, repeated, and rapid information exchange and knowledge sharing are key to successful adoption of change. If you're sick of talking about it, you've probably converted your true believers but have only reached 25% of your people. Talk it up some more and keep "up-selling" the change. The art and science of dealing with the people side of the change equation is Change Management. As a practice, it draws from a multitude of social science disciplines to effectively bring people, technology, and ideas together at the same time. (c) 2004 TurningPointe Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved.
Marketing educator, Kelly O'Brien, is creator of the "Create a
TurningPointe!" Marketing Bootcamp. To learn more about this step-by-step
program, and to sign up for FREE how-to articles and 20-page marketing
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Every January, trade publications put out a list of predictions for the coming year. They discuss products, services and trends that they think will change the way business is done, labeling these "disruptive technologies."
The idea of disruptive technologies comes from Clayton Christensen's 1997 book, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. A disruptive technology is a method, procedure, skill, device, or material that redefines the competitive standards. Note that the technology doesn't have to be a physical item and that it often forces us to re-examine the way we work.
InfoWorld's list of disruptive technologies for 2003 included open source, self-service CRM, digital identity, and my personal favorite, Weblogs. How can a simple, Web-based journal be disruptive?
For starters, it's worth describing what a Weblog is. Basically, a Weblog or "blog" is a personally created, online, time-stamped web page that includes the thoughts, ideas, and comments of the "blogger." The musings are usually brief, but they are published frequently and consistently. People can subscribe to receive the blog updates via e-mail. Often, the blogger is an expert on the subject he/she is discussing.
At first glance, it doesn't appear that blogs would be at all disruptive. So why all the hype? If we look closely at the structure and intent of blogs as a communications tool, we can see some powerful ideas at work.
Blogs are a direct, one-to-many vehicle for communicating ideas. They expand an individual's ability to communicate. They are fresh and timely. The blogger, in order to maintain interest, must communicate often. Blogs enable a single person to share ideas, insights, and useful knowledge with an audience. Thanks to the Web, the audience can be a global one.
Whenever a new tool or process-such as e-mail- expands communications, the effects are far-reaching and dramatic. Even though blogs have been around for 3-4 years, they could be the next big thing.
Blogs Are The "Real Voice"
Two important characteristics of blogs are that they are written by a person who is knowledgeable and passionate about the topic, and that they are written in a "real voice." This is a cosmic shift from the marketing and public relations materials that are the staple of business communications.
Often, when information goes through a formal marketing or PR process, the end result is an attractive, expensive, stale, diluted document written in corporate speak. This result is generally due to the processes that evolved to accommodate the costs and standards of print technology, rather than to the incompetence or malevolence of corporate communicators. The edge, the authenticity, and the voice of the professional speaking to his fellow professionals is lost.
Blogs offer the human voice that can be loud, controversial, and even wacky. But the realness of the blog inspires trust and piques people's curiosity. A blog can create a community and a dynamic discussion.
If you are a product manager working in the chemical products industry, chances are that you would rather hear about the real experiences of other product managers in your industry than read a glossy marketing piece put out by the marcom department. Blogs fit this communications requirement perfectly.
Blogs Are Simple
Weblogs are easy for people to publish, read and respond to. They can foster a community of like-minded individuals and be the catalyst for spirited discussions. Blogs are an inherently proactive form of communications. Weblog participants can subscribe to receive scheduled postings to the blog. Weblogs are inexpensive to produce and they can include a variety of multimedia content (audio, video, files, etc.) and hypertext links that add value to the discussion.
Blogs Empower The Individual
There are a host of tools on the Internet that make blogging a snap! Blogs empower a single person to capitalize on the reach and ubiquity of the Web. And they don't require the investment or recurring costs of print technologies.
Blogs Empower The Enterprise
Blogs empower the knowledgeable people within a company to share their insights, know-how, and expertise. The value to a corporation is that this knowledge can be organized, distributed, and leveraged to increase the value of different product and service offerings to the customer.
If a corporation is going to use a blog, however, it should understand that controlling the content of the discussion is difficult. If you want an authentic exchange, you have to be willing to accept the stone-throwing and critical comments that often occur in a blog. This requires extending trust and giving up some of the control a company would normally have when it publishes a press release or hosts its own online forum, for example. The upside is that people will listen to a real voice.
Adapting Blog Concepts To Your Newsletters
You can adapt blog technologies to your corporate electronic newsletters by taking advantage of the underlying concepts. You can, for example:
* Publish a small amount of well-organized information frequently and regularly
* Include content from individuals who are knowledgeable and passionate about their work
* Make it easy for your employees to communicate directly in their own, human voice
* Respect the reader by making sure your e-newsletter provides value and that he/she wants to receive it.
E-newsletters geared towards educating a marketplace, rather than those focused on advertising or marketing, turn out to be particularly effective. E-newsletters offer an affordable, direct way for the experts in a company to communicate with an audience. This means that a product manager or an engineer can enhance the flow of information and make it more accessible to those who want it.
Think of your channel and the information needs of your partners. Your company has a wealth of information that would help them sell your products more effectively. There is much insight within your partner community that could be leveraged throughout the channel. And your technical experts and engineers have critical knowledge and understanding that everyone could utilize.
What's often missing is an easy way for the "know-how" keepers to capture their knowledge, organize it, and deliver it. The best e-newsletters are written in a real voice, not in corporate speak.
Two years ago, the book The Cluetrain Manifesto shook up the business community (see http://www.cluetrain.com/book.html). The revelation? That business is about humans. As Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Petzinger Jr. writes in the foreword: "I was dumbstruck. There in a few pages, I read a startlingly concise summary of everything I'd seen in twenty-one years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist for my newspaper. The idea that business, at bottom, is fundamentally human. That engineering remains second-rate without aesthetics. That natural, human conversation is the true language of commerce. That corporations work best when the people on the inside have the fullest contact possible with people on the outside."
It turns out that the human "voice" is an underserved or ignored need. In a world of 6+ billion inhabitants, the individual craves to speak and to be heard.
References
Blogs As Disruptive Tech: How Weblogs Are Flying Under The Radar Of The Content Management Giants, By John Hiler, CEO, Webcrimson, http://www.webcrimson.com/ourstories/blogsdisruptivetech.Htm
Making Room For Disruptive And Emergent Technologies, By Hugh Blackmer, Science Librarian, Washington & Lee University, http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/sabb/nitle2.html*
Blogs As Disruptive Innovation: What A Brave New World Blogging Is Building!, by Dr. James V. McGee, Professor, The Kellogg School Of Management,
http://www.mcgeesmusings.net/2002/05/15.html
Weblogs At Harvard Law, Bookmark List For ABCD Weblogs Meeting, By Dave Winer,
http://Blogs.Law.Harvard.Edu/Stories/Storyreader$199
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