Change Management – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

Have you ever wondered where your thoughts come from? Everything we think – and notice, are curious about, believe in – emerges from neural circuits in our brain that store our history. In other words, due to the way brains process, everything we experience is unconsciously biased by our lived lives.

From birth, our parent’s beliefs become part of our unconscious, personal, ecosystem; the cultural norms of our youth begin creating our lifelong beliefs, habits, behaviors, and identity; the schools we attend introduce us to the way the world works and how to behave accordingly; our professions are chosen to comfortably maintain the biases we’ve accrued and person we’ve become.

Net net, our lives are a conglomeration of our history and unconscious biases, causing us to live and work, marry and spend time with people whose norms, interpretations, and beliefs are very similar to ours.

WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND OTHERS

We unwittingly listen through biased filters and hear distorted versions of what was said; we play and read and watch according to what we’re comfortable with and rarely venture far afield; and aided by the way our brains filter and prune incoming data, we notice what we notice in response to our personal norms, values, and learned habits. We even restrict our lives accordingly – our politics, our curiosity, what we read, our professional choices.

Our lives are lived in a reality of our own making, believing, with certainty, that what we see, hear, and feel is ‘real’. We each live in a unique reality that gets maintained every moment of every day, a reality so automatic and habituated that we’re often unaware how different it might be from those around us.

Given the subjective nature of our lives and our idosyncratic filters, we sometimes make assumptions and judgements of others with different lifestyle choices, education, assumptions, race, or political beliefs. And when we notice these biases and attempt to change our behaviors we are often unsuccessful: changing core biases must be resolved within the system that created it.

This article explains the elements that trigger our biases and offers a route to systemic change.

WE MUST UNDERSTAND SYSTEMS TO ADDRESS BIAS

I’ll start by explaining ‘systems’ as they’re at the root of change: A system is a conglomeration of things that all agree to the same rules. Our ‘human system’ includes a composite of our physiology, biology, and neurology mixed with our norms, culture, history, values, beliefs, dreams that we hold largely unconsciously and formed during our lifetimes.

As a dedicated whole, our personal systems enable us to show up every day as unique individuals: although unconscious, they define our politics, our mate selection, even how we listen to others.

Because we’re often unaware of how deeply rooted our biases are, we are sometimes surprised when they show up. Problems occur when we try to change them and they resist. For permanent change to occur, to modify unconscious bias, it’s not enough to try to change our actions, as you’ll see. We must change our system. Here are a few of our naturally occurring practices that would need to be reconsidered for change:

Listening: our habituated listening filters automatically bias whatever anyone says to us; we set up our lives to avoid discomfort, unwittingly interpreting what has been said to stay comfortable. When new information is offered our historic, habituated, biased listening filters kick in and uniquely interpret incoming data, often differently than the intended meaning. Indeed, it’s not even possible to hear anyone without bias; when what we hear (or see, or feel) makes us uncomfortable, we react historically regardless of how far the intended meaning is from our interpretation.

Sample

Questions: all normal questions are biased by the Asker’s subjective curiosity, thereby restricting the Responder’s replies to the Responder’s reaction and interpretation of what was heard, and potentially overlooking real answers.
Historic: biases are programmed in from the time we’re born. Every day we wake up with the same biases, kept in place by our choice of friends, TV, neighborhoods, professions, reading materials, etc. To permanently shift our biases, we’d have to change our historic programming.
Physiological: who we ‘are’ is systemic; our beliefs and norms, character and values have been programmed in and become our Identity, creating the behaviors and responses that will unconsciously maintain our status quo in everything we do and every action we take.
Triggers: because of our lifetime of inculcated beliefs, values, norms and outlook, our brains react chemically, unconsciously, and automatically when there is an untoward activity.
Information: training programs, books, suggestions typically tell, show, explain, offer stories, videos, etc. etc. in hopes they’ll trigger new behaviors. Again, thanks to the way our brain listens, we may not accurately interpret the incoming content.
Behaviors: Our behaviors are our beliefs in action. Behaviors represent us; they are not ‘us’.

To change our biases it’s necessary to change the system that created them to begin with. And this cannot be accomplished by merely trying to change. Remember Einstein’s saying that you can’t resolve a problem using the same thinking used when it was created?

CHANGE IS A SYSTEMS PROBLEM

Change is the alteration of something that has existed in a certain way, using specific and accepted norms, in a specific configuration, for a period of time. To amend our responses to bias, we must first modify the status quo that triggered them.

Change is basically a systems problem: Anything new, any problem to fix, any new activity the system is asked to take, poses a risk to the system and demands changing the status quo in a way that maintains the beliefs and norms. Indeed, any new decision is a change management problem.

When we attempt to problem-solve without systemic agreement, without a way to incorporate something new with the existing system so the system doesn’t implode, no change will happen regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. The risk of disruption is too high.

Too often we try to change behaviors via Behavior Modification practices. But these attempts will not cause permanent change. To change our unconscious, automatic responses our system must be reconfigured to produce alternate outputs. Offering any sort of information before the system knows why, how, when, or if to do anything different will only inspire resistance as the system won’t know how to apply it.

CHANGE IS A SYSTEMS PROBLEM

Let’s put this all together: Real change demands a systemic shift to create new triggers, new assumptions, new neural pathways, and ultimately new behaviors. The goal is not to not to get rid of unconscious bias but develop new beliefs. New behaviors will emerge as a result.

We must become Facilitators, not Influencers. We must teach folks to create and habituate their own new neural pathways and filters.

Listening: we must train ourselves to do ‘meta listening‘ that avoids avoid habituated neural pathways when listening to others.
Questions: I developed a new form of question that guides people through their own unconscious. These Facilitative Questions are systemic, use specific words, in specific order, that traverse through the steps of change sequentially so others can note their own incongruencies. So: What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to take an extra step and consciously choose to listen from a ‘different ear’?
Beliefs: by shifting the focus from changing behaviors to first changing beliefs and systems, we end up with permanent core change, new triggers and habits. And we can avoid bias altogether.
Information: we make several types of information available for the learner to choose from, to fit their own learning criteria and styles, and needs to fit into their unique areas of deficiency.

I believe it’s time we had the tools to permanently change and become non-judgmental, accepting, and kind. And above all, cause no harm. All of our lives depend on it.

_______________

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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, 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 February 24th, 2025

Posted In: Change Management, Communication, Listening

As a preamble to a discussion about failing consciously, I’d like to retell a story. Many years ago Xerox was beta testing a then new-type digital printer. The testers sent back complaints: it was hard to figure out how to work the damn thing, and the user guide was confusing. Obviously, User Error, the designers concluded. Yup. More stupid users. So an internal focus group was set up by senior management to test what exactly was happening.

Three middle managers were brought in and put into a room with the new printer and user guide. Mayhem ensued. The designers watched from behind a one-way mirror while the managers got confused by the directions, spent hours arguing amongst themselves, pressed the wrong buttons, and finally gave up – never getting it to work.

User Error, they again said. Obviously, went the thinking, the managers weren’t smart or savvy enough to understand simple directions. Except they didn’t know a trick had been played on them: the testers were actually PhD computer scientists. Oops. It wasn’t User Error at all. The designers had failed to develop an intelligible user guide. So while the printer itself might have been a marvel of machinery for its day, it couldn’t be used. It was a failure. Or was it?

WHAT IS FAILURE

I contend that until every ‘failed’ step was taken, and every ‘failed’ assumption made, there was no way to know exactly what problems needed to be fixed or if indeed their printer was a success. The failure was part of the march to success.

We call it failure when we don’t achieve a goal whether it’s starting up a company, reaching a job goal, learning something new, or starting a new diet.

I think that as humans we strive to succeed, to be seen as competent, to be ‘better than’, even if we’re only in competition with ourselves. It’s natural to want our products, our teams, our families, our competitive activities, to reap success. To be The Best. And we plot and envision how to make it happen.

But the road to success isn’t straight; sometimes we face disappointment, shame, and self-judgment. We get annoyed with ourselves when results don’t seem to comply with our mental images, and tell ourselves maybe we didn’t follow the original plan, or didn’t plan well enough, or maybe we’re self-sabotaging. We blame teammates or vendors, spouses or neighbors.

I’m here to tell you that failure is a necessary part of success. It’s built in to learning and succeeding, actually a natural part of the process of change and accomplishment. Before we win we gotta fail. Tiger Woods didn’t wake up the best in the world. Neither did Pavarotti or Steve Jobs.

For anyone to get to the top, to achieve success in any industry, any endeavor, any sport, it’s necessary to fail over and over. How surprising that no one teaches us how to fail consciously. I suggest we develop conscious failing strategies that become built in to our success procedures.

WHAT IS OUR STATUS QUO? AND WHY IS IT SO STUBBORN?

Getting to success is a sequential process that includes trial and error – i.e. winning and losing are both part of the same process, and each adding a piece of the puzzle. Of course there’s no way to know what we don’t know before we start – no way to even be curious, or ask the right questions because we don’t know what we don’t know. And unfortunately, part of the process is internal, unconscious, and systemic.

Change – and all success and failure is really a form of changing our status quo – has a large unconscious component, and when you only try to add new behaviors you miss the automatic, habituated, and unconscious elements that will rear their ugly heads as you move toward hitting your goals: you can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior. It just doesn’t work that way.

Let me explain a few things about how your brain works in the area of change. To begin, all change is systemic. Anything new you want to do, anything new that requires, ultimately, new behaviors, or added beliefs or life changes, requires buy-in from what already exists in your make up – your status quo.

Indeed, as the repository of your history, values, and norms, your status quo won’t change a thing without congruency. Indeed it will reject anything new, regardless of how necessary it is, unless the new has been properly vetted by the originating system.

Setting a goal that’s behavior-based without agreement from the system, without incorporating steps for buy in, assures resistance. Sure, we lay out the trajectory, attempt to make one good decision at a time, and use every feeling, hope, data point, guess, to take next steps. But when we don’t take into account the way our brains unconsciously process, it may not turn out like we envision. Lucky there’s a way to manage our activities to take into account what a brain needs for congruent change and a successful outcome.

THE STEPS TO FAILING CONSCIOUSLY

In my work on how brains facilitate change and make decisions to shift what’s already there (my The How of Change program teaches how to generate new neural routes) I offer ways to create new synapses and neural pathways that lead to new behaviors. Take a look at the Change Model chart I developed, with a careful look at The Trial Loop – the steps we each take to learn, to add/trial something new:

The Trial Loop is where the brain learning occurs. It’s here we iterate through several touch points: new data acquisition, buy-in, trial behaviors, and the stop/go/stop action (double-arrowed line between Beliefs (CEN) and red Stop) as each new element is tried and considered before new behaviors are formed.

It’s important to understand that no change will occur until these elements are addressed; merely hearing something new – a directive, an interesting piece of information, an internal decision to change a behavior – doesn’t insure something different will happen. Unless our system buys in, until there’s a specific circuit created for the new, no change will occur. You can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior.

So as we try out new stuff, our personal mental models of rules, beliefs, norms, history, etc., go through iterations of trial, acceptance, rejection, confusion, trial, acceptance, rejection, etc. until the new is congruent with the norms of the system, something we cannot know before we go through this process. So let’s call our disappointments part of the iteration process that precedes success. Here is a closer look at my chart:

An initial goal/idea/thought enters (through the CUE),
then gets sorted through an acceptance/rejection process for beliefs and systems congruence (the CEN), which
darts around the brain seeking a match for an existing neural pathway for earlier incidence of achieving this goal.
If no existing pathway is found, a new synapse/neural pathway must be formed.
The brain goes through an iterative process to form a new path to a new action with agreement (buy in) needed at each step (notice the iterative arrows in the chart).
Iterative process includes: gathering data, trialing new activity, getting internal buy in, testing for Systems Congruence (All systems must be in a congruent state. Individually and personally, we’re all a system.)
Process of Stop/New choice-data acquisition-action/Stop etc. as each new thing is tried.
Final success when there’s congruency and new is adopted without resistance as a final Behavior. (And note: the Behavior is the FINAL activity. You cannot change a behavior by trying to change a behavior.)

Now you know the steps to conscious change. Should you want to learn more here’s a one-hour sample of me laying out the foundation of the How of Change course and explaining how change occurs in the brain.

THE STEPS TO CONSCIOUS FAILING

Now let’s plot out the steps to conscious failure to avoid large-scale malfunction.

The Beginning: to start the process toward succeeding at a goal, you need:

Include all (all) stakeholders (including Joe in accounting) and all who will touch the final solution;
Agree upon the wording for the final goal, including specifics of new behavioral elements, rules, politics, outcomes – i.e. what, exactly, will be different;
Write up a ‘guess list’ of problems that might occur (failures) to the status quo as a result: what they might look like, as well as possible workarounds;
An agreement clause from all stakeholders to act when something is going off course. Note: listening without bias is urgently needed here;
Consider possible ways your starting goals may shift the status quo and make sure it’s tenable;
Know how the new outcome will be maintained over time (including the people, rules, norms, changes, that will be involved) and what else has to buy in to maintenance;
State potential, detailed steps toward achievement that are agreeable to all stakeholders;
Agreement to reconsider all previous steps if the problems that show up cause new considerations.

The Middle: to make changes, add new knowledge to trial, get continuous buy in, you need:

Re write the original goals, with delineated outcomes for each;
Notice how the new is disrupting the status quo. Is it necessary to amend the new plans to ensure Systems Congruence? Is the cost of the new lower than the cost of the original? There must be a cost-effective decision made;
Find ways to acquire the right knowledge to learn from;
Check on the ways you’re failing. Were they expected? Do they conform to your goals? Do you need to shift anything?
Agreement to develop new choices where current ones aren’t working as per plan.

The End: making sure the outcome is congruent with the original goal:

Go through the Beginning steps and check they’ve been accomplished;
Compare end result with original goal;
Make sure there is congruent integration with the thinking, beliefs, values of the original;
Make sure the status quo is functioning without disruption and the system ends up congruent with its mental models and belief systems.

Here are more specifics to help you integrate the necessary failure, and avoid guesswork and reactions to what might seem inconsistent with your goals:

Lay out specifics for each step you’re considering to your goal. Include timelines, parameters, and consequences of results, specific elements of what success for that step should look like, and what possible failure might look like. Of course, you can’t truly know the answers until they occur, but make your best guess. It’s important to notice something new happening when it’s happening.
If something unplanned or feared occurs (i.e. failure), annotate the details. What exactly is happening? What elements worked and what didn’t, and how did they work or not work – what/who was involved, how did the result differ from the expectations? What does the failure tell you – what IS succeeding instead of what you wish for? How does the remedy for the problem influence the next step? How long should you allot for each occurrence before determining whether it’s failure, or just part of the success trajectory you weren’t aware of?
Are all stakeholders involved and shared their input? Do you need to bring in more stakeholders?
Notice the consequences of the outcomes for each: employees, clients, hiring, firing, quitting, vendors, competition, state of the industry and your place in it. What comes into play with these factors when considering if you want to continue down one trajectory rather than designing a new one? What will it look like to decide to change course? How will your decisions effect your vision of an outcome? How are the stakeholders affected by each choice?
How much failure are you willing to risk before you determine that either your outcome is untenable, or you need to make structural changes? What part does ego and denial play? Does everyone agree what constitutes failure? Success?
What will you notice when your trajectory to success is negatively effecting your baseline givens? What are you willing to change, or accept, to reach your goal?
What will it look like, specifically, when you’ve concluded your efforts? Will parts of the failure be factored in as success? Do all stakeholders buy in to the end result? If not, what remains unresolved? And how will you bring this forward?

Of course there’s no way to know before you start what any specific stage will look like. But using the steps, the thinking, above, you’ll be able to get a handle on it. And by including the failure, you’ll have a far better chance of succeeding.

For some reason, as leaders or individuals, companies or small businesses, we shame ourselves when we don’t achieve what we set out to achieve during our change processes. I contend we must think of each step as an integral part of the process of getting where we want to be. As they say in NLP, there’s no failure, only feedback.

________________________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen January 6th, 2025

Posted In: Change Management, Communication

I’m a dancer. When I studied the Argentine Tango there was a foundational metaphor that I believe is true for all leaders: The leader opens the door for the follower to pass through using her own unique style; the leader then follows. If anyone notices the leader, he’s not doing his job. The goal is to showcase the follower.

Much of what is written about leadership falls into the category I call ‘trait-centered leadership’: someone deemed ‘at the top’ who uses their personality, influence, motivational skills and charisma to inspire and give followers a convincing reason to follow an agenda set by the leader or the leader’s boss – a mixture of Jack Welch, Oprah, and Moses.

But what if the leader’s goal overrides the mental models, beliefs or historic experiences of the followers? Or the change is pushed against the follower’s values, and resistance ensues? What happens when the leader uses their personality as the fulcrum to cause change? What if the leader has a great message and incongruent skills? Or charisma and no integrity? Adolf Hitler, after all, was the most charismatic leader in the 20th Century.

WHAT IS A LEADER?

Whether it’s for a group that needs to perform a new task, or for someone seeking heightened outcomes, the role of leadership is to

facilitate congruent change and choice by
enabling followers to discover their optimal behaviors
in accordance with their own values, beliefs, and ability,
to match agreed-upon requirements
without resistance.

In other words, enable them to employ their best skills in service of an agreed-upon outcome. It demands humility and authenticity of the leader to let go of their own concept of success and enable Others to bring their ideas, skills, values, and commitment to the project to meet agreed-upon outcomes uniquely. This way, the followers share their best ideas, creativity multiplies, and resistance is avoided as everyone buys-in to the project they own.

This type of leadership is other-centered and devoid of ego, similar to a flashlight that merely illuminates the most harmonious path, enabling followers to discover their own excellence within the context of the change sought.

And remember: change is an inside job. Leaders are outsiders.

YOU CAN’T LEAD IF YOU CAN’T FOLLOW

Too often leaders use their own assumptions and goals to influence and persuade others to comply with their vision. They begin with something they want to accomplish and work hard at inspiring their followers to make the fixes they believe necessary, using their passion and motivational skills to encourage buy-in, later wondering why they’re not on target, or work is falling through the cracks.

But being inspirational, or a good influencer with presence and empathy, or a great storyteller that seeks to motivate, or even being a ‘nice guy’ that staff generally likes following, merely enlists those whose beliefs and unconscious mental models are already predisposed to the change. It omits, or gets resistance from, those who should be part of the change but whose mental models don’t align.

When we try to change others, we only reach those who have a conscious ability to comply, bypassing those who could use what we have to say but aren’t ready to change. I call this trait-centered leadership: using our own skills as influencing strategies.

Sample

SERVANT LEADERSHIP

What if our jobs were to serve? What if we trusted that Others had good skills, and by agreeing on a course of action that met everyone’s values and the ultimate requirements, help them figure out how to get there their own way?

If we enter our leadership situations as Servant Leaders we are guiding Others through to their own best actions in the area we seek to shift, facilitating them through their own ability to change according to their own beliefs and norms. This form of leadership has pluses and minuses.

Minuses: the final outcome may look different than originally envisaged because the followers set the route according to their values and mental models.
Pluses: everyone will be enthusiastically, creatively involved in designing what will show up as their own mission – meeting the vision of the leaders (although it might look different), and owning it with no resistance.

Do you want to lead through influence, presence, charisma, rationality? Or facilitate Another through their own unique path to congruent change and ownership? Do you want people to see you as a charismatic chief? Or teach them how to congruently move beyond their status quo and discover their own route to excellence – with you as the GPS? Do you want to push your agenda using your own ideas? Or enable followers to discover their own route to systemic change? They are opposite constructs.

POWER VS. FORCE

Here are some differences in beliefs between trait-centered leadership and more the more facilitative leadership that I call Servant Leadership:

Trait-centered: Top down; behavior change and goal-driven; dependent on power, charisma, and persuasion skills of a leader and may not be congruent with foundational values of followers.

Facilitation-centered: Inclusive (everyone buys-in and agrees to goals, direction, change); core belief-change and excellence-driven; dependent on facilitating route to excellence rather than developing and strategizing the route to enable systemic buy-in and adoption of new behaviors.

Remember that real change happens at the unconscious belief level. Attempting to change behaviors without helping people change their beliefs first meets with resistance regardless of the efficacy of the solution or the need for the change.

New skills are necessary for the facilitation-centered, Servant Leadership style I suggest:

1. Listen for systems. This enables leaders to hear the elements that created and maintain the status quo and would need to transform from the inside before any lasting change occurs. Typical listening is biased and restricts possibility.

Sample

2. Facilitative Questions. Conventional questions are biased by the beliefs and needs of the Questioner, and restrict answers and possibility.

3. Code the route to systemic change. Before asking folks to buy-in, facilitate them down the 13 steps of change to build consensus and collaborate to define, agree on, and set strategy for, the necessary changes thereby avoiding resistance.

Sometimes Leaders assume that their job is to assign tasks and get shit down. From what I’ve learned with clients, that only gets them mediocre results, resistance and time wastage. Worse, it fails to capture the passion and creativity of the followers. Be the Servant Leaders who open the door and follow your followers.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen September 30th, 2024

Posted In: Change Management, Listening

During a day we make innumerable decisions. What should I eat for lunch? When should I go to the store? Should I complete this paperwork now? Or wait until after the meeting? We make these simple decisions quickly, effortlessly, using top-of- mind answers. But sometimes we must make consequential decisions that need some pondering.

Whatever we go through to get to our final end point, the process is often fraught with confusion, time delays, and unknown risk. To help you minimize these downsides when making important decisions, here are a few foundational elements:

Perspective: Have you collected the full data set necessary for resolution?
Criteria: What are the norms and values you must consider?
Goal: What is the specific goal you seek to achieve?
Risks: What are the threats to specific choices?
Steps: A replicable route to practical decision making.

I’ll take them one at a time.

PERSPECTIVE

One of the problems with decision making is the way your brain presents you with habituated responses. Like when you decide to go on a diet and unconsciously duplicate the patterns you used in previous (failed) diets, or when you stop at the same point when trying to learn a new hobby – again. So much of how we decide is ruled by our brain’s historic biases and restrictions.

To have as broad a range of options as possible with a minimum of bias and restriction, it’s necessary to consider the problem from different perspectives.

Ordinarily we automatically think our standard, familiar thoughts and unconsciously pose our standard, familiar questions to ourselves. I call this perspective Self. Self is our natural state, a largely unconscious idiosyncratic mix of physical, mental, emotional, unconscious and comfortable reactions and ideas. In Self we are the fish in the water.

From Self your decisions are based on your immediate world view – restricted by your momentary feelings, what’s going on in your life, and your history of managing similar issues.This is perfect for daily living. But for making consequential decisions it’s good to have as broad, and unbiased viewpoint as possible. For this you’ll need an expansive perspective that I call Observer/Witness.

Being in Observer offers more a conscious choice with a broader perspective and far less bias. You already do this, albeit unconsciously: the quick intake of breath telling you to be more alert and consider a new choice; that it’s time to go beyond your natural reaction, your standard thoughts and feelings.

You use Observer when raising children, like when your 2-year-old so creatively crayons the wall and you gently guide her to the coloring book but really want to scream ‘I JUST PAINTED THAT WALL!!!’. It’s when you’re fighting with a partner and take a step back to say, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s chill.’

In Observer, you notice a broader range of choices that weren’t visible from Self. They were always there, but not habituated like the more-used options. My book HOW? teaches how to do this.

Rule #1: Make important decisions from Observer to perceive a broad range of choices.

Sample

CRITERIA

Values and Beliefs – the basis of any decision making criteria – are the primary determinants for making important decisions as they defend and maintain who you are and what you stand for. Indeed, people often delay making a decision because they fear they’ll overlook something significant, because they don’t know the full set of risks involved.

From Observer you can consider the underlying values that must be maintained in the new decision. They’re often personal, although in team decision making the group must collaboratively agree to the values they want to maintain.

Here’s a personal tale of how my switch from Self to Observer converted my criteria to more authentic, less reactive values and a positive outcome.

A mythic row with a dear friend ended our relationship. He betrayed me! He lied! He broke my values-based criteria of honesty, of my ‘right to be respected!’ But as time passed I began to get a different perspective: I must love with ‘Ands’ not ‘Buts’. That meant (to me) I had to find a way to be in relationship. So I shifted my criteria (and Self perspective) from honesty and ‘right to be respected’ to my Observer perspective: ‘How do we love each other AND be respectful and honest?’ With this new criteria our relationship had a way forward.

Rule #2: Know the criteria you want to meet for your decision and write down some thoughts on what it will look like when it’s met.

GOALS

Goals often include specific target actions and a time limit for completion, and require a well-worded goal. So “I want to go on a diet to lose weight” becomes “I will do the research to find the best foods for my body to find and maintain its best weight.”

Goals must include details that can be evaluated or you run the risk of failure. The more specificity, the higher the possibility of success.

Rule #3: Set a goal using very specific words and expected results.

RISKS

All decisions carry some sort of risk. What risk are you willing to take? Are you willing to switch values? Are you willing to let go of people in your life? Relationships? Money?

Before making a final decision it’s important to know the risks involved in the change caused by the final outcome. Ask the people in any way involved in the final decision what the upsides/downsides are for them. Make sure you pose questions from Observer so you instill as little bias as possible. I’ve invented Facilitative Questions™ that lead to unconscious circuits where decision criteria are stored. Again, I teach them in HOW?.

Your final decision may not be able to address all risks but knowing them in advance is valuable for goal setting. Where there’s a chance the risks won’t be fully addressed, do as much advance work as possible to reduce the fallout.

Rule #4: before making a final decision, know the risks involved for the people, policies, values, etc.

STEPS

Often people begin seeking information too soon. I suggest you wait until you’ve determined the goals, risks, and criteria so you’ll have a more accurate foundation. Then:

Assemble all the elements involved: Know the goals, criteria, people and fall-out from each. Include gathering data (from Observer, to minimize bias) from the people who will be touched by your decision. While you might not be able to meet their criteria, you’ll at least have an idea of the risks.
Determine and manage the risks: Fully understand the distance between where you are now and where you will be once the decision is made. Will the same values prevail? Will jobs or situations be changed? How will this affect the status quo? How will you deal with any fallout?
Gather data: Once you know the risks, goals and criteria involved, gather supporting data (both internal and external) that ensures you’ve got the important elements covered and the risks managed best you can.
Weight the options: You’ll now have the information you need to understand the types of choices and risks. Go back to the drawing board. Get into Observer. Write down a hierarchy of criteria to meet and see how/where they match the options. Weight them according to risks and values. Know precisely the fallout.
Carry out the decision: make sure to personally manage any fallout.

And good luck! Should you require some team coaching to facilitate an important decision, please contact me: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_____________

Sharon Drew Morgen September 2nd, 2024

Posted In: Change Management, Communication

Change gets a bad rap. Confusion, time delays, resistance, goal resets. We keep trying new approaches to change management, but none of them seem to work. The reason? We’re not addressing the underlying, systemic issues that create and maintain them. Once we know and execute the steps to congruent change, the problems fall away.

My orientation around change originates in my profession: I invent systemic brain change models for sales, leadership, coaching, change management, and training, all presuming that change is systemic, with lots of moving parts that must collaborate for a successful outcome.

Currently, change agents merely attempt to change the outcomes, the activities they want fixed. But behaviors are outputs, end results. It seems obvious to me that you can’t change anything by starting at the end. Change must be initiated from the source, by reprogramming the input.

Trying to change a behavior by merely trying to change a behavior is like trying to change a table (output) into a chair (output) without going back to the initial programming that generated the chair to begin with.

Sample

My latest book lays out specifically HOW to get into the unconscious to find the right circuits for change and decision making and HOW to generate new circuits for learning and change.

THE STEPS OF CHANGE

Both the change process and decision making have specific steps that must be addressed sequentially (and this can be iterative), starting at the very beginning.

1. Full data set: to understand, quantify and assess the problem, to end up with congruent, systemic change, it’s necessary to assemble and analyze the full set of ‘givens’. This sounds easier than it is. Since change is systemic it’s necessary that all elements that have caused and maintained the problem be included from the very beginning. Without the complete data set it’s impossible to fully grasp the problem, let alone understand the needs or goals change would address.

Obviously you can’t know the full data set of a problem until you’ve assembled and gotten feedback from the people and job descriptions who touch the current problem and will be involved in the ultimate solution. I’m always surprised when I hear leaders say they’ve omitted gathering data from front line workers or middle managers. This fact alone causes resistance and time delays!

Rule: to understand or define a problem and design a specific outcome, wait until you have the full data set of how it was created and maintained.

2. Workarounds: Once the problem is fully defined and all who touch the problem and solution are engaged, it’s necessary to ascertain if it’s possible to fix it by trialing solutions that are available and familiar. Often this involves brainstorming and taking time away to ponder. I have my clients tell their folks to go away for a week, have small group meetings in which they think and brainstorm before coming back with the group’s thoughts.

To maintain Systems Congruence, any change must be congruent with the beliefs, rules and norms of the system. Again, this means the full complement of job descriptions, etc. must be involved. Overlooking them means resistance.

A good way to avoid this is to first try known resources (familiar consultants, expanded versions of current software, etc.) that adhere to the same beliefs, norms and rules.

Rule: Once a problem is correctly defined, first trial solutions among known/familiar resources.

3. Risk Management: If there are no available known resources, the next step involves the biggest issue: risk. Until the risk of change is understood and found manageable by the folks who will be affected by it, there will be no decision to change (or at least major resistance).

Rule: if the risk of change is higher than maintaining the status quo, no change will be made. Any proposed change must carry the same or a lower risk than the initial problem.

4. Buy-in for change: If there’s no known solution that will resolve the problem, and everyone agrees the risk is manageable, an external solution – a consultant, a piece of software, a training program, a product purchase – can be sought with everyone’s approval.

Rule: whatever is brought in must match the norms, beliefs, rules of the system, and everyone who will touch the new solution must buy-in.

Sample

Here’s my book that details the 13 steps of change. While seeming to be a book for sales, it’s a deep dive into the specific steps people make during decision making.

LEADERSHIP MUST FACILITATE

From what I’ve experienced with my clients, change is too often approached as merely a behavior change activity with leaders defining the problem with less-than accurate, or incomplete, data, assumptions, and almost always without the right complement of people included.

In other words, the problem gets mis-defined, people’s beliefs and egos get out of whack, a full complement of creative and needed suggestions get overlooked, and resistance rears its ugly head.

I’ve got some questions to help you think this through:

What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to give up the control you prefer and not determine any outcomes or make any assumptions until you’ve assembled the full complement of people to provide the full data set?
How will you all know to assess the risk? Whose voices must be included? What does risk look like?
What will you need to do differently to step back from any control you’re accustomed to having during a project?

I hope this has helped you create change management projects devoid of problems. If you need to talk the issues through or need help designing a project with no resistance and less time wastage, I’d be glad to help. Sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_______________________

Sharon Drew Morgen August 19th, 2024

Posted In: Change Management

Do you need to lose 10 pounds? Are you exercising as much as you need to? What about your eating habits – should you be eating healthier?

I bet there are several things you need to do to be healthier that you’re not doing. Is it because you don’t have a need? Nope. It’s because ‘need’ is not your criteria. It might be a time issue, or a priority issue. You might be in denial. Maybe it’s because you need agreement from a spouse.

Let’s take this thinking to sales. Sales professionals search for folks with a ‘need’ to sell their solution to, yet their closing rates are low. When I began training sales folks in 1987 the close rate was 8%. Now it’s between 4-5%. One of the reasons for the failure is the belief that someone with a need is a prospect. Sellers are seeking out the wrong people.

This focus on ‘need’ was initiated by Dale Carnegie – in 1937. And yes, sadly, much of modern sales is based on the same precepts Carnegie espoused in How to Make Friends and Influence People. Find folks with a need. Establish a relationship. Then sell them what (you think) they need. In 1937, people needed sales folks to help them explain how to resolve problems and they were a respected, necessary profession.

But with the internet providing content and solutions, with global communications now possible so an entire team can be involved with decision making regardless of their location, it’s time for some new thinking. A buying decision is no longer as simple as finding someone with a need: it’s a risk management problem before it’s a solution choice issue. ‘Need’ is not the reason people buy. Risk is.

THE RISK OF CHANGE

The biggest reason folks don’t change or do something different is risk. Unless people fully understand the risk involved with a possible change, or the downsides it might cause to their stability, they will maintain their status quo. After all, it’s been ‘good-enough’ until now.

I’ve spent decades unpacking decision making and change and developing change models for sales, coaching, leadership, and healthcare. What I’ve discovered is change isn’t as simple as merely doing something different. To actually resolve a problem and do something different several things musts occur:

All information about the problem must be gathered and assessed. Unless everyone and everything that’s caused and maintains a problem provides input does it even get defined as a problem.
Once identified as a problem, people try to fix the problem using workarounds or known resources. They do not begin by going ‘outside’ for a fix as that would bring unknowns into the equation and cause unknowable risk.
Only after a workaround proves unworkable are outside fixes considered. But these are also problematic as the risk of using anything outside the system is unknowable. Everyone must gather to assess the risk of fixing the problem with an external resource. If the cost of the fix is deemed higher than maintaining the status quo, the problem will be maintained.

It’s only when it’s understood that the risk of bringing in something new won’t break the system, and there’s buy-in for specific fixes, does everyone agree to look outside for a solution and self-identify as buyers and become prospects.

Sample

The same applies with buyers. People only make a purchase when they understand and can manage their risk of change, regardless of need. No sales person – or coach, or leader – can understand that risk as it’s unique and idiosyncratic to a specific situation. The question then becomes: how can sellers facilitate a buying decision when much of it involves off-line decisions that must be made before people even self-identify as buyers?

WHEN DO PEOPLE BECOME BUYERS?

There are 13 steps in a buying decision; in only the last 4 of them (10-13) do people consider themselves prospects. Before that they’re merely people seeking to solve an internal problem; they can’t even know the extent of their need until they finish assessing the people, change elements, buy-in problems and possibilities, and know their risk of change. Not to mention they start off believing they can solve their own problem and haven’t yet determined they have any need at all. Sadly, even when our solution might obviously serve them, they won’t notice until then.

If you begin by seeking out folks with need you will

pose biased questions to provide you enough content to pose more biased questions that produce biased answers;
listen for a hint that folks ‘need’ your solution so you believe you’ve got a real prospect (hence your pipeline is filled with folks who will never buy);
pitch according to what you think you heard and you think they need, a push strategy which may turn not-ready-to-buy people off – people in their early stages of discovery but who WILL become good prospects once they’ve gone through their steps and understood their risk;
overlook folks who really may become buyers once they’ve traversed their steps of change.

And the time it takes them to figure out their risk is the length of the sales cycle. They will do this with you or without you. Right now they’re doing it without you, and you’re closing only those who have finally figured it out.

But by seeking out people who are already in the process of trying to solve a problem your solution can resolve you can quickly and efficiently facilitate them through to a decision and create trust.

By restricting your prospecting to folks with ‘need’, you’re seeking people who either don’t know they need you (and you must convince them you’re right), don’t recognize a problem at all (and you must convince them you know more than they do), or are in the process of solving their problem and haven’t yet determined their risk (great prospects who haven’t yet self-identified as buyers).

So your choices are: wait (and keep calling, lowering your price, keep them in your pipeline, waste time on them, etc.); or help them figure out their risk (and sales is not involved here).

TIME FOR NEW THINKING

With a known 5% close rate, it’s time for some new thinking. I’ve got a question, and it’s not a simple one to answer: Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different processes: the buying decision process on the Buy Side, or the selling process on the Sell Side.

By focusing only on the Sell Side, you either keep prospecting until you find those who have figured out their risk already and self-identify as ‘buyers’ (5%) or keep them in your pipeline, waste a lot of time chasing them, and never close.

I invented Buying Facilitation® (BF) for sellers to find prospects in the process of trying to solve a problem they can resolve – those who WILL buy once they understand their risk – and facilitate them down their 13 steps of change and decision making to the point where they self-identify as buyers. It involves

listening for systems (to avoid the bias in standard questions and to hear the underlying issues conventional listening may not pick up);
use Facilitative Questions (a new form of question I invented that lead people down their steps of change to their decision making criteria with no bias from the Asker);
use Presumptive Summaries (so they recognize what they’re missing in their thinking);
traverse the 13 steps (to ensure people assemble all the right people and search out proper workarounds. It might lead them to possible competitors. But they’d do this anyway. Might as well serve them and engender trust.).

Once people recognize they have a problem, know precisely how to define it, can’t find an easy fix within their sphere, and understand their risk of change, THEN self-identify as buyers and trust you. They won’t buy from anyone else, the process has taken you a quarter of the time a normal prospecting engagement would have taken, and you’ve got a competitive edge.

Seeking out people with a ‘need’ leads to low close rates and a lot of wasted time running after people in your pipeline that either aren’t ready or won’t ever be buyers. The question is: Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy. Your choice.

_______________________

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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, 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 22nd, 2024

Posted In: Change Management

Leaders, consultants, coaches, sales and healthcare professionals often use influencing strategies to lead their patients, teammates, prospects and clients to action. But is there fallout from the influencing strategies? Do they lead to resistance? How do the clients and prospects, the teams and patients, experience being influenced? How often do the strategies themselves cause an irreparable relationship fissure? And is it possible to facilitate permanent change without using influencing strategies?

I recently presented my <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/learning-facilitation” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>new training model</a> (an instructional design that generates new neural circuits in a Learner’s brain to store, understand, and retain the new content) at the Learning Ideas Conference where I met dozens of trainers and instructional designers, all kind folks seeking the best approaches to training. When I asked many of them how their Learners were storing and retaining the new skills, they looked at me blankly. Some shrugged, some were troubled that they hadn’t thought of it. None of them had a clue: they only considered the advocate side.

But it’s not just the training model that only considers one side of the equation: Do docs know how patients are hearing them – or if their suggestions collided against the patient’s beliefs? Do coaches know how clients understand their questions and stories? I’ve trained 100,000 sales professionals and not one of them understood how their buyers buy. Do any professionals know, or consider, how their approaches affect the recipients?

We know how to pitch, tell, prove, advise, inform, teach, enlighten, guilt, align as we work at getting our message heard. But what is occurring on the other side? Is our message perceived as intended? And how do we create messages that will not only be accepted, but be respectful to our clients, teammates and patients?

INFLUENCER VS INFLUENCEE

Many books and programs are dedicated to influencing. But they fail to mention the possible downsides. What happens for the influencEE while we’re influencING? How many clients don’t accurately hear/understand what’s been suggested (a standard problem because brains don’t <a href=”http://didihearyou.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>translate incoming words</a> according to a Speaker’s intended meaning)? Or achieve the opposite results because they convert what they think they’ve heard into reasons to maintain existing habits? Do influencERs know who hears the new ideas as oppositional and set up an immediate resistance to our input? A resistance to our relationship? How many clients do we lose? How many change projects meet resistance? How many patients maintain their problematic behaviors?

Given the failure rates of many professions (90% failure to retain in training; 95% failure to close in sales; 97% failure to adopt to change in healthcare and change management or any <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/behavior-modification-doesnt-modify-behaviors-an-essay-on-why-it-fails-and-what-to-use” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Behavior Mod</a> activity) there’s obviously a problem not being addressed.

In many instances, influencERs believe they’re working from the influencEEs best intentions. Is it possible influencERs are merely trying to get others to do what they want them to do?

Conventional influencing strategies use psychological principles to produce agreement, using tactics to inspire people to change their behaviors (voting or buying or donating or change) according to the needs of the influencER. Here’s Bob Cialdini (author of Influence: the psychology of persuasion) explaining why generating a ‘relationship’ is a successful influencing strategy:
“I describe how individuals who can be convinced that a communicator shares a meaningful personal or social identity with them become remarkably more susceptible to the communicator’s persuasive appeals.” (Robert Cialdini, Comment on This Edition of Influence, pg 5) (Italics mine)
Over the years, psychological principles have emerged to garner compliance. Cialdini says there are seven ways to ‘get in’ to someone’s confidence so they’re willing to comply: reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, commitment, consistency, and unity. He says that by doing these things it’s possible to produce ‘a kind of automatic, mindless compliance…a willingness to say yes without thinking first.” (Robert Cialdini, Comment on This Edition of Influence, pg 7)

It’s a science: by using someone’s ‘trigger features’ and ‘action patterns’ to hack into precise places in the influencEEs brain to prompt – say ‘yes’ to – an action, influencERs work at getting someone to submit to their goal: one person (influencER) attempting to cause another (influencEE) to act according to the influencERs needs.

THE OTHER SIDE

Some influencERs believe their attempts to influence decisions are merited because they’re doing ‘good’. Years ago Stephen Covey (author of the renown Seven Habits of Highly Successful People) hired me to train <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/what-is-buying-facilitation-what-sales-problem-does-it-solve” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Buying Facilitation®</a> to the sales folks at his Leadership Center because he recognized it as an <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/sales-as-a-spiritual-practice-3″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>ethical selling model</a>. His folks were the most manipulative group I’d ever trained. When I asked them if they’d be willing to learn to sell by <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/how-why-and-when-buyers-buy-2″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>facilitating buying</a> instead of manipulating, they said, “But why? We’re entitled to manipulate! We’ve got an important model that everyone needs to learn!”

Do influencERs ever wonder what’s going on with influencEEs? Do they know if there’s fallout to the relationship? Or if trust is affected? Is the downside worth it? Sadly, many influencERs overlook what the influencEE may be experiencing as a result of their persuasion tactics:
<ul>
<li>Distrust</li>
<li>Manipulation</li>
<li>Judgment</li>
<li>Reduced self-esteem</li>
<li>Feeling less-than</li>
<li>Powerlessness</li>
<li>Anger, annoyance, disrespect</li>
<li>Loss of agency</li>
<li>Loss of relationship</li>
</ul>
I realize that some professions – sales, marketing – work with strangers and, sadly, feel they’ve got less of a stake in negative outcomes. But some professions, like coaching, leadership, healthcare, have ongoing relationships with their influencEEs that may be irreparably damaged.

I believe there are better ways to serve clients and patients that don’t involve any form of control and are even more successful.

I’ve been <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>developing and training facilitation models</a> that enable Others to generate their own change based on a Servant Leader model that eschews manipulation and influencing strategies.
<a href=”https://mind-brainconnection.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”><img class=”fusionResponsiveImage aligncenter” src=”https://staticapp.icpsc.com/icp/resources/mogile/193273/dfe67cd4e9ce7d9d4d9e657a3fc42f93.jpeg” alt=”” width=”108″ height=”auto” /></a><a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Sample</a>
Here are the principles I work from:
1. Everyone has their own answer. It will not be the same answer you’ve come up with but it might be close enough to make your solution viable for them AND eschew manipulation. By helping them discover how (not why!) they do what they do and finding it incongruent with their beliefs, by leading them to <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/you-cant-change-a-behavior-by-trying-to-change-a-behavior” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>use their own values</a> and mental models to develop their own new choices, they will change, feel good about themselves, trust you as a facilitator for your guidance, and end up changing, adopting, or buying from you – with integrity.
2. Develop trust. Recognize that your goal may be directly opposed to the Other’s. Spend collaborative time uncovering each other’s goals and negotiating a way forward that is win/win for all.
3. Avoid resistance entirely by collaborating. Are you both working with the same fact pattern? From the same beliefs and goals? What needs to happen to get on the same page toward a goal agreeable to both? What actions do you both agree need to be taken? Resistance is the output of an influencER pushing an agenda that an influencEE hasn’t agreed with.
4. Encourage self-esteem and agency. By facilitating Others through to their own ability to make their own changes, you’re encouraging trust and moving your relationship forward toward loyalty over time. Plus providing them with confidence, and acting with Servant-Leader values.
My win/win <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/how-the-mind-brain-connection-generates-change-and-decision-making” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Change Facilitation</a> model uses a <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/facilitative-questions-questions-that-facilitate-change-with-integrity” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>unique form of question</a> and a <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/the-13-steps-of-change” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>13 step</a> process mirroring how change happens in the brain to facilitate Others – buyers, teams, coaching clients, patients, teenagers – through to permanent change and good results. By leading Others through their own, personal, steps of belief-based change, they can discover problems they want to fix that they might not have otherwise discovered. So the influencER becomes a real leader without manipulating, seeking compliance, or hacking into Another’s patterns to get your own needs met.

I work with teams, sellers, and coaches to enable permanent, integrity-based change. If you’re seeking to facilitate better results while inspiring folks on your team, your practice, to generate their own solutions, I look forward to speaking. <a href=”mailto:sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com</a>
__________________________
Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor<a href=”https://buyingfacilitation.com/blog/buying-facilitation-new-way-sell-influences-expands-decisions/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> Buying Facilitation®</a>, listening/communication (<a href=”https://didihearyou.com/read” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>What? Did you really say what I think I heard?</a>), change management (<a href=”https://sharondrewmorgen.com/the-how-of-change/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>The How of Change™</a>), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book <a href=”https://mind-brainconnection.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>HOW?</a><a href=”https://mind-brainconnection.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making</a>, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and<a href=”https://dirtylittlesecretsbook.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> </a><a href=”https://dirtylittlesecretsbook.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell</a>). 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. <a href=”https://www.sharon-drew.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>www.sharon-drew.com</a> She can be reached at <a href=”mailto:sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com</a>.

Sharon Drew Morgen July 15th, 2024

Posted In: Change Management

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how hard ‘change’ is. Take heart! Change only seems hard because of the way we’re going about it. I’ve been developing systemic brain change models for decades and I’d like to offer my two cents to explain the reasons there’s so much unnecessary failure.

You see, for permanent change to occur (new habits, behaviors, decisions, change management initiatives) the brain must have new circuitry. Too often, current change management/ behavior change models focus on behavior change and omit making alterations to the brain circuits. But this fails: trying to change without generating the new brain circuitry to prompt it is like expecting your bike to ride itself without you peddling, then blaming the bike.

CHANGE MUST COME FROM THE BRAIN

Because all actions (thoughts, behaviors, opinions, habits) are a result – an output – of instructions received from the brain, without modified instructions we continue doing the same thing and getting the same results. Unfortunately, using discipline or rational reasons to change don’t prompt new circuit configurations. Let me explain.

Behaviors are merely responses – the outward manifestation, or outputs – to signals sent from brain circuits. Speaking physiologically, there’s no way to change a behavior by merely trying to change a behavior: to get a different output, new behavior or choice, it’s necessary to go directly to the source (the brain) and make the changes in the circuits themselves or create new ones.

Current change models try to fix the symptom and ignore modifying the initiation point they emanate from.

My book HOW? details the mind-brain connection and how to construct the specific circuitry to generate the choice we desire.

Sample

In this article I’ll simply explain how our brains cause change, and why your attempts at permanent change aren’t more consistent.

CHANGE ISN’T HARD

Sadly, change gets a bad rap. Perceived wisdom believes that ‘change is hard’ and ‘no one likes change’ because of the resistance that results when behavior-based models are used. When approached from the brain, not so much.

We’re a culture dominated by the mind. Information. Data. Content. Stories. Facts. Our minds certainly need data to think with, to learn from and weight decisions with. But it becomes a problem when we want to make a change. You see, information – the mind – doesn’t cause change. Brains do.

We begin with a flawed assumption: we assume we can effect change because we desire it or work at it or provide ‘rational’ reasons for it. But when we neglect to involve the brain we fail: change is a brain thing; information is a mind thing. Changing the brain is the precursor to changing the mind.

The problem is our brain’s laziness. Because of the way our brains process data we end up with either short-lived change, no change, or resistance.

CHANGE IS A BRAIN THING

Instructing outputs is what brains do: there is nothing we see, hear, do, think or feel that hasn’t been instructed from our brains. We rely on our brains for everything – thoughts, understanding from books, behaviors and activities, colors, what we hear (sounds and words).

We forget this when seeking change. Using conventional change models – Behavior Modification, Cognitive Behavior Change – try to change with mind-based mastery like discipline, regulation, rational thinking, habit creation, practice, and training.

But without a new home, without new circuits to house new instructions, the mind has no way of carrying out our wishes. Attempts to change behaviors without reprogramming the brain will likely fail, regardless of dedication or will. The numbers concur: Organizational Development fails 97% of the time. Training fails to retain the new knowledge 90% of the time. Diets and smoking cessation fail 97% of the time. Sales fails 95% of the time. Even in our own lives: With all the discipline in the world, we have difficulty making behavior changes permanent. Keep weight off? Get organized? Hard to do. Why?

All behaviors, decisions, habits and choices are outputs, end products, generated from instructions sent from specific, historic circuit configurations in our brains.

WHAT IS A BEHAVIOR?

Since so much of what we want to change is behavioral, let’s look at what a behavior is.

A behavior, or any sort of action, thought or choice, is an output arising from a string of brain processes. My Morgenism is ‘A behavior is a Belief in action.’

Simply, the mind sends our brain a signal to ‘do something’ (an input) and the brain complies by sending the signals to a ‘similar-enough’ set of existing circuits that translate the request into instructions for some sort of output.

These signals are mechanical, electro-chemical, and automatic. No meaning or intent involved. Meaning and intent are mind things. Brains, comprised of 86 billion neurons and trillions of neural connections and synapses, are unconscious and just do what they’re told via signals; they don’t judge good/bad, right/wrong.

Here’s a simplified explanation of the string of events:

All incoming words, directions, ideas, promises, etc.
enter our brains as puffs of air (inputs without meaning!) and
get transformed into electro-chemical signals that
eventually get automatically dispatched to ‘similar-enough’ (historic, existing) circuits
for translation into action (outputs, such as new behaviors, decisions, ideas)
via our mind.

Again, there is no meaning, no intent, no thinking involved. Mechanical. Electro-chemical. Automatic. Take a look:

All this occurs in five one-hundreths of a second. So: behaviors are outputs; without inputs, no outputs can exist. Behaviors are a result, an end product of inputs and cannot be modified as such.

HOW WE GET RESISTANCE

All outputs that emerge are specific to an existing circuit: the brain will always produce the same output when the same directives and thoughts are input. So a machine programmed (input) to make a chair will produce (output) the same chair each time. To make a table you must reprogram the machine.

Given there are billions of bits of data coming into our brains every second our mind ignores, overlooks, forgets, most of it. When we request an action that differs from the circuit that receives it, or make new requests that don’t have a circuit, we get resistance. It’s why we fail when we try to do something different. Without changing the input we’re trying to turn the chair into a table.

When our brains are asked to do something that they have no circuits to interpret we resist or fail or misunderstand: incoming instructions get lost in translation, misinterpretation, or assumption.

This is what happens when we decide to go on another diet for example: our brain references the existing DIET superhighway and we get the same results we got previously. Hence the 97% failure rate. We can force the behavior part for a while, and possibly even lose the weight, but we don’t have the circuits to maintain it.

WHY CHANGE ATTEMPTS FAIL

For any action, any change, any new behavior, habit or choice, we need both the mind and the brain: The mind directs requests to, and carries out instructions from, the brain but doesn’t instigate the activity itself. Think of it like a car’s engine: you turn the car on (i.e. the mind) and it moves (the mind) but needs the engine (i.e. the brain) to make it work.

And herein lie the problem. Because our behaviors emerge from established circuits (called Superhighways) that have been created and sustained during our lifetime, we keep doing what we’ve always done regardless of any differences we desire: it’s how our circuitry is programmed. Obviously we’re limited to choices that embrace our unique histories and mental models and… here is the annoying part… maintains the status quo.

It rules our lives: We live around people of similar political beliefs; our friends share ideas and lifestyles similar to ours; what we read, the TV news we watch, where we take vacations, are largely similar to those in our sphere. Even our curiosity is restricted accordingly. Sadly, we either don’t notice unfamiliar content or have problems accepting ideas foreign to us.

But, in general, this works well for us and keeps us comfortable – until we want to do something ‘different’, or try to change/create a habit, or when we’re involved in a change management process in our companies that requires new activities.

THERE IS NO REALITY

And that brings up another item that causes us to fail: we seem to think there is something called ‘rational’ and we try to do ‘what’s right’. But there is no reality. Basically, our brains – yes, back to the culprit – make up our reality from the lives we’ve lived. As David Eagleman says in The Brain,

“..our picture of the external world isn’t necessarily an accurate representation. Our perception of reality has less to do with what’s happening out there, and more to do with what’s happening inside our brain.” [pg 40]

“Each of us has our own narrative and we have no reason not to believe it. Our brains are built on electrochemical signals that we interpret as our lives and experience… there’s no single version of reality. Each brain carries its own truth via billions of signals triggering chemical pulses and trillions of connections between neurons. [pg 73-74] [bold mine]

Indeed, everything we think, hear, decide, and choose is an output, an interpretation made by, and directed from our brains. We’re not in control.

So one last reminder: Since all activity is an output from directions our brains give our mind, you can’t change a behavior (mind) by trying to change a behavior (mind) as there are no accompanying brain circuits to generate new directives for new outputs.

Got it?

_____________________________

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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, 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 3rd, 2024

Posted In: Change Management

In the late 1970s, I approached my studies for an MSc in Health Sciences with an idealistic goal to create ways to promote wellness and prevent disease. Although life took me in a different direction, I’ve tried to stay caught up on healthcare.

Recently, I’ve noticed a committed effort in this country to assist the under-served: food services that offer nutritional training as an outpatient service in hospitals and training in healthy eating for patients; outpatient and home support for treatment and prevention for diabetes, obesity, heart disease, cancer sufferers; school lunches and Pre-K programs. I hadn’t been aware of the extent, or creativity, of the outreach of caregiving professionals. We’re on our way to understanding that prevention is preferable to treatment.

The bad news is that some easily treatable or preventable conditions (diabetes, heart conditions, cancer, obesity) are not garnering the necessary buy-in from patients to make the needed healthy choices.

With the best will in the world, providers – intent on designing outreach programs to encourage behavioral change and choice – are facing non-compliance: even with adequate funding, multi-faceted prevention services, and supervised support, patients are resisting and not adopting the necessary changes to generate long term health. What’s going on?

STATUS QUO

The problem is that the methods we’re using to inspire healthful behavior aren’t facilitating compliance. But with a shift in thinking, buy-in is achievable. It’s a belief-changing thing, not a behavior-change thing.

I’ll begin with a brief discussion of change and how we unwittingly fight to remain stable regardless of its (in)effectiveness. Buy-in is a change management problem.

We’re intelligent. We know smoking and sugar are bad, that exercise and fresh veggies are good, yet we continue to smoke and eat processed foods. We know that telling, advising, or offering ‘relevant’ and ‘rational’ information is largely ineffective and invokes resistance, yet we continue to tell, advise, and suggest, knowing that the odds of success are against us and blaming the Other for non-compliance.

When faced with the need to change, we tend to continue our current behaviors with just a few shifts, hoping we’ll get different results (Hello, Einstein.).

The problem is that change is a systems problem that demands buy-in from the very things that created the problem in the first place – much more intricate than knowing there’s a problem.

Let’s look at the problem by understanding why people keep doing what they do. I’ll be discussing this in terms of systems.

For those interested in a deeper discussion, I’ve broken down change and decision making from the brain in my new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change, and decision making.

Sample

OUR STATUS QUO LIKES STABILITY

Each person, each family (everyone, actually), is a system of rules and goals, beliefs and values, history and foundational norms often called our Mental Models our status quo. It represents who we are and the organizing principles that we wake up with every morning; it’s habitual, normalized, accepted, and replicated day after day – including what created the identified problem to begin with – with the problems baked in. Unfortunately our automatic patterns cause us to keep doing what we’ve always done and has become comfortable.

Any proposed change challenges the status quo and invites risk and possible disruption. When a problem shows up, diabetes for example, the patient has a dilemma: either continue their comfortable patterns and be assured of a continued problem, or dismantle the status quo and risk disruption with unknowable consequences.

How does she get up every day if she needs to eat differently and must convince her family that the food they’ve been eating for generations isn’t healthy? How does she avoid dessert when the family is celebrating? And the family’s favorite recipe is her cookies!

Change means the status quo has to reconfigure itself around new/different/unknown rules, beliefs, and outcomes to become something that can maintain itself with the ‘new’ as normalized. Because – and this is important to understand – until people and their unconscious norms

recognize that something is wrong/ineffective,
recognize that whatever they’ve been doing unconsciously has created (and will maintain) the problem,
know how to make congruent change that includes core values and systems norms,
know exactly the level of disruption that will occur to the status quo, and
make a belief shift that is acceptable to the rest of the system and enables new behaviors,

they will not change, regardless of its efficacy of the value of the solution.

In other words, until or unless someone understands their risk of change, AND are willing/able to do the deeply internal work of designing new habits, beliefs, and goals, AND manage any fallout, people will not change regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.

UNCONSCIOUS PATTERNS HARD TO NOTICE

Why isn’t a rational argument, or an obvious problem, enough to inspire behavior change? Because we’re dealing with long-held and largely unconscious patterns, habits, and normalized activities and beliefs that become part of our neural circuitry. And because we’re trying to push change from the outside – usually through information, advice, and activities – before the system has figured out how to change in the least risky way.

Rational argument is ignored because our unconscious fights to maintain the status quo: we’ve been ‘like this’ for so long and it’s been ‘good enough’ to keep us stable. Change must be agreed to from our deepest norms before being willing to change behaviors. And until then, we can’t even accurately hear incoming data if it runs counter to our beliefs.

THE INTRICACY OF BUY-IN

Change is a belief change issue. By focusing on behavior change before facilitating belief change, we’re putting our status quo at risk. Let’s look at what a behavior is.

Behaviors are merely the expression – the representation, the output – of our beliefs. Think of it this way: behaviors express our beliefs much like the output of a software program is a result of the coding in the programming. To change the output, you don’t start by changing the functionality; you first change the coding which automatically changes the functionality. Like a dummy terminal, our behaviors only represent our internal programming.

WHY PROFESSIONALS DON’T PROMOTE CHANGE

How does this all apply to Healthcare? Our current healthcare system considers providers to be experts with the ‘right’ answers. Providers wrongly believe that if they share, advise, gather, or promote the right information with rational reasons why change is necessary, Others will comply. But our patients and clients

hear us through biased filters and cannot hear our message as meant;
feel pushed to act in ways they’re unaccustomed to or that go against their beliefs;
resist and reject when expected to act in ways outside their norm;
lose trust in us when we push them.

Because of their history, because brains often mistranslate incoming words, because the new may negatively touch their beliefs – for any number of reasons – information ‘in’ without systemic change may not prompt a hoped-for response.

So how can we effect compliance if offering information or diets or exercise programs, for example, isn’t effective?

PEOPLE CAN ONLY CHANGE THEMSELVES

Start by recognizing that people must change themselves. Instead of seeking better and better ways to offer advice (and getting rejected and ignored), we must help people make their own discoveries and systemic changes.

Here are some ways you can enter a change conversation to enable buy-in and avoid resistance:

Shift your goal. Your job is to help Another be all they can be. It’s not about you getting them to accept the change you believe necessary, but enabling them to design the change they need, in a way that concurs with their beliefs and values.
Enter differently. Enter with a goal/outcome of facilitating change and buy-in, not to change behavior. They must change their own behavior. From within. Their own way.
Examine the status quo. First help Others recognize and assemble all of the elements that created and maintain their status quo – not merely the ones involved with the problem as you perceive it, but the entire system that created and maintains it. Outsiders can’t recognize the full complement of givens within another’s status quo. Starting with a focus on what you perceive is the problem (or the Other recognizes as a problem) inspires rejection.
Traverse the brain’s steps to change. There are 13 steps to change that must be traversed for all change to occur. Unless all – all – of the elements have been included, recognize a need to change, and know precisely how to make the appropriate shifts so a stable systems results, they will resist.
Behavior is an expression and not a unique act. We must recognize that exhibited behaviors are expressing beliefs. Change must occur at the belief level. Trying to push or inspire behavior change is at the wrong level and causes resistance.
Everyone has their own answers. They may not be what you would prefer and might not make sense given the outcomes. Help them recognize how and when and if to change. But not using information as it can’t be understood.

Here are some examples of how I’ve added Change Facilitation to elements of health care in a way that promotes belief change first, ideas that might inspire you to think differently:

Intake forms: instead of merely gathering the data you think you need (which you’ve inadvertently biased), why not enlist patient buy-in at the earliest opportunity? It’s possible to add a few Facilitative Questions (I developed a form of question that enables unbiased systemic change and decision making and eschews information gathering. See examples below.) to your forms to start the patient off recognizing you, and including you, as a partner at the very beginning of your relationship and their route to healthful choices:

We are committed to helping you achieve the goals you want to achieve. What would you need to see from us to help you down your path to health? What could we do from our end that would best enable you to make whatever changes you might want to make?

Group prevention/treatment: instead of starting off by sharing new food or exercise plans, let’s add some change management skills to the goals of the group. By giving them direction around facilitating each other’s change issues, you can enable the group to discuss potential fallout to any proposed change, determine what change would look like, and begin discussions on how to approach each aspect of risk together to recognize different paths to success. Then the whole group can support each other’s different paths to success:

As we form this group, what would we all need to believe to incorporate everyone’s needs into our goals? If there are different goals and needs, how do we best support each other to ensure we each achieve our goals?

Doctor/patient communication: instead of a medical person offering ideas or information, make sure you achieve buy-in for change first. This encourages a patient to self-examine their unconscious behaviors while trusting the provider.

It seems you are suffering from diabetes. We’ve got nutritional programs, group support, book recommendations. But I’d first like to help you determine what health means for you. How will you know when it’s time to consider shifting some of your health choices to open up a possibility of treating your diabetes in a way that doesn’t diminish your lifestyle?

A healthy patient, or any desire to change in a way that benefits a more balanced life, is the goal. Be willing to enable change and compliance, rather than attempt to manage it, influence it, or control it. I’ve got some articles on these topics if you wish further reading: Practical Decision Making; Questioning Questions; Trust – what is it and how to initiate it; Resistance to Guidance; Influencers vs Facilitators.

______________________

Sharon Drew Morgen May 6th, 2024

Posted In: Change Management

When Dale Carnegie published How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1937 he laid the foundation for sales thinking that continues today: find folks with a need, get into a relationship, and tell them about the features, functions, and benefits of your solution in a way that induces them to buy it. But it’s no longer relevant. The industry faces a less-then 5% close rate, a 55% turnover of sales professionals, and 75% of people prefer not to engage sales people at all.

What’s changed? Well for starters, it’s no longer 1937: When Carnegie was king there was no direct way to meaningfully connect with a prospect unless they lived nearby. Phones were party line; travel was with Model T Fords. And the main marketing vehicles were Look magazine and the Sears Catalogue. Your neighbors were your customers and you were a necessary element in their decision: people relied on sales professionals to understand features, functions and benefits of products that could help them.

Those days are gone, but the sales industry continues to apply the same story:

just find people (the new art of finding names is a billion-dollar industry)
with needs that match what we’re selling (seemingly evident from the biased questions we pose to ‘expose a need’) and
provide well-composed (another billion-dollar industry) content using our charming personalities
to push solutions (people can find online) onto those we’ve found and they’ll buy.

But they don’t. Yet the industry continues to seek out people with ‘needs that match what we’re selling.’ When they don’t buy we say they’re stupid, ill-informed, seeking a lower price, or….

We’re merely finding the people who were going to buy anyway, the low hanging fruit, at the end of their decision cycle. No one’s noticed the foundational premises we’ve used for close to a century, techniques designed for a different time, are no longer relevant:

Folks with a seeming ‘need’ are now dispersed teams, making it difficult for them to understand their full problem set, let alone agree to something they need;
Getting into ‘relationship’ with, or gathering information from ‘a prospect’ is moot as there is no longer ‘a prospect’;
The features, functions, and benefits of our solutions are posted online, well outside the need for a human to introduce them.

With fewer and fewer buyers, less and less income, and more and more frustration, sellers are leaving their jobs to play musical chairs for jobs with higher earning potential (and commission guarantees) that don’t procure them higher income beyond the guarantee. Because people aren’t buying.

Why aren’t alarm bells ringing? We continue doing what we’ve always done when all rational indicators tell us we’re doing something wrong. The sales industry is suffering from ‘Problem Blindness’: assuming our failures are just ‘the way it is’ as we build more and more tools to fix the very problems they create rather admit failure and change the system altogether.

In this article I will lay out the reasons sales as we’ve known it has become irrelevant, the current struggles of the Buying Decision Journey (a term I coined in 1985), and how sales can reposition itself to become a highly respected and relevant profession. Again.

PART ONE: Why our standard sales thinking no longer works

OUTDATED ASSUMPTIONS

There are several stories here:

Sellers are leaving jobs for similar ones in the hopes they’ll close more sales and earn more money. But without changing the core skills and premises of sales, fewer and fewer people need sellers and close rates will continue to fall. We need a new vision of sales.
Sellers are no longer needed to place solutions; details can be found online. We need a new function that prospects need us for.
Buying decisions involve complex environments and ever-changing norms to be managed. Problem solving is confusing and time-consuming. People need help making their change-related decisions that won’t reverberate back to leadership, job descriptions or the bottom line. These are change management issues that must be resolved before they can consider buying anything.
We treat failure in the industry as if it were inevitable and aren’t attempting to fix it at the source, using the same thinking that cause the very problems they’ve created.

First we must acknowledge there’s a problem: we haven’t progressed beyond using sales as a needs/solution placement tool and face decreasing, and costly, results. Then we must redefine our jobs beyond finding and instigating people to buy and add new tools at the front end to facilitate people through their decision factors.

Right now we’re stuck in a cycle that perpetuates the problem.

Here’s an analogy: Let’s say you open a clothing store with the best cash registers available for efficient transactions, and you’ve overlooked installing fitting rooms, depriving customers of help where they really need help in making a choice. Hmmmmm. Sales keep decreasing! You decide to fix the situation by adding new capability to the cash registers: robots to make transactions even MORE efficient by finding folks in the aisles as they shop. But now, prospective customers feel pursued! Robbed of a way to make their best choice and pursued, they stop shopping in the store altogether. And it’s never occurred to you to bring in fitting rooms.

Sales continues to use the same baseline thinking used since 1937, but now prospects no longer live next door and don’t need anyone explaining features and functions. Yet we continue using what worked for Carnegie, but with sophisticated technology and more manipulation tools, doing the same things over and over again, hoping for different results. All assuming if we can find-em they’ll buy.

We continue thinking of sales tactically. But that’s not how people buy: they buy relationally, and they’re resolving their problems without us. And we’re not helping them where they need help.

I have a question: Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? I assume most sellers would respond ‘Have someone buy’. But that doesn’t seem to be true: using any rational standard, what you’re doing now is failing. Your answer, it would seem, is you’d prefer to sell, regardless of whether or not anyone is buying – which is indeed what’s happening.

Indeed, we haven’t defined the real problem we face as sellers, making it impossible to resolve: instead of finding and providing real support for prospective buyers where they really need our help, we expect them to be where we are looking for them – and blaming them for not being there! Like the joke of the man looking for the lost lug nuts under the lights because he can see better, instead of searching where he lost them.

I have proven out-of-the-box ideas and models that I’ve been teaching in the sales industry for 35 years. They truly serve employees and prospects, find real buyers efficiently, and increase closing rates dramatically in far less time. But they’re not sales! And they don’t equate with anything you’re now doing, so could potentially be rejected. Yet they solve the problems you face. Are you willing to consider doing anything differently?

Before I even introduce you to my new information, the industry must first resolve the core issue: we must stop denying there’s a problem. And then we must stop using sales for prospecting. It was never meant for that.

WHY IS A 5% SUCCESS RATE OK?

When I ran my first Helping Buyers Buy program to KLM in 1987 close rates were 10%. They’re now less than 5% and dropping, an indication that the original thinking is no longer relevant. Yet we accept ‘failure’ as normal for the sales industry. “It’s just the way it is.” But failure is not inevitable. We’re just using the wrong tools for this time in history and bringing on the failure ourselves.

Failure (a 5% close rate is a 95% fail rate) has been accepted as a ‘given’ that’s been normalized and built into the cost of doing business. Sales directors understand this, hire more sellers to make up for the lower closing rates, and do some creative accounting that ignores the real cost of a sale. A sales director recently told me he closes 30%. Thirty percent of what? I asked. Of folks we meet with. What’s the percentage from first prospecting call? Less than 2%. It goes without saying that the prospecting group is listed as a cost center and closed sales are in the profit center.

Let’s get real: Would you go to a dentist with a 95% fail rate? Or get on a plane with a 5% chance of getting you to your destination? You wouldn’t even go to a hairdresser with a 95% fail rate.

Why do we condone and maintain the thinking that leads to a 95% fail rate? Why do we accept the cost of hiring 8x more sales folks who waste most of their work hours chasing people they can’t reach, putting invalid prospects into the pipeline who disappear and won’t take calls, or seeking appointments they can’t get or which don’t end in a sale? Why is it ok to have low close rates and high turnover rates? Why?

Why aren’t these factors a sign that something is wrong? What does the industry need to believe differently so failure is not a ‘given’ and can be rectified?

We are using the sales model for tasks it wasn’t designed to do. It’s a solution placement model, evolved by necessity to include prospecting and qualifying, seeking appointments, and sharing content details – all in the name of making a sale. And for a long time, it worked. But now, in the 21st Century, it’s relevant only in the final stages of a buying decision once people have self-identified as prospects.

REASONS FOR FAILURE

All rational indicators broadcast that what you’ve been doing isn’t working. But until you admit your current practices don’t capture the clients, the revenue, the numbers you seek (i.e. until you admit failure), you will continue selling less, wasting more time, earning less money, having more turnover, and helping fewer people than you deserve.

All the new apps, the new companies that promise to help you close more by finding you names of ‘real’ prospects, are the only ones making money. I recently asked a noted Lead Gen group what the close rate was for the leads they handed over. “I have no idea. That’s not our job. We only send names and have nothing to do with what our clients do with them.”

It doesn’t need to be this way. The sales model as we’ve known it is no longer relevant as the sole tool to make sales. Designed for different times, the originating assumptions capture a tiny subset of people:

those who have figured out that making a purchase is the only way to resolve a problem and worth the risk of change;
those situations in which the full set of stakeholders are involved, bought in, and are ready NOW;
those who carry the cultural- and values-centric criteria of the full stakeholder team.

Even with a real need, a great solution, and a trusting relationship with a vendor, no purchase occurs until everyone buys into the risk of change; the cost of disruption is too high. And sales just keeps trying to push solutions and determine need before folks are actually buyers, before they’ve assembled the complete Buying Decision Team, before they’ve understood their risk of change.

Sales overlooks the change issues that must be addressed before people decide to bring in an external solution (i.e. buy). It’s here we can add a new tool kit and become relevant.

By breaking a buying decision into two segments – the Buy Side change management process AND the Sell Side solution placement process – we 1. begin by finding those on route to becoming buyers and facilitate their change management process as they morph into buyers extremely quickly, then 2. sell. By then they’re ready, willing, and able to buy, already know they need us and are in relationship with us. Right now we have one tool kit: we rely on our solutions as bait.

By recognizing the two legs of the Buying Decision Journey and save the sales element until the first leg is complete, it’s possible to find real prospects on the first call and reduce the sales cycle by at least half. But it gets better: it’s possible to make sellers a sought-after group who can provide real help during the decision process.

But as I’ve said, first you’d need to acknowledge what you’ve been doing is failing and look at the problem from a different angle.

PART TWO: How Buyers Buy

WHY ISN’T SALES RELEVANT NOW?

Let’s begin at the beginning: Buying is not the first thing anyone does. If your car doesn’t start you don’t go straight to a dealership and buy a new one. If your team isn’t communicating skillfully your first action is not to hire a consultant. No. Before you recognize you need to bring in an external solution you’ve got work to do, things to consider, people to assemble to understand the full scope of the problem and brainstorm with, workarounds to trial.

When people first notice a problem they’ve got internal issues to resolve that carry far-reaching consequences if not delicately handled. And while they might eventually require a purchase – eventually being the operative word – these early steps are not based on buying anything. Hence, the sales model doesn’t work here.

Sales overlooks what people must do anyway: the change management piece. In fact until everyone involved buys-in to any changes caused by fixing/reconfiguring the status quo, folks cannot make a purchase regardless of their need or the value of the solution.

Need and solution value are no longer buying motives: risk avoidance is. And because each prospective buyer lives in unique cultures, they face singular, often hidden, and hard-to-discern risks; the goals, apps, and thinking used for selling don’t apply! In fact, until the risks of change are addressed and managed, people aren’t in the market to buy anything and, again, don’t even self-identify as buyers.

Here is a Truth that must be the foundation of sales thinking:

People don’t want to buy anything, merely fix a problem with the least risk to their system. And the time it takes folks to figure all this out is the length of the sales cycle.

Making a purchase is the last – the last – thing people do, and only then when everyone has bought-in and the cost of disruption is manageable. This is what they’re doing when we sit and wait! And we’re not helping them:

figure out how to assemble the right stakeholders (not always obvious and always unique),
find the right workarounds that avoid disruption,
weigh the disruption/change a new solution will generate,
facilitate their journey as they figure out how to inspire buy-in within their culture.

Until these are resolved, folks don’t even self-identify as buyers and will not heed your well-considered content, your charming personality or your great solution.

By avoiding facilitating the journey people must handle on the Buy Side, we’re only finding/closing folks who have determined the cost of change is less than the cost of the status quo and have gotten buy-in for change. Until then they won’t notice, or heed, your efforts as they don’t consider themselves buyers.

PROVIDE THE HELP FOLKS REALLY NEED

A buying decision is a change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue. And this change management process is a conundrum, filled with confusion, false starts, and unfamiliar options – the reason the sales cycle is so long. Sellers sit and wait, push and lower the price, and refer to this as ‘no decision’. But it’s not ‘no decision’, it’s just ‘no purchase’.

The tasks people must complete are cultural, idiosyncratic, and unique to each group. Using the needs-based, solution-placement sales model, there’s no way to connect until they’ve completed their objectives. Until then what they need is different from what we’re offering. This is why they won’t take an appointment, call us back, or read our marketing materials. They’re not ready.

But it’s here that 40% more real prospects reside, people who WILL buy once they’ve completed their change management steps. And it’s here we can become relevant: we can first help them manage change as a precursor to selling.

But we need different assumptions, goals, and skills: we begin by seeking those on route to change and help them traverse the confusing bits that are risk- and change-oriented. Instead of pushing and hoping they’ll close, we can put on a ‘facilitation’ hat and help them do what they must do anyway.

MY JOURNEY TO THINKING DIFFERENTLY

I learned the differences between the Buy Side decision process and the Sell Side solution-placement process when I went from being a highly successful sales professional to starting up a tech company in London. As a new ‘buyer’ who had just left the sales profession, I now realized why many prospects hadn’t closed: I needed to consider my staff, my investors, the market, our strategies and goals, before we considered (together) the most effective routes to problem resolutions. As a seller I had thought because I could see a need that they were buyers. They weren’t.

As I worked at resolving our problems I took 13 very specific steps. I didn’t even fully understand the ‘need’ until step 7, or realize we needed to go ‘outside’ to buy anything until step 9 when I realized we couldn’t fix the problem inhouse and we all understood the risk, the cost, of change. We finally considered ourselves buyers at step 10 – where the sales model is needed to clearly define how the solution would fit our need. (I describe the steps in my book Dirty Little Secrets).

Here’s a summary of what my team (all teams!) considered on route to fixing our problems with the least risk:

All stakeholders must be assembled. This isn’t always easy. Sometimes HR needs to come aboard. Sometimes there’s a hidden influencer (Joe in accounting) who needs to join the decision team. But unless the full complement of folks are onboard, the full fact pattern of the problem cannot be understood. This fact alone takes quite a bit of time. And speaking with one person and assuming a need is just silly.
All possible workarounds must be tried: known vendors, other teams.
The ‘cost’, the risk, of doing something different must be fully understood as less than the ‘cost’ of the status quo. If the cost is too high – if they must fire people, reorganize, go against policy, etc. – they will continue doing what they’re doing.
Once the cost is understood – the new job descriptions and responsibilities, the habits they’d need to change, the new norms – everyone must buy-in.

It’s ONLY when everything plausible to fix a problem has been tried AND the ‘cost’ is manageable that people consider seeking an external solution. And the time it takes to complete this process is the length of the sales cycle. I’m sure you also noticed that none of these steps include a desire to buy anything.

Why not use different thinking and new tools to help? We’ve overlooked serving people where they really could use expert help. It’s here you’re needed now and would be welcomed, so long as you refrain from pushing your solution until they become buyers.

PART THREE: How Sales Can Be Relevant

FACILITATE CHANGE MANAGEMENT FIRST

We must modernize sales by adding new goals and tools to facilitate the Pre-Sales, non-solution-oriented journey people must traverse BEFORE self-identifying as buyers and find – and serve – people during their change management process and on route to buying instead of using our solutions as bait.

During my experience as a buyer, I developed a model that facilitates the change management portion of the Buying Decision Journey. I named it Buying Facilitation®. I trained it to my own staff and we tripled our sales in months. Then I trained it to my tech folks who used it to understand a client’s full problem set upfront and lead them through to their best decisions before they even began programming, and halved their time to complete. And then I trained it to 100,000 sales folks globally with 8x results over the control groups.

Buying Facilitation® finds those people on route to becoming buyers (the 40% actively trying to resolve a problem but haven’t yet self-identified as buyers), helps them assemble real decision makers and define their needs from many viewpoints, figure out the best workarounds to consider, and sanctions the risk. By then sellers are in real relationships with real buyers, with a real need, eager to buy. And as true servant leaders we will rise above the competition.

But it’s predicated on sellers beginning with a wholly different goal: find and serve folks actively involved in resolving a problem in the area your solution can provide support, then lead them through their change management steps to the point they’re ready – and asking! – for a pitch.

Yes, during your facilitation process a percentage of them will discover ways to fix their own problems; these weren’t prospects anyway and you’ll both realize this in ten minutes on your first call. And yes, because of the way you enter a call, with a goal to serve not sell, more people will take your calls.

Once you recognize your real buyer population you’ll sell faster, with no objections and no price issues. The KPMG Partners I trained went from a three year sales cycle to a four month sales cycle for a $50,000,000 solution; working with phone sales at IBM they began making one-call closes that originally took three months. Remember: people are happy to resolve their problems quickly; they just don’t know how.

Here’s one more thought: we must – and this might be difficult for sellers accustomed to having all the answers – trust that each client has their own unique, culturally-appropriate answers. While we are well-versed on product details for our solutions, we truly have no idea what people are going through in their own environments – a boss that won’t approve funds for training, a newly hired director who’s not up to speed.

Let’s help people use their knowledge of their own unique environments as they go through their problem resolution discovery. With our knowledge in our fields that gives us an understanding of the types of change required, we will be recognized as real assets and become a part of the Buying Decision Team. It’s a perfect way to serve, be competitive, and close more sales.

Btw I’m not overlooking the selling function. By the time the facilitation process is complete, the sales process is used for what it was originally intended to do: sell solutions to those who know exactly what they need and are already bought-in to buying. It’s SO much easier! And sales becomes a needed service and relevant again.

DIFFERENT THINKING; DIFFERENT GOAL

It’s possible to make sellers a sought-after group who can provide real help during the decision process. But given the new function and new prospect base, different thinking and assumptions are needed:

1. Instead of seeking folks with ‘need’ seek out folks in the process of resolving a problem in the area you can potentially provide a solution. This is where folks really need help.

a. They don’t always know the right folks to involve, and until all relevant stakeholders are involved they can’t fully understand the problem to be fixed. Plus, with everyone on board they think, create, decide quicker.

b. They need to be assured they cannot fix the problem themselves and need help determining relevant workarounds.

c. Folks don’t self-identify as ‘buyers’ until they’ve recognized that they can manage the risk of disruption when something new enters (i.e. hypothetically, if they must fire 8 people to buy a new CRM system, the ‘cost’ may be too high.) Sometimes, the status quo is their best option.

2. Instead of assuming the person you’re speaking with has answers, assume they are part of a decision team in the middle of discovery and don’t represent the full fact pattern.

a. You can help this person assemble all the right people who must be on board to assist in decision making, information sharing, and buy in.

3. Instead of listening to make a pitch, listen for where they need help determining their risk of change.

4. Instead of trying to make an appointment, use your first call to discover who is actively seeking change, help them assemble the full Buying Decision Team, then lead them through their change issues. (Again, read Dirty Little Secrets where I lay out the decision/change steps.)

5. Instead of a purchase being the goal, help people recognize the ‘cost’ – the risk to their culture – of bringing in something new.

6. Instead of posing curiosity-based questions to discover a need, use Facilitative Questions to help them through their unique discovery.

7. Instead of entering with a goal to place a solution, make your first goal to facilitate change.

This thinking will find people on route to buying – a much higher probability of buying than random names chosen with a mythical ‘needs’ criteria. The hard part will be to make sure you don’t try to slip in a pitch or biased question as you facilitate change. Because if you do, you won’t be trusted and prospects will feel manipulated.

NEW MEASUREMENTS OF SUCCESS

Buying Facilitation® is a Pre-Sales skill set. It’s

NOT sales, although it works with sales;
NOT based on selling a product, although 8x more products will be sold;
NOT ‘needs’ based, although our solution has a high likelihood of handling needs;
NOT based on understanding a problem but based on facilitating folks through their change management problems that only they can understand as insiders.

Buying Facilitation® employs an entirely new form of decision-detection question (took me 10 years to invent Facilitative Questions), a new form of listening (not for need!) and facilitates people through their 13 steps of change. And there are different measurements of success:

A much higher close rate – 40% of would-be buyers can be found on the first call using a relevant list.
Minimal turnover as sellers make more commission and face less rejection and frustration.
Uncovers people who are real prospects but haven’t yet self-identified as buyers.
An accurate pipeline.
Fewer price issues.
Prospects request appointments; all stakeholders are present.
Competition shifts to recognize sellers who best facilitate change.
Maintain the client base.
No time wasted following people who will never buy (and sellers know the difference).

Success will be measured by closed sales (I know companies that now pay sellers per visit, assuming if you get an appointment you can make a sale!); by brevity of the sales cycle; by accuracy of the pipeline; number of referrals; ratio of active prospects to closed sales. Even Lead Gen would bring in prospects with a 40% close rate and not merely uncover names of people who agree to hear a pitch.

To make sales relevant again, the sales profession needs to help people where they need help: add a front end to facilitate the Buying Decision Journey. Then prospective buyers will recognize sellers as professionals who can truly serve them and then everyone wins: clients get their problems resolved sooner, you get to close more sales, and everyone is happy. Win/Win. Worth a try, no?

For those wishing more information on Buying Facilitation®, go to: www.sharon-drew.com. Read the section: Helping Buyers Buy. There are several articles linked, plus hundreds more in the blog section. Or contact me with questions: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_______________________________

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 December 18th, 2023

Posted In: Change Management

What is Bias? Can We Rectify It? by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Conscious Failing, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Trait-centered Leadership vs. Servant Leadership, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Making Important Decisions, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Change Isn’t as Hard as You Think, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Buyers Don’t Buy Based on Need, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

The Other Side of Influencing

How the Mind-Brain Connection Generates Change and Decision Making

Facilitating Compliance: helping patients choose health

Let’s Make Sales Relevant Again