There is one hurdle that will sink a Salesforce change management project every time: lack of buy-in from your team. Without change champions among the team or a dedicated push to help the team understand the need for the change and embrace it, you’re doomed before you even begin. There are many ways to avoid this devastating scenario, however.
Steps to Creating Buy-In
There are five steps you should follow to ensure that your team is supportive of your change initiative.
Give employees the opportunity to provide feedback and ask all questions that they need.
Employees do not like to feel like they have been left out of decisions that directly affect how they do their job. They have worked hard to find out the best, most efficient ways to work and, if that’s changing, they want to understand why and how it will affect them. Because they are so intimately involved with the processes that are being changed, they may also have some suggestions for improvements that you may not have thought of and will help propel the change initiative forward.
Carve out time to have 1-1 conversations and make their voices feel heard.
Some employees may have more questions and concerns than can be addressed in an all-hands or team meeting. Giving them the opportunity to speak with you one-on-one will help them feel like you care about their feedback. Knowing that there is an opportunity to talk more in-depth about may even be enough for some employees who have concerns.
Be willing to compromise where needed.
At the end of the day, you may not know everything about how your teams are working and what will help them most. When you hear feedback that would change parts of your change initiative, don’t write them off immediately as being counter to your ultimate objective. Your employees have the insight you don’t have and may have great ideas that you didn’t think of. Compromising your plan to address that feedback and include those ideas is concrete proof that you are listening to your team and want to help them succeed.
Don’t launch until you know you and your team are ready.
Timelines are great guidelines, and they should remain as guidelines. Unless there is an outside force that is compelling for you to stick to a hard and fast deadline, you should remain as flexible as you can on the launch date for the change initiative. Finish having all the conversations you need to have. Finish all the beta testing that needs to be done. Finish incorporating the feedback you receive into the plan. The launch date can wait until everyone on the team is ready to go.
Constantly test and ask for feedback after launch.
Once the launch date has passed, your job is not done. Change initiatives have a way of causing unforeseen issues and breaking things that you didn’t think would break. Keep testing and keep soliciting feedback so you know where tweaks need to be made and fixes need to be deployed. By working together with your team, you can ensure that the change is embraced and people are willing to roll with the punches for a little while knowing that they will be fixed because you are looking out for them.
Whenever you find yourself having to make a significant change in your organization, it’s time to start planning. Not just planning for the change itself, but also planning how to get your team on board. This will require time, the ability to listen, and some flexibility about the details but, in the end, it will all be worth it when you have a smooth roll-out that’s embraced by your team.
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