Thinking in Systems: the difference between sequential thinking and systems thinking

As an original thinker, I think in systems or, as some systems thinkers call it, ‘thinking in circles’. The main difference between systems thinkers and serial thinkers is the scope of what we notice.

Standard thinking is sequential. One idea follows the next and appears logical as per the person’s knowledge of the situation and similar experiences. It 1. restricts possible choices to the person’s assumptions, history and beliefs; 2. notices what’s deemed relevant; 3. may overlook factors that might enhance understanding or outcomes. Sequential thinkers have a relatively straight path to their outcomes.

Many leaders are sequential (transactional) thinkers. When resolving a problem they speak to other leaders; consider actions to resolve it; invite other leaders to create and deploy a solution. They often make decisions based on intuition and available information.

Systems thinking is circular. Systems thinkers hear, think, notice a broad range of factors on many levels simultaneously, making it possible to compile an expansive data set from a broad array of sources. With more good data to weigh, there’s a high probably of more creativity, more choice, less risk, less resistance, more collaboration, more efficiency and a greater possibility of attaining excellence.

A systems thinking (relational) leader seeks out a broad scope of ideas and people to ensure inclusion and maximum creativity. To assure there’s collaboration, agreement, and acceptance, and to gather the full fact pattern, they assemble (representatives of) all job descriptions touching the problem and the solution; trial several workarounds; lead the group to discern if the risk of change is manageable; promote group buy-in to integrate the new solution. I’ve developed a 13 Step model that facilitates systemic change.

WHAT SYSTEMS THINKERS DO

Top people in their fields are generally systems thinkers. Steve Jobs, Nikolai Tesla, Cezanne. In modern sports, Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, and LeBron James become one with the ball, their implement (racket, club), the court/course, their hands, their legs, their grip, etc. and continually (re)adjust their position according to their opponents. It’s all one system. When Federer, Woods, James are not ‘one’ with all, they miss the shot. My son, a medaled Olympian at 3 Olympics (Nagano, Salt Lake, and Vancouver), excels when he’s ‘one’ with his system: his skis, the snow, the poles, his knees and boots, his arms, the gates, the run, the turns. When he’s not ‘one’ with all, he falls.

Here’s a breakdown of the systems artists think in while making a painting. They simultaneously:

• see the paint, the canvas, the brush, the stroke, the color, the mental vision of what they’re painting, the emerging patterns and a shifting minds-eye visual as the picture emerges.
• feel the emergence of the vision from their mental picture, the brush, the hardness of softness of how the brush meets the canvas, their hand/arm as they apply color to the canvas.
• hear the whisk of the brush on the canvas, the creak of the floor or chair as they move toward and away from the canvas.

I believe that adding systems thinking to transactional activities will make them more efficient and their outcomes more successful, collaborative, and creative. For those of you who’d like to add more systems to your thinking, here are some ideas to consider.

HOW DO BRAINS THINK?

Everyone naturally thinks in both systems and sequences at different times and for different reasons. Here’s a simplistic explanation of how we end up doing and thinking as we do.

Sample

Everything we see, hear, feel is a translation from our existing neural circuitry and, by nature, subjective. We’re all restricted by how our brain stores our history. We understand, act on, notice, and even hear what we already know; we do what we’ve always done. While true, it’s not the whole story. We actually know – and sense, and understand, and intuit – a lot more than we use due to the way our brain stores stuff.

Fun fact: our brains collect millions of bits of information PER SECOND and sends them whizzing around our 100 trillion synapses as we make decisions, write reports, and turn on the dishwasher before going to bed!

Our conscious thoughts are a fraction of the full data set we’ve got stored in our unconscious. Sequential thinkers will likely access more of the automatic superhighways – those neural circuits triggering ideas and behaviors that have become habituated – that carry our historic (biased, subjective) expressions. Systems thinkers are less direct and make decisions from a broader fact pattern; their brains access more of the data stored in various circuits around the brain and not automatically accessible, providing more elements and less bias in each decision.

Here’s the problem when we need to make a choice: due to our brain’s laziness, our standard thinking automatically triggers our assumptions and biases. Obviously we’d prefer the broadest range of data for decisions making. How, then, do we access our unconscious to retrieve more of what we’ve got stored?

Note: I’ve got a new book coming out soon that provides ways to accomplish this. (HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change, and decision making)

Here’s how I access data beyond my brain’s automatic choices. Maybe you do some of this naturally?

HOW I THINK

During conversations or when helping someone resolve a problem, several layers of data show up simultaneously as I listen:

• I am detached (in Observer/witness/coach) from any outcome, making it possible to notice more and gather a broader scope of data with a minimally-biased brain.
• I detect the underlying intent. A speaker initially offers a simplified version of a goal or problem, often unaware of the complete fact pattern. The ultimate goal is often unspoken, unknown, and unconscious until it’s fully uncovered. Too often sequential thinkers assume the initial disclosure is accurate; it’s where I begin accessing patterns.
• I hear the underlying message which I call a metamessage. Again, this is largely unspoken – a belief, or bias that isn’t specifically mentioned but rules the entire interaction.
• I can detect disparities, incongruences, between the metamessage and the stated (but often incomplete and possibly incongruent) intent. Too often, sequential thinkers only notice incongruences after they’ve become a problem.
• I notice patterns, what occurs repeatedly. So if I see someone regularly taking action on a subset of data before uncovering the full data set (i.e. FIRE, excluding the ‘Ready, Aim…’), I assume that’s a typical behavior.
• I can hear the underlying systems and assumptions that influence the goal. How did X become the ‘logical’ conclusion? Why is Y the response to Z?
• The person’s tone, tempo, pitch, and affect point me to congruence or incongruence in their goal.
• I notice word choices. How the chosen words correlate with the stated goals and problems lead me to underlying assumptions and where something’s missing.
• I only attend to what’s relevant to understand the system. Neither details nor story line are relevant at the beginning.
• I notice if a problem can be fixed from previous successful fixes. Note: among a brain’s 100 trillion synapses there are often existing neural circuits that were used successfully before. I always ask: ‘Have you successfully resolved this before? If so, what’s stopping you from using the same methods now?’ Otherwise I help them generate new neural circuits for a new solution.

Thinking in circles, I hear/notice all this simultaneously. When one of the factors doesn’t match the goal or intent, it lights up in my head telling me there’s an unresolved issue, or a systems problem.

Unfortunately, sequential thinkers often resolve problems in ‘logical’ steps and are surprised when they later discover the goal, as stated, is wrong, or they’ve gathered an incomplete set of problem factors, or not included all necessary stakeholders, or missed vital factors that conclude with failure or resistance.

I believe that anyone can add systems thinking to their standard thinking.

USE YOUR SYSTEMS THINKING

Thinking in systems provides a broader scope with which to think and plan. Beneficial for inspiration, resourcefulness, accuracy, unbiased responses, and creativity, for writers, artists, musicians, inventors and original thinkers to name a few. I also believe that corporate management, healthcare providers, coaches and trainers would benefit from an unbiased, broad, inclusive understanding of the entire scope of a situation. Of course listening without bias and posing non-biased questions are skill sets everyone needs.

For those times you need a bit of inspiration or seek a more complete outcome, it’s possible to add some systems thinking practices. Here’s an exercise to express your systems-thinking brain.

EXERCISE

Remember a time you considered making/creating something. Painting, knitting, whittling, woodworking. Let’s see if you can capture what you did in creation mode to see if any of your actions are worth adding to your current way of thinking. And grab a sheet of paper to write down your answers to the questions below.

To begin your project, you might have had pictures in your mind’s eye as you played with ideas. Maybe you made some sketches. Or just trialed different things knowing you’d fail a few times. You probably sat quietly to think and let your mind explore possibilities from all sides. Is this the right angle? What will adding this color do?

Notice how you’re thinking, how the ideas are emerging. Are they similar to things you’ve done before? Wholly new? Do they have sound? Colors? Can you feel any of them? How many different versions are showing up? How do you know which ideas are ‘good’ or relevant, which won’t work? How many different things did you come up with? How many of these did you try? How did you choose which ones were ‘good’ and which were ‘bad’? How did you notice what you needed to alter – did you feel it? See it? When did you decide you needed some additional research? How did you know you were finished? Did you complete? Why? Why not?

Now, what’s different about the way you thought of those things vs the way you go about resolving a problem? Is there anything you can add to your daily choices that would expand what you notice? What you consider? What you do?

I believe that all of us could benefit from systems thinking for activities that demand we show up with minimal bias. Listening to strangers, or people not in our general life path (i.e. unhoused people; elderly people; disabled people) without bias or judgment. Recognizing a problem that needs resolution. Making life decisions that affect others.

Try it. You’ll expand your world.

____________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen July 31st, 2023

Posted In: News

‘No Decision’ isn’t Indecision: people won’t buy until they’re buyers

I’ve been reading articles claiming a major impediment to closing sales is buyer’s ‘indecision’. But is non-buying called ‘indecision’ because people aren’t responding according to a seller’s expectations? Why is an entire field built upon persuading Others to act as per the needs of a stranger who has no understanding of the Other’s internal (and highly idiosyncratic) benchmarks?

Why do sellers think by ‘painting a compelling reason’ for prospects who have ‘cold feet’, or by providing a ‘burning platform’ to entice buying, they must get people to um, understand that ‘the pain of same is worse than the pain of change’? Why are the assumptions, the exhortations, based on what the seller wants? And, comically, on folks that aren’t self-identified buyers yet?

Why have sellers spent decades blaming people for not buying when they’ve ignored the processes that folks go through to bring in a new solution (so no cold feet, no laziness, no change avoidance)? After all, until they’re buyers the sales model is irrelevant for them – which explains (seller’s blame aside) the non-buying! They are not buyers yet!

SELLERS IGNORE RISKS TO STATUS QUO

I have more questions: Why is a non-purchase something to be managed by giving prospects jolts to take them beyond their alleged ‘laziness’ or ‘decision avoidance?’ What if people aren’t ‘lazy’ or ‘avoiding decisions’ but merely in a change/decision process the seller isn’t privy to?

What if the alleged ‘signs of indecision’ are a biased misreading of normal buy-in and change management practices that are not purchase-centered? What if people are NOT ‘avoiding change’ and don’t ‘prefer complacency’ or settle for ‘good enough?’

Why do sellers believe their jobs are to ‘break the gravitational pull’ and ‘beat the status quo’ rather than do something different to help them traverse their own unique decision process so they become buyers, so they understand the ‘cost’ involved with change, so everyone has bought in? Don’t sellers realize no one starts off wanting to buy anything, merely resolve a problem at the least ‘cost/risk’ to their system?

Do sellers even know what the status quo is – a unique mix of the unique people, policies, history, relationships, goals, job descriptions, etc. that make a culture operate successfully? And how, may I ask, with only ‘sales’ as their tool, would a seller know the risks to people and policies that must be managed for congruent change to happen within any unique status quo?

Why do sellers believe that prospects ‘wobble’, or ‘waiver’, or ‘back peddle’ when pushed for a close, when people (not even buyers yet!) are merely not finished getting buy-in, managing internal risks, trialing workarounds – or merely trying to get away from a pushy seller?

The term ‘decision avoidance’ has been around for decades. Sellers are warned they must ‘break the gravitational pull’ and ‘beat the status quo’. The ‘price’ issue has been an ongoing excuse. I even read this in an article recently (The Indecisive Buyer) on salesgravy.com:

“Why should anyone make a decision quickly if they don’t have to? More often than not, the buyers believe that by waiting, they will get a better deal. The salesperson will get scared and will think the only way to secure the sale is to offer a discount.”

Wait, what?

I think we should define sales as ‘A two-staged process involving facilitating the buying decision/change path, then placing solutions to those who become buyers’.

SALES ASSUMPTIONS ARE DISRESPECTFUL

There is profound disrespect inherent in all the above assumptions: Why is an entire industry so disrespectful, so eager to blame when the stubborn insistence on ONLY trying to sell (with no real knowledge as to what’s going on in the Other’s process) closes 5%, instead of recognizing that maybe something is wrong with the seller’s ‘need-focused’ assumption that there’s a ‘buyer’?

Indeed, decisions involving purchasing a solution only account for one third – the last third – of a buying decision. My clients, connecting first with Buying Facilitation® and a change facilitation focus that addresses the first two thirds of the change process, consistently close 40% against a sales-based control group that closes 5% with a ‘needs’ focus.

The very act of seeking those who seem (using biased thinking) to have a ‘need’ ignores 40% of those in process, and who will become buyers once they’re done. And as you’ll learn, it’s much, much more efficient to find prospects in the process of change than wrongly presume someone has a need and try try try to close.

And while I’m at it, why is it ok that the sales model carries an in-built, accepted, 95% failure rate? You wouldn’t even go to a hairdresser with a 95% failure rate! And an entire industry never considers that the outsized failure rate is a sign that just maybe the sales process is missing a few bits? Bits that could be discovered if they’d stop blaming people for not buying and instead look inward to recognize how they could be helping in a truly relevant way?

When I was a seller in corporate sales we said buyers were stupid. A favorite expression in the 80s and 90s was ‘buyers are liars’ (In 1992 David Sandler told me he was sorry he’d ever said that.). Sellers were told to be kind and charming, to make a personal connection, send out mass emails and play the percentages, get ‘through’ the gatekeeper. Anything to ‘get in front’ of that prospect! Anything! Assuming, of course, that once the prospect met the seller! Or heard about the product! they’d buy! Nope.

None, none of these silly excuses address what’s going on in the Buy Side!

WHEN DO PEOPLE BECOME BUYERS?

Have you ever considered that people aren’t buyers until certain benchmarks in their environment have been addressed? Sales professionals and marketers can facilitate these benchmarks. Just not with sales thinking.

The time it takes to figure out how to fix a problem in a way that causes the least risk to the system (AND there is buy-in, AND the ‘cost’ of a solution is lower than the ‘cost’ of maintaining the problem) is the length of the sales cycle. This is not indecision, a term used when

• the seller has determined a ‘need’,
• the seller believes a sale is imminent and has put the ‘prospect’ in their pipeline,
• a seller isn’t getting what s/he expects to occur,
• there’s no response to a pitch or marketing campaign,
• it’s taking ‘too long’ to close,
• the process involved in the prospect’s decision making is ignored.

Silence doesn’t mean back peddling, or complacency, or that a decision isn’t in progress. Someone recently asked me what to call people who haven’t yet become buyers. “People.” And People are who you’re blaming for not being buyers, people just trying to find excellence without disruption, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. People who haven’t considered the option of buying anything. Yet.

People aren’t indecisive: they are going through a necessary, systemic process. It just doesn’t follow or heed the sales model. And until this change management process is complete, people will ignore sales outreach.

And yes, I recognize that the industry has used my concepts I developed 40 years ago of workarounds, buy-in, stakeholders, etc., and added them into the Sell Side, mentioning these points to would-be prospects and offering research on what Others have done to ‘beat the status quo.’

But as long as sellers continue to work in service of closing a sale instead of using a different thought process (and new skills, such as Facilitative Questions, listening for systems, etc.), with a goal to first facilitate systemic change, you’re still manipulating to get your own needs met. And people will resist you.

TWO-SIDED DATA SET

The sales model has no capability of understanding the idiosyncratic and complex issues people deal with to resolve a problem.

Potential buyers themselves have a confusing time trying to understand their full problem, something they cannot do until all the stakeholders have weighed in and the ‘cost’ of the risk involved is known. And sales folks NEVER speak with the entire set of stakeholders! (BTW using Buying Facilitation® you would!)

The truth is, using the just sales model, there is no way a seller can understand any of the challenges to change that prospective buyers face. It certainly does NOT help people assess the real risk to their system, even as they ‘paint a compelling picture of the pain of same’ with very very little real data. Not to mention actually believe they’re ‘smarter and more savvy than customers.’ (I actually heard a noted sales guru say this  recently.)

Obviously, telling prospects what other companies have done to manage risk, is just silly, and another form of push sales. With no knowledge of the intricacies of a specific culture, or how the identified problem got created or maintained, there is no credible data from others that will be applicable.

And people are NOT in pain! That’s a sales word to mitigate assumptions.

EXAMPLES OF RISK IN THE BUYING DECISION PROCESS

People don’t want to buy anything, merely resolve a problem at the least ‘cost’ (risk) to their system: the ‘cost’ of a possible solution must be equal to or less than the ‘cost’ of the problem.

The status quo is maintained ONLY when the ‘cost’ of change is recognized as being higher than the ‘cost’ of the problem. If you need to fire 8 people to buy a new piece of software, which carries the most risk?

I did a pilot Buying Facilitation® (a change facilitation model I invented when I realized, as a seller-turned-entrepreneur, that the problem was in the buying process) training for Proctor and Gamble years ago. It was highly, highly successful – a massive increase over the control group. But they couldn’t train the entire sales force because it would cost $3,000,000,000 to change (new trucks and faster robots to handle the higher volume of sales, global rollouts etc.) and take two years to recoup the cost.

I did a BF pilot for Boston Scientific. Again, the pilot was massively more successful than the control group, but they thought the model was too controversial and disruptive: they’d need to change their marketing, follow-up, and customer service practices to employ it.

The pilot at Safelight Auto Glass was also highly successful. The reps made more money, closed more sales, faster. But the reps – hired to go out daily and deliver donuts (True story) as part of their ‘relationship management’ – all submitted their resignations en mass, a month after the course because they WANTED to be out in the field delivering donuts!

From the sales side, none of those stories make sense. But from the Buy Side, the cost of change was too high. They ‘needed’ my solution; they loved me and Buying Facilitation®; the companies understood that with Buying Facilitation® they made more money – a lot more money. The risk, the cost, the disruption, was too high. Nothing to do with need.

EXCUSES WHY BUYERS DON’T CLOSE

During the 43 years I’ve been teaching my Buying Facilitation® model I’ve heard bazillions of excuses that blame buyers, all from the Sell Side. But it doesn’t need to be this way.

See, buyers must do this anyway, with you or without you. By using only the sales model, you can only sell to those who show up as buyers. By adding change facilitation, you can enter at the beginning, facilitate them (with a change/leadership lens NOT a solution-placement lens) through to being ready to buy, THEN sell to people who are real buyers.

And with a change facilitator’s hat on, you can easily discover would-be buyers ON THE FIRST CALL that you can’t do with a sales hat on.

With my 7 books and hundreds of articles on facilitating buying, I’ve been describing how buyers buy, including recent articles on the Buy Side vs the Sell Side, and buyING vs BuyERS.

THE 13 STAGES OF THE BUYING DECISION PROCESS

There are two elements to the buying process:

1. The change management end – where potential buyers reside and standard sales outreach doesn’t reach (they’re not self-identified as buyers yet);
2. The purchasing end.

Sales does a great job with #2. By ignoring #1, you’re left pushing to ‘overcome indecision.’ But there’s no indecision: they’re just not ready yet.

Let me explain what’s going on. Decisions, including a buying decision, are just not so simple as weighting options. It’s about risk to the culture, the environment, the people, the norms, the jobs – the status quo. Risk avoidance (or maintaining Systems Congruence as systems thinkers call it) is a vital component of all decision making.

For our purposes, let’s call this change management process a buyING process. It includes 13 stages (written about extensively in my book Dirty Little Secrets):

1. Idea stage: Is there a problem? Who needs to be involved to gather the full fact pattern?
2. Brainstorming stage: Idea discussed broadly with colleagues.
3. Initial discussion stage: Initial group of chosen colleagues discuss the problem to gather full fact pattern: how it got created/maintained; posit who to include on Buying Decision Team; consider possible fixes and fallout. Action groups formed to bring ideas for possible workarounds to next meeting. Invites for new, overlooked stakeholders to join.
4. Contemplation stage: Workarounds (previous vendors, inhouse solutions) discussed for efficacy. People who will touch a solution to discuss their concerns to engage before they resist. More research necessary on possible solutions, ways to determine viable workarounds.
5. Organization stage: Group gathers research to discuss upsides and downsides of workarounds. Viability of workarounds determined.
6. Change management stage: If workarounds acceptable, group goes forward to plan to implement. If workarounds deemed unacceptable, group begins to consider downsides of external solutions: the ‘cost’(risk) of change, the ‘cost’ of a fix, the ‘cost’ of staying the same, and how much disruption is acceptable. Broad research for next meeting on solutions that might meet the criteria and ‘cost’ minimal disruption.
7. Coordination stage: Dedicated discussions on research in re risk factors, buy-in issues, resistance. Delineate everyone’s thoughts re goals, acceptable risks, job changes, and change capacity. Must consider: workaround vs purchase vs status quo; decide on partial fix vs complete fix; decide on time criteria. Folks with resistance must be heard and group to decide how to include and dismantle resistance. Specific research to be assigned based on decisions reached. Discussions on next steps.
8. Research stage: Discussion on research that’s brought in for each possible solution. Who is onboard with risk? How will change be managed with each possible solution? To include: downsides per type of solution, possibilities, outcomes, problems, management considerations, changes in policy, job description changes, HR issues, etc. and how these will be mitigated if purchase to be made – or discussion around maintaining the status quo instead of resolving the problem at all (i.e. cost too high). If a purchase is preferred option, list of possible types of solutions to purchase now defined; research for each to be ready for next meeting.
9. Consensus stage: Known risks, change management procedures, buy-in and consensus necessary for each possibility. Buying Decision Team makes final choices: specific products and possible vendors are named. Criteria set for solution choice.
10. Action stage: Responsibilities apportioned to manage the specifics of Step 9. Calls made to several vendors for interviews, presentations, and data gathering. Agreed-upon criteria applied with each vendor.
11. Second brainstorming stage: Buying Decision Team discusses results of calls and interviews with vendors and partners, and fallout/benefits of each. Favored vendors pitched by team members among themselves, and then called for follow on meetings.
12. Choice stage: New solution/vendor agreed on. Change management issues that need to be managed are delineated and put in place. Leadership initiatives prepared to avoid disruption.
13. Implementation stage: Vendor contacted. Purchase made. Implement and follow on.

These comprise the complete decision path that everyone goes through before self-identifying as buyers. Notice they don’t begin considering buying until Stage 9 when they have their ducks in a row! Until then they’re only people trying to fix a problem at the least risk to the system. 40% of these people will be buyers once they complete their process.

Until then they’re merely People trying to solve a problem! The sales model is useless here! And there is no indecision.

SELLING IGNORES BUYING

Sales don’t close because of sales process only attracts the low hanging fruit who have completed their stages and show up as self-identified buyers. A buying decision starts of as systemic:

• Until everyone (all stakeholders who touch the current problem that needs resolving) adds their thoughts into the mix there is no way to fully understand the problem (and it follows, no way to consider a possible resolution). Sometimes it takes a period of time to recognize the full set of stakeholders. It’s certainly not as simple as it seems. Must they include ‘Joe in Accounting’? HR? Often stakeholders show up late in the decision process and the entire process must start from the beginning or face irreparable disruption.
• Until all workarounds are tried, until old vendors, other departments, friends and referrals are found and studied, outside solutions (i.e. purchases) will not be considered regardless of need or the efficacy of a specific solution. Any marketing materials or sales discussions will be ignored until internal fixes are found to not be viable.
• Until the full ‘cost’ (risk) of a proposed fix is understood and found to be less than the ‘cost’ of maintaining the status quo (i.e. cheaper than dealing with the originating problem), no action will be taken; the risk of disrupting the system is too great.
• Until the ‘cost’ is deemed manageable, AND the full set of stakeholders who will touch the final solution is on board, AND the team buys-in to any change involved, there will be no purchase and the status quo will be maintained.

And there can be no decision to purchase anything until completed.

NO ONE WANTS TO BUY ANYTHING

I’ve taught 100,000 clients Buying Facilitation® to use as a front end to sales. With specific questions (I invented a new form of question for this) we seek folks going through change in the area my solution supports – those who WILL become buyers instead of seeking those who have already self-identified and can use your website to get what they need.

No, you can’t use the sales model for this. Yes, you’ll need an additional tool kit; Buying Facilitation® uses Facilitative Questions, systems listening, the steps of change, and a commitment to facilitating systemic change before trying to sell anything. Read dozens of articles I’ve written on the subject.

Maybe it’s time to make Buying Facilitation® your new new thing, put the onus of blame on the restrictive sales model, and go beyond merely placing solutions – and actually sell more. This is what people REALLY need help with! They know how to find you, and how to buy once they get there. Help them get there.

Remember: you have nothing to sell if there is no one to buy.

__________________________________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen June 12th, 2023

Posted In: News

Questions Aren’t All They’re Cracked Up To Be

Ask more questions! sellers are admonished. Ask better questions! leaders and coaches are reminded. Questions seem to be a prompt in many fields, from medicine to parenting. But why?

There’s a universal assumption that questions will yield Truth, generate ‘real’ discussion topics or realizations, or uncover hidden gems of information or important details. Good questions can even inspire clarity. Right?

I’d like to offer a different point of view on what questions really are and how they function. See, I find questions terribly subjective, don’t enable Responders to find their real answers, and often don’t get to the Truth. But, it’s quite possible to use questions in a way that enables Others to discover their own, often hidden and unconscious, answers.

WHAT IS A QUESTION?

Let me start with Google’s definition of ‘question’: a grouping of words posed to elicit data. Hmmmm…. But they don’t often elicit accurate data. Here’s my definition. Questions are:

• posed according to the needs, curiosity, goals, and intent of the Asker;
• interpreted uniquely and unconsciously, according to a Responder’s world view;
• potentially ignore more important information outside the Asker’s purview.

And, to make it worse, our normal processes get in the way:

1. Language: Questions are posed using words and languaging unique to the Asker. Using their own (subjective) intent and goals, their own idioms and word choices, Askers assume Responders will accurately interpret them and respond along expected lines. This expectation is most easily met between folks who are familiar with each other, but less successfully with those outside the Asker’s sphere of influence. Too often Responders interpret a query quite differently than intended, offering responses far afield from the Asker’s intent.
2. Listening/brain: All incoming words enter our ears as meaningless sound vibrations (see my book WHAT? on this topic), “puffs of air” that eventually get translated according to historic circuits based on our mental models that have been set during our lifetimes. In other words, and similar with the language problem, Responders may not accurately translate incoming questions according to the intent of the Asker. The way Responders hear and interpret the question is at the mercy of the Responder’s brain circuits.
3. Curiosity: Often an Asker seeks data, thoughts, according to his/her desire for knowledge. It might be for research, interest, or ego – to exhibit their intelligence or prove their commitment. Yet given the way information is stored and retrieved in the brain, the question may capture some degree of applicable data, or a whole lotta subjective, unconscious thoughts that may or may not be relevant.

As you can see, questions posed to extract useful, relevant data have a reasonable chance of failure: with an outcome biased by the needs and subjectivity of the Asker, with Responders listening through brain circuits that delete incoming sound vibrations and only translate incoming words according to what’s been heard before, it’s likely that standard questions won’t gather the full set of information as intended.

TYPES OF QUESTIONS

Here’s my opinion on a few different forms of question:

Open question: To me, open questions are great in social discussions but there’s no way to get precise data from them. What would you like for dinner? will prompt an enormous variety of choices. But if the fridge only has leftovers, an open question won’t work, and a closed question “Would you like me to heat up last night’s dinner or Monday night’s dinner?” would. Open questions cause brains to do a transderivational search that may unearth responses far afield from the Asker’s intent and the Asker is out of control.

Closed question: I love these. They are perfect when a specific response is needed. What time is dinner? Should we send answers now or wait until our meeting? Of course they can also be highly manipulative when only limited responses are offered for potentially broad possibilities.

Leading question: Don’t you think you rely on conventional questions too much? That’s a leading question. Manipulative. Disrespectful. Hate them.

Probing question: Meant to gather data, these questions face the same problem I’ve mentioned: using the goal, intent, and words of the Asker, they will be interpreted uniquely as per the Responder’s historic stored content, and extract some fraction of the full data set possible.

Given the above, I invented a new form of question!

FACILITATIVE QUESTION

When I began developing my brain change models decades ago, I realized that conventional questions would most likely not get to the most appropriate circuits in someone’s brain that hold their best answers.

Knowing that our brain’s unconscious search for answers (in 5 one-hundredths of a second) leads to subjective, historic, and limited responses along one of the brain’s neural superhighways, I spent 10 years figuring out how to use questions to help people find where their unbiased (and unconscious) answers reside.

One of the main problems I had to resolve was how to circumvent a brain’s automatic and unconscious preferences to make it possible to notice the broadest view of choices.

            Language to avoid bias and promote objectivity

Since questions (as words) are automatically sent down specific neural routes, I had to figure out a way to use language to broaden the routes the brain could choose from, expand possibility, and circumvent bias as much as possible – a difficult one as our natural listening is unwittingly biased.

Incoming words get translated according to our existing superhighways that offer habitual responses. To redirect listening to where foundational answers are stored, I figured it might be possible to use questions to override and redirect the normal routes to find the specific cell assemblies where value-based answers are stored and not always retrieved by information gathering questions! That led me to a model to use specific words in a specific order so the brain would be led to find the best existing circuits.

To accomplish this, my Facilitative Questions are brain-change based, and save information gathering until the very end of the questioning process when the proper circuits have been engaged.

            Getting into Observer

To make sure Responders are in as neutral and unbiased a place as possible, avoid the standard approach of attempting to understand, and have a chance of listening without misunderstanding, Facilitative Questions are formulated in a way that puts Responders in Observer, a meta/witness position that overrides normalized neural circuitry. They are not information gathering and use the mind-body connection to direct incoming messages to where accurate answers exist that often are not noticed via conventional questions.

Let me show you how to put yourself into an Observer, coach/witness position – the stance you want your Responders to listen from – so you can see how effective it is at going beyond bias. You’ll notice how an objective viewpoint differs from a subjective one and why it’s preferred for decision making. Indeed, it’s a good place to listen from so you can hear responses without your own biases.

Here’s an exercise: See yourself having dinner with one other person. Notice the other person across from you (Self, natural, unconscious, subjective viewpoint). Then mentally put yourself up on the ceiling and see both of you (Observer, conscious, objective, intentional viewpoint).

If you’re having an argument with your dinner partner, where would you rather be – ceiling or across the table – to understand the full data set of what was going on so you could make personal adjustments?

On the ceiling, where you’d see both of you. From this meta position, you’d be objective, free from the feelings and biases that guided the argument along historic circuits. From Observer you’d have the best chance to make choices that might resolve your problem. Try it for yourself! Don’t forget to go back down to Self to communicate warmly. My clients walk around saying ‘Decide from Observer, Deliver from Self.’

So when developing Facilitative Questions, I had to put listeners into Observer. I played with words and found that these cause Responders to unconsciously step back (i.e. meta) to look into neural circuits with an unbiased, less subjective, and broader view.

• how would you know if…
• what would you need to understand differently…

Notice they immediately cause the Responder to ‘observe’ their brain; they do NOT gather data or cause ‘understanding’ in the Asker. The intent is to have the Responder begin to look into their brains to discover answers stored outside the automatic circuitry.

            Change the goal

I also had to change the goal of a question, from my own curiosity and need to elicit data to helping the Other discover their own answers. Instead of seeking to understand, have the goal of facilitating Responders to their own data sets stored in different places in their brains, places not accessible to Askers using conventional questions. After all, their systems are so unique that an outsider couldn’t know the answers anyway.

Here’s an example of a standard question, biased by the needs of the Asker:

        “Why do you wear your hair like that?”

puts the Responder directly into Self and their automatic, historic, unconscious responses, while

“How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle?”

is a Facilitative Question that uses specific words that cause the Responder to step back, look into their full circuitry involving hair (How would you know), consider current and past hairstyles (if it were time), note their situation to see if it merits change (reconsider), and have a more complete data/criterion set with which to possibly make a change – or not.

Note: because some questions are interpreted in a way that (unwittingly) causes Responders to distrust you, Facilitative Questions not only promote an expanded set of unbiased possibilities, but encourages trust between Asker and Responder and doesn’t push a response.

            Questions follow steps to change

The biggest element I had to figure out was the sequence. I figured out 13 sequential steps to all change and decision making and I pose the Facilitative Questions down the sequence. Here are the main categories:

• Where are you and what’s missing? Responder begins by discovering their full set of givens, some of which are unconscious.
• How can you fix the problem yourself? Systems don’t seek change, merely to resolve a problem at the least ‘cost’ to the system. To minimize any ‘cost’ involved, it’s best to begin by trying to fix the problem with what’s familiar.
• How can you manage change without disruption and with buy-in? Until it’s known what the fallout of the ‘new’ will be, and there’s agreement, no change will occur.

WHEN TO FACILITATE UNBIASED DISCOVERY?

Facilitative Questions are especially helpful in

• data gathering to discover a more expanded range of choices,
• decision making to uncover each element of consideration as matched with values and outcomes,
• habit/behavior when seeking to understand and modify the patterns and neural circuitry underlying the current behaviors,
• leadership, sales, coaching when leading others to discover routes to new choices.

I’ve trained these questions globally for sales folks learning my Buying Facilitation® model to help prospects become buyers, and for coaches and leaders to help followers discover their own best answers.

If your job is to serve, the best thing you can offer others is a commitment to help them help themselves. Facilitative Questions can be used in any industry, from business to healthcare, from parenting to relationships as tools to enable discovery, change, and health.

It takes a bit of practice to create these questions as they aren’t natural or curiosity based, but the coaches, sellers, doctors, and leaders I’ve taught them to use them to help Others discover their own excellence, avoid resistance, and maintain trust between the Asker and Responder. I encourage you to consider learning them. And I’m happy to discuss and share what I know. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com My hope is that you’ll begin to think about questions differently.

___________________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen June 5th, 2023

Posted In: News

Influencers Must Change Brains, not Minds: why information, persuasion, and motivation don’t cause change

As an influencer, how often do say to yourself “Why doesn’t she understand me?” or “If he understood me better this decision would be a no-brainer.” It’s natural to assume Others will understand – and comply with – your suggestions. Have you ever wondered what’s happening when they don’t?

As an influencer, part of your job is to facilitate change. But how? In general, you’ve likely used great rationale, logic, and leadership, data sharing, or just plain directives. But what if your Communication Partner’s brain isn’t set up to hear you accurately? What if your words are misinterpreted, or not understood? You naturally assume your words carry the meaning you intend to convey. But do they?

Sometimes people misinterpret you and your audience is unintentionally restricted to only those who naturally understand your message. Sometimes people ignore you, regardless of how important your message, how engagingly you deliver it, or how badly they need it.

What if ‘changing minds’ is the wrong way to think about it, and if your real job is to ‘change brains’? What if the Other’s brain, it’s neural circuitry, was in charge and your job was to facilitate the way it went about decision making?

OUR BRAINS ARE THE CULPRIT

Thinking about using any form of content-based sharing as a persuasion strategy, let me share a confounding concept: words have no meaning until our brain interprets them. According to John Colapinto in his fascinating book This is the Voice,

Speech is a connected flow of ever-changing, harmonically rich musical pitches determined by the rate at which the phonating chords vibrate, the complex overtone spectrum is filtered by the rapidly changing length and shape of the mouth, and lips, interspersed with bursts of noise…It is our brain that turns this incoming stream of sonic air disturbances into something meaningful. (pg 54)

Seems to parallel how we ‘see’ color. We don’t, exactly. Light vibrations enter our eyes and get translated into color by our rods and cones. Otherwise, the world is gray! Indeed, both what we see and what we hear are largely out of our control, influencing what we notice (or not), how we decide (or not), what we think and hear and are curious about (We can’t be curious unless we have the circuitry to think with!).

Here’s a greatly simplified explanation of how brains translate incoming words (or sounds, or…) as I learned when researching my book WHAT?: Spoken words, like all sounds, are merely meaningless electrochemical vibrations that enter our ears as ‘puffs of air’, as many neuroscientists call the vibrations, that get filtered, then automatically dispatched as signals to what our brain considers a ‘similar-enough’ circuit (one among 100 trillion) for translation. And where the signals don’t match, a Listener’s brain kindly discards the difference!

People understand us according to how the selected circuits translate these signals, regardless of how different they are from the intended message.

In other words, people don’t hear us according to what we say but by how their historic circuitry interprets it. To me this is quite annoying and hard to address: not only does that restrict incoming content to what’s already familiar to us, there’s a chance that what we think was said is only some fraction of what was intended.

Unfortunately, neither the Speaker or Listener understands how far from accurate the translation is. Listeners assume their brains tell them exactly what’s been said; Speakers assume they’ve been heard accurately. Turns out these assumptions are both false; communication potentially ends up biased, restricted, and subjective.

THE BRAIN/INFORMATION PROBLEM

The misinterpretation problem gets exacerbated when words get sent down circuits that unwittingly incur resistance, as Others ‘hear’ something that goes against their beliefs. If my brain tells me you said ABL it’s hard to convince me you said ABC. I’ve lost friends and partners that way and didn’t understand why until my book research. And sadly, it all takes place outside of conscious awareness.

This is especially problematic when there’s a new project to be completed, supervision to correct a problem, or Business Process Management to be organized. It’s a problem between parents and teenagers and a curse in negotiations. As leaders, without knowing how accurately we’re heard, we have no idea if our directives or information sharing is being received as we intend.

This possibility of misinterpreting incoming words makes the case for providing information when it can be most accurately translated: when the Listener knows exactly what they are listening for, the brain has a more direct route to the appropriate circuits to interpret them.

In other words, instead of starting with goals or solutions for Others, we need their direct buy-in first. To invoke change, help Others figure out what they need from you then supply content that will be applied accurately. In other words, instead of shooting an arrow to hit a bullseye, first shoot the arrow then draw the bullseye where the arrow lands!

INFORMATION IS LAST

After 60 years of studying, and developing models for, systemic brain change and decision making, I’ve realized that offering ideas, directives, suggestions, or information is the very last thing anyone needs when considering doing something different (i.e. buying, changing habits, etc.). And yes, it goes against most conventional thinking. But hang with me.

As a kid, my then-undiagnosed Asperger’s caused me to act differently than people around me. I was in trouble often and never understood why. I began reading voraciously on how to change my behaviors: how to visualize, to motivate myself, be disciplined. But they were all based on trying to fix my seemingly automatic actions, to change my behaviors. And I failed repeatedly to make any of the changes permanent.

I finally acknowledged it’s not possible to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior, my brain was the culprit. I then began developing neural workarounds to:

• create new brain pathways to new behaviors,
• consciously change the circuits causing my behaviors,
• enhance my ability to translate incoming words accurately.

I know, I know. It’s odd, and there was lots of trial-and-error. But eventually I figured it out and dedicated the rest of my life to developing, writing about, and teaching systemic brain change models for conscious behavior change.

Thankfully, my concepts caught on in sales, coaching, leadership, and change management: my facilitation models help people orchestrate their own change based on their own internal norms, values, and criteria: in sales, my Buying Facilitation® model teaches people on route to fixing a problem how to become buyers. In coaching and change management, I provide the skill sets to enable people to discover, and act on, their own unique criteria and avoid resistence.

CHANGE FACILITATION

For those of you whose job is to get Others to do something you want them to do, let’s look at it from the side of the people you seek to change.

In order for change to occur, people must understand the difference between their status quo (their problem) and the new activity you want them to do. Below are all the specific factors they must address to be ready, willing, and able to change:

Conform to norms: Change is more than doing something different; it demands a reconfiguration of the brain circuitry. And it’s only when an incongruence is noticed that something different is required. By first facilitating people through their discovery – by leading them to the underlying beliefs and values that created the circuits that caused the problem – they can discover an incongruence and be willing to change. It’s got nothing to do with new content or imposed regulations, regardless how important they are. I created a new form of brain-directive question (i.e. not information gathering) called a Facilitative Question that’s quite effective at leading others to their own, often unconscious, answers.

Cost: It’s not until the ‘cost’ (resource, results, disruption) of a fix is identified and agreed to by all stakeholders (including mental models and beliefs) that it’s possible to know if a problem is worth fixing. No one naturally seeks out change if all seems fine, regardless of the problem or the efficacy of the solution.

Disruption: Because our internal systems seek balance (homeostasis), we avoid disruption. And the time it takes us to find a route through to a change that matches our values and avoids risk is the length of the change cycle. If new behaviors are required that cause someone to be out of balance, they will be resisted.

Personal: When change is sought, people must discover their own route to change that match their values and maintains homeostasis. And outsiders can ever understand someone’s history, values, norms, or neural configurations.

EACH PERSON MUST DESIGN THEIR OWN CHANGE

To facilitate change efficiently, we need a shift in thinking. Instead of trying to have the answers for Others, first focus on the goal of helping Others discover how to handle their own change issues; enable them to discover their own incongruences. Then they’ll know exactly where they need to add or subtract something to fix it, and the influencer can supply the information to complete the process.

Here’s a situation where I used a carefully crafted sentence to direct a friend’s thinking to where her choice points lie.

I have a lovely young friend who, to me, had serious energy problems. Some days she had difficulty getting out of bed, even with 5 children. Some days she didn’t have the energy to cook or work. And she’d been having this issue for decades. After knowing her a year I finally said, “If the time ever comes that you wish for additional choices around your store of energy to be more available for your kids, I have a thought.”

By shifting the context to her children, by giving her control over her choices and not trying to change her, by leading her to each of her decision points, her system didn’t feel threatened. She welcomed my thoughts, got help (My naturopath discovered she was actually dying from a critical lack of vitamin B12.) and now is awake daily at 5:30 a.m. with endless amounts of energy.

No matter what the problem or solution may be, unless someone understands that change won’t cause major disruption, unless the new fits with their values and criteria, unless all the people involved agree to change, they won’t consider doing anything different. So how can we help Others find their own excellence?

13 STEPS TO CHANGE

You must begin by trusting Others have their own criteria for change. Instead of starting with answers or goals, lead them down their unique path through to discovery, to notice any incongruences they can’t resolve on their own. Then they’ll know exactly what they need from you and be ready to hear your information. And as you’ve already helped them help themselves, they’ll come to you for their needs and trust has been established when you offer them new ideas.

The facilitation model I developed leads buyers, teams, coaching clients through to discovery. It involves 13 specific steps that follow the sequence all brain change takes as a precursor to behavior change, providing the tools to help the Other figure out their own path. By then they’ll need your information. To address change congruently, people must first:

• recognize the full set of givens involved;
• identify and include all stakeholders, beliefs, criteria, and norms;
• try workarounds to fix the problem internally if possible;
• understand and accept the risk of change;
• get buy-in to adopt the new.

It’s not so simple as an outsider gathering or sharing information or posing questions to help the influencer understand. Because until they know that the cost change will be equal to or less than their status quo, they will not take action.

Historically, I’ve taught this facilitation process successfully to 100,000 sales professionals and coaches. But with the new technology, it’s quite possible to use it in marketing for Deal Rooms, ABM discussions, and Sales Enablement.

So as you consider delaying your storytelling or pitching until you’ve facilitated change, ask yourself:

• Would you rather speak or be heard?
• What is your job – to serve Others through to their own form of excellence or get your point across to anyone who can listen?
• Do you seek a quick hit or a long-term relationship?
• Would you rather be a servant leader or an information hawker?

You decide. It’s possible to serve Others and be available with information when and as they need. Sellers can first facilitate buying, coaches and facilitate permanent change, and marketers can develop content that leads people through to brain change. I’m here if you have questions. Or go to www.sharon-drew.com to learn about my facilitation and brain change models.

_______________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen May 8th, 2023

Posted In: News

Thank You. We Appreciate You: a case study in caring for employees

Early this morning I went to my favorite ‘big box’ supermarket, WinCo. If you’re not in one of the 5 states where it operates (Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, and Oregon), you may not be familiar with it and I’d like to introduce you. WinCo is an employee-owned food-supply chain that cares as much for its employees as it does for its customers. As a result, the customer service and store care is exceptional: the stores are spotless, well-stocked, and employees are easy to find if you have a question, not to mention always kind, informed, and personal. And it’s always a surprise to find items I purchase in more specialty stores – even Amazon! – at least 40% cheaper! Who knew my favorite Roasted Salsa Verde (Herdez) was available at half the price! I love this store and am willing to drive out of my way to shop there. As I was walking down an aisle I noticed a tall woman and young man walk over to a much older man as he was cleaning the floors:

Woman: We’d like to give you a gift (She handed him an envelope – I assume it was a check.) for all the hard work you do and how well you take care of us all. You always go the extra step to make this store even better. We deeply appreciate you and all do you for us. We all thank you.

I must admit I stopped in my tracks and began crying a bit. I had never heard this in any store, nor have I been aware of supermarkets gifting and thanking employees for their service. I sought the woman (his manager?) out.

SD: Do you choose an ‘employee of the month’ each month and hand out checks to the winners?

Woman: No. It’s on an individual basis. Sometimes we hand out a few in one month, sometimes only a few a year. It depends. When we notice someone doing a great job we reward them and let them know they’re important to us. It’s pretty simple. We take care of each other and show our appreciation when one of us shines.

‘We take care of each other’. So simple! When was the last time you let an employee, one of your staff or team, know how much they were appreciated? Went out of your way to take care of them? OUR EMPLOYEES ARE OUR FIRST CUSTOMERS When I started up my tech company in 1983 in London I had never run a business before. But even without knowing ‘the rules’ I knew it was as important to care for my team as well as I cared for clients. To that end I put in place some initiatives to make sure they felt taken care of. Every year I gave the management team a fully paid week off and a $3,000 check for tuition and travel to take any type of course they wanted (Photography? Pottery?), even if the subject matter had nothing to do with their jobs. The goal was to help them keep their brains creative and curious. Certainly a way to let them know I appreciated them. I also didn’t give them vacation time per se but told them to take off whatever time they needed (so long as they covered their responsibilities) when they felt they weren’t operating on all cylinders. I told them I trusted them to know when they needed rest – it wasn’t about the time. Surprisingly I had to force them to take time off. I would call their wives – and in those days (1980’s) the team was mostly men and the women were usually at home doing child care – tell them to give the kids to the grandparents for a few days, and keep their husbands in bed. To make sure they had plenty of time to relax, I had restaurants deliver food to them so no one had to cook or shop. My folks would return rested with happy faces. Because it was quite important to me that we all meshed even though in scattered locations, I took my inside and outside folks to a pub once a month for beer and darts. I always lost (I never figured out darts in all my years in London!); out of pity, I suspect, they then bought the next round. FIELD FOLKS BROUGHT IN BUSINESS To keep abreast of the field folks (the techies) and make sure they felt like part of the company, I called each of them once a month to check in. Sure, I only had 40 people in the field so it was doable (My secretary would schedule the calls to make sure we connected). One of the pluses of my check-ins was they would tell me when our client was preparing to upgrade the program/package we supported. I knew the vendor had a team that installed it, but that would have taken business away from us and we could easily do the installation. I certainly wanted to be involved with any follow-on work. I would then call my client before the new software was installed and asked if they’d be willing to continue working with us if they brought in new software. Of course they were happy to have us do the work, given my staff’s excellence. This factor alone caused my business to explode. I once even got a call from the vendor: “You’re killing me. Clients order an upgrade but don’t hire us to do any programming because you’re already handling it. How do you get in there so fast?” My colleagues chided me when they found out how well I took care of my peeps: “Are you running a spa?” they’d ask. “Don’t you think your folks will take advantage?” I think they were jealous, but that didn’t stop them from trying to hire my staff away from me. I would hear grumbles at conferences, gossip that they were offering big bucks to lure my folks away. But nope, I never lost an employee to anything other than relocation in four years. They were happy. Together we grew the business from zero to almost $5,000,000 in under four years – with no internet (1984 -1988), no websites, no email, no Twitter, no LinkedIn. Just me – a rookie entrepreneur – and my team remained dedicated to caring for our clients and each other. WHO IS YOUR CLIENT? I believe our employees are our first customers – happy staff happy clients. Why do we forget this? How is it possible that some of the larger companies are known to have high turnover, low pay, and very strict hours with rules designed to minimize variance and kill the creative spirit rather than maximize kindness and respect? Why are companies willing to harm employees, to be disrespectful and unkind, just to save a buck? When did money become more important than values or humanity? What are they saving, anyway? When I did consulting work at KPMG I noticed a bravado about working all night, or 80 hour weeks. No surprise that many of the partners were on their third marriages – almost all on their second. Working that hard – hard enough to ignore sleep, relationships, food – was a highly valued part of the culture. Why? Why don’t we take care of our employees better? Trust them and their ideas? Take time to listen to them? Make them understand that without them we can’t be successful? How did people become expendable to save money at all costs? I know a very large, successful multinational that forces all levels of employees to spend hours preparing for meetings with senior managers where they’d have to make a case to receive modest funds – even $200! – for an online skills course or money for needed coaching. It’s a misuse of everyone’s time, disrespectful, and not even rational. Why not give mid-level managers a slush fund to have on hand when someone needs something and trust their judgement!? Why not hire people you can trust and let them decide what their folks need? We all put so much energy into our clients and customers so we can make money. Why don’t we offer our staff the same respect? We spend a fortune hiring and training the ‘right’ people and then create rules and restrictions to control them. We treat them like chits, like cogs in a wheel and make them replaceable, ‘things’ without value. And yet we want them to deliver for us and complain about turnover, about their lack of ownership. What we lose is not only ideas and loyalty, but the spirit of a man, the heart of a woman. We too often make our employees objects. I’ve interviewed middle managers in large corporations who tell me they’ve stopped bringing in new ideas because they don’t get heard, or live only for their vacation time because they’re so miserable and stay only because they’re getting paid so well. Let’s take as good care of our employees as we do our clients and customers. Let’s make sure everyone is given the time, the respect, the remuneration, to work in an environment that is filled with kindness, trust, creativity, collaboration and ideas so they can’t wait to come to work each day. Let’s treasure each of our employees. They are, indeed, special. That’s why we hired them. What’s the cost? What’s the cost if we don’t?

__________________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen May 1st, 2023

Posted In: News