How to Get Buy-in for Organizational Change

Last Updated November 22, 2021

One of the biggest challenges in organizational change management is motivating the people who power the business to buy into the change strategy. Without that motivation, change may never take hold.

A leading thinker on change, John Kotter of the Harvard Business School, introduced an eight-step change management process in his 1995 book, Leading Change. Understanding how critical buy-in at every level of an organization is for change strategy success, Kotter emphasized the importance of creating a vision for change and communicating it effectively in order for individuals to embrace the new strategy and motivate them to align in achieving it.

Understanding What Makes a Clear Vision

Before you develop a shared vision, you need to understand what a vision is. A vision is a view of the future that lays out what the organization aspires to be. That may be very different from the status quo, or it may be just slightly different from the existing way things are done.

The important thing to remember is that the vision is clear. It should illustrate what the organization is striving to be, and it should be easy to communicate. In order for the strategy to be widely adopted by the organization, there must be a vision that people understand and accept. The most effective visions also are created in a way that make them easy to communicate and share.

Consider what makes an effective vision.

• It must be imaginable. People have to be able to imagine it and see it in their minds to understand it.
• It must have broad appeal. People need to see the impact and benefit to them. Immediate appeal needs to be evident, as well as appeal to the long-term stakeholder interest.
• It must also be desirable. The vision must be developed, presented and explained to emphasize why it is desirable. To some extent, the new vision may not be widely desirable simply because it is change and some people try to avoid it.

The resistance makes it even more essential to show why the new vision is necessary and why it will appeal to your stakeholders’ long-term interests.

Making a Vision that Works

The vision sets the tone of your larger change strategy. For it to be effective, it also must be feasible. People want to believe that the vision can be achieved, so it must be realistic, and, while not necessarily easy to bring about, it must be attainable.

Developing aligned goals and objectives for the respective individuals, teams, divisions and/or departments that meets their needs can speak to the attainability and feasibility of the vision, while helping all your people to “imagine” it and understand their part in it.

This means there must be flexibility and clarity, allowing for individual initiatives and alternative responses within their scope. This is particularly true for dynamic industries or environments where change is going to be needed in an incremental or revolutionary sense over time.

Sharing the Vision Widely

It’s very important that the vision is shared widely and effectively as soon as it has been approved. An effective vision should be focused and clear. If it’s not easy for you to communicate, it’s not going to be easy for your employees to understand and, more importantly, share and champion throughout the organization.

In distilling it down to a vision statement, your organization’s all-encompassing idea can be easily shared and remembered. It needs to be prominent everywhere, such as on the website, on placards, in meetings and referenced in organizational directives and team meetings.

Leading Change with Vision

We as human beings do not like the uncertainty change brings. To resolve it, we’ll create our own vision of the future. That makes it imperative that any change and new vision for the future that this change brings are unveiled simultaneously. Everyone should see the destination of the vision clearly and the strategic model as the path that will take them there.

With transformational and visionary leadership, you can help to resolve much of the uncertainty the change process creates, enabling the buy-in that’s necessary for positive change and continual innovation as an organization.

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