Read about how to get leadership buy-in to help your organisation succeed.

Leaders hold the power when it comes to making decisions about a lot of different important aspects of a business. Encouraging them to buy-in to your process improvement plans and engagement strategy could literally result in continual improvement for your efforts.

Studies also show that companies with leadership buy-in are more likely to have better engagement levels. So if they aren’t taking engagement and process improvement important at all, it’s even more important to get them on board.

Of course, you have to help leaders to get to your way of thinking, and that means competing against other initiatives within your organisation. There are only so many resources to go around, so you have to be pretty persuasive to get the leadership team to buy-in.

Strategies For Achieving Buy-in

Refer To Process Improvement Reasons Already Embedded

Remind your leaders why improvement has already been sought, including a focus on key issues they want to solve. Reiterate those core reasons, and how your process improvement is able to address them.

Be One Step Ahead

As well as connecting your ideas to the issues they can resolve, you have to also go one step ahead. Whatever the current strategies are, you have to build on them, not just replicate them. Use examples that directly relate to current issues, strategies and better ideas that you have that are more likely to be successful.

What Do Your Leaders Truly Care About?

Understanding what your leaders truly care about helps give you an edge. Do they prioritise communication processes? Legislation? Safety? Whatever their area of interest is, keep that as a focus in your presentation to some degree.

Don’t Sugar-Coat Anything

Getting buy-in isn’t about promising the earth, it is about being honest and explaining the true hurdles ahead. Most importantly, it is about acknowledging those hurdles and showing that you understand how to get over them, and succeed.

Back It Up

It is important that you don’t just represent your ideas with meaningful jargon, and a smile. YOu need to gather evidence and present the numbers. If you’re claiming a boost in productivity for example; back up those claims with the figures. Be specific and precise, to be extra-convincing, and showcase that you really know what you’re talking about.

Be Ready To Get Basic

Some leaders are already invested in engagement and process improvement, which means you are already halfway there when it comes to getting them interested in your ideas.

To be realistic though, some leaders are disengaged, completely. If that is what you face it is important to be really basic with your reasons, essentially starting from scratch. You may have to convince them to care at all, before you show them how to do it.

Gathering support from management who do see the validity of these kinds of improvements is essential when you’re having to convince leaders about topics they do not see the importance of.

“Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” - Golda Meir

The tips above are designed to help inspire you to make change, and stop your leaders missing opportunities.

With the right approach, you can achieve buy-in and push positive momentum in your organisation.