How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted

Often when learning about Deming’s ideas on management, lean manufacturing, design of experiments, PDSA… people become excited. They discover new ideas that show great promise to alleviate the troubles they have in their workplace and lead them to better results. But how to actually get their organization to adopt the ideas often confounds them. In fact, I believe most potential improvements efforts may well fail even before they start because people can’t get past this problem.

I believe the way to encourage adoption of management improvement tools, methods and ideas is to solve people’s problems (or give them new opportunities). Instead of trying to convince people by talking about why they need to adopt some new ideas, I think it is much better to show them. To encourage the adoption of whatever it is (a philosophy like Deming or a new tool) try to find projects that would be good candidates for visible success. And then build on those successes.

For adopting whole new ways of working (like lean thinking) you go through this process many times, adding more and more new ideas to the accepted way of doing things. It is a bit easier if you are the CEO, but I think the strategy is very similar whoever you are. For smaller efforts a boss can often just mandate it. But for something like a large improvement in the way work is done (adopting a lean management system, for example), the challenge is the same. You have to convince people that the new methods and ideas are valuable and that they can use the ideas to help improve results.

Start small, it is very helpful if initial efforts are fairly small and straight forward. You often will have limited resources (and limited time people are willing to invest) at first. so start by picking projects that can be accomplished easily and once people have seen success more resources (including what is normally the most important one – people’s time) should be available. Though, honestly getting people to commit will likely be a challenge for a long time.

It is a rare organization that adopts a continual improvement, long term focus, system thinking mindset initially. The tendency is often strong to focus on fire fighting, fear (am I taking a risk by doing x, if I spend time improving y – what about the monthly target my boss is measuring me on…) and maintaining the status quo. It is baffling to many hoping for improvement, when you have huge successes, and yet the old way of doing things retains a great hold. The inertia of organizations is huge.

Another key is to, target what people actually care about. Solving some problem no-one cares about (even if it is good) doesn’t help much in gaining support.

Target who you are trying to convince. If you want to convince executives to do more, then target them. If you want to convince front line workers to adopt the new ideas, target things that they care about. For large changes, you normally target multiple groups. Take care that you progress sensibly. What sensibly is, depends on the situation. Often you can target more than one group at once with the same effort (efforts that multiple targets care about, and will notice, should get priority).

If you decide we really need to get the executives on board first, then target them first. Or if you decide you need to target 3 different groups take care as you proceed that you are doing so and are not ignoring one group. Adjust as you gain more knowledge (you may decide to change your strategy). Normally I think a broad based strategy is better. And even if you are targeted at first I think broadening the adoption quickly is best (for a systemic change – one of the nice things about adopting tools is it is very easy to do in a piecemeal way).

It is baffling to me how slowly changes are adopted, but I have come to accept, the normal process, is to hold to the old ways far longer than seems rational. It is a mistake to assume what seem like obvious connections between improved results and the changes would be obvious to everyone. Often people don’t connect the improved results to the improved practices, which can be a problem if then the improved methods are not valued by the organization.

Continued: How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted.

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15 Responses to How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted

  1. Brian Buck says:

    John, thank you for this post. As someone who has been practicing consulting for 3 years, this message really helps me. I read about how other organizations achieve results through behavior change or the great wrtings of Deming and wonder why lightbulbs don’t go off for people immediately. Great post.

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  3. John

    You made what I feel are several key points I always look to first.

    Look to solve people’s problems for places to start, start with what people care about, and communicate with all those that will experience the effects of the change.

    If Change Agents start on this foot they will slowly win respect, as people see that you care. Emotions are a far greater driver of change than fact ever will be, you have to start by dealing with everyones’ emotional needs, the facts will follow their emotions. As people get use too the fact that you are there for them, and to help make things better, you will create the momentum that can lead to a Continuous Improvement environment, and attitutde, but you have to be patient.

  4. Anonymous says:

    I agree that solving peoples’ problems goes a long way. What advice do you have if the people who have problems that need solving won’t participate at all in solving them? For example, a hospital whose doctors are independent (not employees of the hospital) but do not want to take the time to work with the hospital to solve the problems?

  5. Ivette Holley says:

    Sometimes we fail by focusing on the problem, getting overwhelmed thinking of it and struggle to resolve the issue. I have learned to identify the problem and established what I want as the final outcome; then write down steps required to get to my goal and work on one step at a time to completion. I do agree we should start with small efforts, specially when we are in a rush, it might seems to be slow but will get you better oriented and then you will speed up without realizing it.

    Thanks for the article.

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  12. Anonymous says:

    Hi there!

    I remember when was the first time they integrate CRM system in my company. It was really simple to use but I was so surprised how slow the changes are accepted in the team.In the beggining there were a bunch of problems and misunderstandings 🙂 No easy wok with sure!

    Enjoy the rest of the day 🙂

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