I recently got a call from a noted venture capitalist of healthcare apps.
DH: I heard you have a model that facilitates permanent behavior change. I wonder if it would work with any of the 15 healthcare apps I’ve invested in.
SD: I do have a model that does that. And it certainly could be used as a front end to conventional behavior change apps to enable users to develop permanent habits by developing neural circuits. What are you using now to help folks change behaviors permanently?
DH. Behavior Modification, but it doesn’t work. There’s no scientific evidence that it works and our analysis concurs. But there’s nothing else to use. Can you help?
It’s a known fact that Behavior Modification has a 3% success rate over time. Sure, people initially lose weight with a behavior-based plan to eat differently. Certainly people stop smoking or get to the gym for a few weeks. But because these new behaviors haven’t been accepted by, or made permanent in, the brain, they cannot succeed over time. And repeating the new in hopes that THIS time it will stick obviously doesn’t work.
Stay tuned for my new book coming out in September: HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change, and decision making.
Permanent change is a very achievable goal. But we’re approaching the problem from the wrong angle. In this essay I will explain what a behavior is, what change is, how our brain governs them both, and introduce the steps needed to form habits. Believe it or not, it’s mechanical. THE PROBLEM WITH BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION Lately I’ve heard several Behavioral Scientists on the radio, all offering Behavior Modification techniques to habituate new behaviors by, well, habituating new behaviors. They ‘remove barriers’, suggest ‘momentum’, offer ‘promoting forces/restraining forces’, and propose ‘behavioral interventions’ such as keeping weights at your desk so you can ‘lift’ during Zoom calls. All meant to motivate behavior change – through behavior change. I suspect Einstein might have something to say about that. The problem is the premise. Behavior Mod’s core assumptions are actually contrary to brain science. It assumes that by merely repeating (and repeating and repeating) new ways to accomplish something that’s been problematic, permanent change will result that can be maintained over time. But it doesn’t. And it can’t. Certainly we’ve all tried. We’ve learned the hard way that we can’t lose weight permanently by trying to lose weight. Or stop smoking by trying to stop smoking. We promise ourselves we’ll be disciplined ‘this time’. But our discipline isn’t the problem. We have no circuits to translate our wishes into actions automatically. Our brain makes us fail. DIFFERENT THINKING REQUIRED The reason we fail is simple: we’re not making the necessary adjustments to the neural pathways that prompt behaviors to begin with. I’ll start with an analogy. Let’s say you purchase a forward-moving robot, use it for a while, then decide you want it to move backward. You tell it why a ‘backwards’ functionality would enhance it, show it slides and presentations of other robots that move backwards, and attempt to push, cajole, and offer rewards. Nope. It won’t move backward. But if you program it differently, it will. What about changing a chair into a table. You put red plastic into a machine that is programmed to spit out a red plastic chair. Once the chair is produced, you can’t make it a table. But you can create a table if you program the machine appropriately at the start. Changing habits by trying to change habits is merely attempting to change the outcome – the output, the habit, the behavior, the robot, the chair – but failing to reprogram the brain with different instructions to create something new. Sounds obvious. But that’s not what behaviorists do: the Behavior Mod approach suggests we get the robot to move backward by pushing it (and pushing it and pushing it) assuming the repetition will cause permanent change. As you know, it doesn’t work. WHAT IS A BEHAVIOR? To understand the full scope of the problem it’s helpful to understand what, exactly, a behavior is. They don’t just arise because we want them to. Behaviors are the output of our brain’s signaling system, the response to input instructions that travel as electrochemical signals down a fixed neural pathway and hook up with a set of circuits that translates the signals into something tangible. Where do behaviors originate? Behaviors are Beliefs in action, physical representations of our core identity factors. Our politics represent our Beliefs. The way we dress, talk; the professions we choose; where we travel and who we marry. Everything we do represents who we are. As the foundational factor in what we do and think, Beliefs must be factored in when considering change or forming a new habit. Current Behavior Mod approaches circumvent Beliefs and therein lie the problem. There is actual science on how behaviors get generated and why we automatically repeat behaviors even when we don’t want to. Here’s a quote from noted Harvard neuroscientist Richard Masland in We Know It When We See It to set the stage: Our brain has trillions of cell assemblies that fire together automatically. When anything incoming bears even some of the characteristics [of operational circuits], the brain automatically fires the same set of synapses [triggering the same behavior]. (pg 143). Here’s a simplified version of how to convince the brain to make the changes that lead to new habits. It explains how behaviors occur and where change comes from. For a more complete explanation and tools to actually create new brain circuitry for change, watch for my new book HOW? coming out soon. NEUROLOGICAL PATHWAY FROM INPUT TO OUTPUT Generally, each behavior starts off as an input – an idea or command, thought or story – that enters our brain as a meaningless puff of air, an electrochemical vibration (a ‘message’). To keep us congruent, the input gets evaluated against our Mental Models and Beliefs before going further. Is this input a risk? Is it congruent with our values? If the idea goes against who we are, it gets rejected or resisted. If the vibration is accepted, it gets turned into signals that then seek out (among our 100 trillion synapses) similar-enough circuits that translate them into action or output – a behavior. Specifically, our brains:
As you can see, whichever neural circuits receive the signals are the translators that determine what we hear, see, know, and do. Simply stated it looks like this:
Input -> Risk check -> Signal creation and Dispatch -> Output
The time it takes a message to go from an input to an output takes 5 one-hundredths of a second. It’s pretty automatic. And obviously, once an output, it can’t be changed. Change begins when initiated from the input. THE NEED FOR VALUES-BASED CONGRUENCY The next important piece is why repetition won’t cause new (permanent) habits. When a wholly new input enters, it requires a new relevancy check. Sadly – and the reason new activity fails when Behavior Mod is attempted – if anything tries to change the status quo without being checked for relevance, our brain discards the new input because it may carry risk! The new isn’t sustainable without new circuitry. When we try to create new habits by merely ‘doing’ new behaviors without sending new and different input instructions we cannot generate permanent change because there are no new circuits to administer it! The good news is that the brain is always willing to create new circuits for new behaviors. It’s called Neurogenesis. CREATING NEW PROGRAMMING, NEW SIGNALS, NEW BEHAVIORS To change behaviors permanently, start with new input messages:
I’ll explain with a story. A friend said, “I’ve been telling myself I’m a Fat Cow recently. That means it’s time for me to go on another diet.” Obviously this input would lead her to the same circuits (and results) that it used for past diets that she failed at. But if she changed her input signal and told herself instead:
‘I am a healthy person who will research best nutrition choices for my body type and lifestyle and have the discipline to eat the best foods for the rest of my life.’
she would end up with a different set of circuits and different output/behaviors. Our outputs, our behaviors, are merely responses to inputs that our brain has checked out as congruent with who we are. So one way to change a behavior is to change the incoming messaging to one that is Belief-based and takes into account all the elements (Mental Models, history, norms, experience) that might cause risk to the system. Once it’s approved, it will automatically generate new circuits and new, habituated, behaviors. My new book How? Generating new neural pathways for learning, behavior change, and decision making, will teach you several models to formulate the neural circuits you need to help you change habits permanently. I am passionately interested in enabling people to consciously design new signaling instructions for their brains to output any new habits they seek. My wish is to work with healthcare providers and apps for exercise, healthy eating, meditation and decision making to aid folks seeking to achieve greater health and success. If you want to collaborate, or have questions, contact me to discuss ways we can engage those seeking permanent change. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. And look for my book launch in September.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com
Sharon Drew Morgen July 24th, 2023
Posted In: Change Management, Communication
Do you know where your ideas, behaviors, and choices come from? Every thought we have comes from our existing neural circuitry, as does everything we do or we’re curious about. What we hear others say is a translation from our existing neural circuitry. Everything we ‘know’, every opinion we believe to be ‘true’ comes from – you guessed it – from existing neural circuitry.
In other words, we live in subjective worlds biased by how our brain stores, translates, and generates our history electrochemically. While this is a known fact in neuroscience, we forget how it restricts our lives. We hear, see, feel, act, think based on our history, limiting new thinking, new ideas, curiosity.
But it’s possible to develop wholly new circuitry to add new choices and behaviors consciously to get beyond the restrictions. In fact, I’ve developed models that do so. They traverse the mind -> brain connection to trigger conscious choice and generate permanent behavior change.
My book describing these models HOW? Generating new neural circuitry for learning, behavior change, and decision making, will be out soon. In the meantime, here are some of the ideas from the book to mull over. Enjoy. And btw I’m seeking readers to read the final draft.
HOW BRAINS EXPERIENCE EVERYTHING
There is no reality. What we notice, think, feel, experience, hear, do are outputs – automatic responses to electrochemical signals our brains interpret to represent our mental models. We live in subjective worlds.
We are at the mercy of how our brain interprets incoming data. Our conscious self is out of control. What we experience is based on what our brain perceives from circuits (i.e. historic, subjective) that hold our history, not what is actually going on.
The world contains no color per se, only light vibrations that get translated into color by the rods and cones in our eyes.
Every minute of every day we construct our ‘reality’, limited by the circuitry, the knowledge, beliefs, experiences, etc. we’ve constructed during our lifetime. This, in addition to the fact that brains don’t differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, explain how difficult it is to do, or think, anything outside our status quo. Our brains are automatic mechanisms that merely do what they’re electrochemically told.
The meaning derived from any situation; what causes us to ‘know’ something or accept something as ‘real’; or ‘hear’ something ‘accurately’; comes from our existing circuits. In other words, what we know and think and hear, what we consider reality, is subjective and biased.
Words are puffs of air, sound vibrations that get turned into electrochemical signals which then get turned into meaning via our existing neural circuitry. We ‘hear’ according to what we’ve heard before and otherwise ‘misunderstand’. (My book What? explains this thoroughly.) What we think we hear is merely a filtered interpretation of what was said – some fraction of what was intended and rarely fully accurate.
We are restricted every moment of our lives by our history, beliefs, and existing circuits that initiate and instruct all that we think and do. Our brains cause us to be stuck in old patterns and behaviors, limiting what we hear to what we’ve heard before, what we do to what we’ve done before. It’s habituated, automated, and normalized, causing us to keep doing what we’ve always done regardless of ‘reality’, discipline, or goals.
LISTENING
Listening is a physiological, neurological, electrochemical, and mechanical process, devoid of meaning. Words are merely ‘puffs of air’ until they’re translated by existing (subjective, biased) circuits.
What we think we hear is what our existing circuits translate for us, not necessarily what a Speaker intends. Listening is inherently biased and often inaccurate. We can’t understand what our brains don’t have circuits to translate.
What we think we hear is often an inaccurate translation of what remains after our filters delete bits they don’t like, or when incoming signals get sent to existing circuitry regardless of how divergent they are from what was said/intended.
To accurately hear what’s being said without bias or subjectivity we must listen from Observer – meta listening, from Witness or Coach position.
We all ‘hear’ each other when our brain circuits send the sound vibrations from spoken words to ‘similar enough’ circuits that often don’t have the appropriate circuitry to translate incoming, intended messages accurately.
Because of the ways our brain filters and deletes incoming information via electrochemical signals and historic circuitry, we can’t accurately understand what’s been said, regardless of how well we ‘listen’.
CHANGE
Change is a process of creating wholly new neural circuits by: inputting a precise (new) message; prioritizing beliefs and mental models; executing a learning loop that includes acquiring knowledge, trying and failing, buying-in.
All decisions and change initiatives follow the same 13 steps that include: Where are we? (Problem specifics); assembling the full complement of stakeholders (not just leadership); trying workarounds; understanding the risk of change; managing change/buy-in. Although sometimes iterative, they must be sequential or there’s confusion and lack of buy-in.
Resistance occurs when people are asked to do something outside their beliefs or historic circuits and their brains identify the incoming as risky. It can be avoided if we include people in the solution design.
Information doesn’t teach anyone how to make a decision unless all factors – systems congruence, belief matching, understanding risk – have been managed. And incoming information will always be translated by what’s already been accepted and in existing circuitry (i.e. subjectively).
Our curiosity is limited to what’s already been programmed in our brain. Otherwise we’ve got no way to think it.
No outsider can ever understand someone else’s brain configurations. Leaders, coaches, therapists, sellers, pose biased questions and interpret what’s been said subjectively.
Our opinions have everything to do with our beliefs and nothing to do with reality. Even with strong evidence to the contrary, we will believe nothing that goes against our beliefs.
QUESTIONS
Conventional questions are biased by the needs of the Asker and pull biased, often partial, data from a Responder. The data gathered has some unknown degree of accuracy.
It’s impossible to pose a non-biased standard question since the words, intent, goals are chosen by the Asker. [I invented brain-change directed Facilitative Questions to solve the problem.]
Standard questions
BEHAVIOR CHANGE
You can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior. The main component in behavior change is new neural circuitry.
Because brains operate automatically and are electrochemically organized to choose – in five one-hundredths of a second – the nearest and most-used ‘similar-enough’ pathway to execute an incoming request (regardless of the level of compatibility), behaviors arise from existing circuits. Brand new behaviors don’t occur merely because we want them to.
When learning something new, several activities are required for our brain to create new circuitry to generate it. They include beliefs (check for congruence); stop/fail trials; knowledge acquisition (reading, videos, etc.); and buy-in.
Since our behaviors are the outputs from circuits that received electrochemical signals, wholly new behaviors (i.e. new diets, change) require wholly new signals.
A behavior is a belief in action, an outward manifestation – a representation, a translation, an output – of our systemic world views. They appear after input vibrations/signals (what we hear, what we tell ourselves) have been sent to a specific circuit that translates them into action (a behavior, an understanding).
Regardless of how extensive or important the need to change, NO CHANGE will occur if the system believes it will face major disruption. And NO CHANGE will occur unless the system recognizes an incongruence.
If the cost of change is greater than staying the same, the system will resist.
Change is more complex than merely adding new data: because brains generate action from existing knowledge and circuitry, new content doesn’t cause new action unless there are circuits in place to accept and translate it.
Because we each have unique brain configurations, an outsider (coach, parent, seller, doctor, etc.) can never understand the full extent what’s going on in the unconscious of another. Yet to facilitate change, the Other must get into their unconscious circuits where their answers are stored.
Making a new decision, creating new habits, or even getting rid of long-held biases has little to do with the rationality, need, or behaviors we seek to change.
When we try to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior, (i.e. Behavior Modification), we’re hindered by
Permanent change begins by developing wholly new signals that contain beliefs and engage different circuitry. New behaviors emerge automatically.
All change is systemic and must include
Systems don’t like incongruence; it’s only when a system fully recognizes it cannot solve a problem by doing what it’s always done and recognizes an incongruence, that there’s a willingness to change. But it will only consider change so long as the change won’t compromise the system.
One of the problems with change occurs when your system hasn’t recognized the need to change. Change requires noticing an incongruence.
If we try to change in a way that goes outside our beliefs or mental models, our brain will resist as there are no circuits set up to generate the change.
Brains and systems are happy to change, to create new cell assemblies, so long as the proposed change is congruent with the rules of the system. When you try to get different results using the same structure that caused the problem to begin with, you’re actually causing the problem to continue as the underlying system will reject/resist anything new.
Change requires new circuitry, starting with a new path from a new instruction down a different circuit leading to a different choice. When we try to change only the behavior we cause resistance.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen July 3rd, 2023
Posted In: Change Management
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.
They brought in three middle managers, put them in a room with the new printer and user guide, and from the one-way mirror watched while mayhem ensued. They watched while the managers got confused by the directions in the user guide, spent literally hours arguing amongst themselves about what the user guide meant, kept pressing 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. They had failed to design a machine and a user guide that had clear user interfaces. 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 we’ve set out to accomplish, 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 along the route. 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 very large unconscious component, and when you only try to add new behaviors you miss the 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:
Now you know the steps to conscious change. Should you want to learn more about my How of Change program let me know. Here’s a one-hour sample of me laying out the foundation of the 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:
The Middle: to make changes, add new knowledge to trial, get continuous buy in, you need:
The End: making sure the outcome is congruent with the original goal:
Here are more specifics to help you integrate the necessary failure, and avoid guesswork and reactions to what might seem inconsistent with your goals:
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.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen May 29th, 2023
Posted In: Change Management, Communication
Our biases have been developed through the stories of our lives. From birth, our parent’s beliefs become part of our unconscious, very 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.
Our normal skill sets and brain neurology aid and abet us: we unwittingly listen through biased filters and hear restricted versions of what was said (I wrote a book on this: What? Did you really say what I think I heard? ); 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.
Our lives are lived in a reality of our own making to maintain our status quo. And yet, regardless of our natural biases, we seem to believe, with certainty, that what we see, hear, and feel is ‘real’. We even restrict our lives accordingly – our politics, our curiosity, what we read, our professional choices. In other words, we each live in a unique reality that gets maintained every moment of every day.
Our personal ‘reality’ is the basis of our unconscious biases and interpretations; so automatic and habituated, so accepted by all around us that we’re often unaware that our actions may harm others whose world views are different from ours.
WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND OTHERS
Given the subjective nature of our lives we cannot help but judge others accordingly. I, for one, never lock doors. My car is always unlocked. My house is always open even when I travel. Many people would find this unthinkable, but they don’t know my reality. As an incest survivor and a rape victim, I always need a quick way in and out. If a door is locked around me, I hyperventilate, panic. Terrifying. But without understanding my reality, you might have judged my actions as being unsafe.
Given the givens, it’s obvious that none of us can truly understand another’s interpretations of anything, or their resulting behaviors. And even though it’s difficult to even notice anything we’re not programmed to notice, we judge each other’s actions against our own.
A problem emerges when we run into others with different lifestyle choices, or communication styles, or education, or assumptions, or race, or political beliefs and behave automatically in ways that inadvertently harm them. We may not have the skills to connect with them in ways they understand or wrongly misinterpret their intent or judge their choices.I believe that most people don’t intend to harm anyone. But without common ground, the best we can do is act from our habituated interpretations and assume because we ‘mean well’ that we’re not causing harm.
NEED FOR CHANGE
Historically, we’ve done a bad job resolving the problems of inherent bias that may ultimately harm others. I think this might be changing. Companies and public servants are now taking unconscious bias seriously and requiring unconscious bias and diversity training in the hopes of giving people new choices and eradicating harm. Good. But I have a concern.
As someone who has spent decades coding and scaling the stages of how human systems change, I know it’s not possible to cause change from the outside, by merely trying to change a behavior. To change, we must each find a way to shift our own core norms and biases from within (i.e. inside/out).
Current training approaches offer information, practice, scientific data, videos, etc., assuming that the offered data will cause behavior change (outside/in). But that’s like asking a forward moving robot to move backwards by showing it videos of other robots moving backward! Obviously the change must come from new programming. You can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior.
Merely assuming that people can change when offered ‘good’ or ‘rational’ reasons to change cannot fix the problem permanently because it:
Current unconscious bias and diversity training assumes people can learn enough from recognizing problems and practicing ‘real’ situations, etc. to recognize their unconscious bias in hopes they’ll know when it’s time to change behaviors. But with our choices arising in five one-hundredths of a second from automatic and electrochemical neural circuits, it’s hard to know exactly how to change a possibly offending behavior in time. 🙁
In other words, just when our brains are unconsciously registering ALERT, we are supposed to tell ourselves ‘Nope. Wrong thinking. Don’t do that. Do something different. NOW!’ just as it’s occurring. It’s possible to do so, but not with the training currently offered.
WHAT IS BIAS? AND WHY IS IT SO HARD TO CHANGE?
Bias is the unconscious, habitual, involuntary, and historic reaction to something deemed ‘different’ (skin color, gender, lifestyle choices, etc.) that negatively triggers someone’s largely unconscious beliefs and values causing an immediate, unconscious, and automatic reaction.
Our reactions to external stimuli follow our brain’s historic and habituated neural pathways whenever our unconscious triggers go off. To alter these, it’s necessary to go to the source where they occur in the brain; it’s not possible to permanently change behaviors by merely changing behaviors. Changing core biases permanently is not a behavior change issue; it’s a core Identity/Belief problem that must be resolved at the source, within the system that created it. Basically, this level of change is a systems problem.
WE MUST UNDERSTAND SYSTEMS TO ADDRESS BIAS
A system is a conglomeration of things that all agree to the same rules. For us, our system keeps us who we are as unique individuals, a composite of our physiology and neurology mixed with our norms, culture, history, values, beliefs, dreams that we hold largely unconsciously and formed during our lifetimes. Systems always seek stability; as a way to maintain balance, they define our politics, our mate selection, even how we listen to others with an unconscious structure of filters that get triggered by situations that make us uncomfortable.
When we try to get others to change by merely requiring behavior changes, their internal systems resist as there is no neurological, physiological foundation from which to act. For permanent change to occur, for new behaviors to be chosen, there must be a change in core beliefs before new skills or situations are offered.
Here are the elements necessary to include in bias or diversity training to trigger permanent behavior change:
To change behaviors permanently it’s necessary to change the system, the programming, that created them to begin with. And this cannot be accomplished by merely trying to change the behaviors that created the problem to begin with. Remember Einstein?
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 recognize, then modify, the specific triggers (historically produced for a reason) that have been developed to operate unconsciously as the norm.
It’s basically a systems problem: for permanent change to occur, we must reconfigure the system that has created and maintains the status quo, and has operated ‘as is’ for some amount of time. Anything new coming into our system (any problem to fix, any new information that creates disruption, any new activity the system is asked to take) demands changing the status quo.
Indeed, any new decision is a change management problem. The way we are addressing the problem now doesn’t enable permanent change. Change means that a system must go through a process to become something different:
If all of the above aren’t managed, the system will fill in the blanks with something comfortable and habituated (regardless of its efficacy). In other words, if there is not systemic agreement, no known way to resolve the problem using its current givens, no known 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.
Indeed – and I can’t say this often enough – you can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior. And all current bias and diversity training involves a focus on getting behaviors changed without addressing the source that created the behaviors and triggers to begin with.
WHAT IS A BEHAVIOR?
Current bias training attempts to get behaviors changed by offering information: showing and telling people what’s wrong with what they’re doing and what ‘right’ would look like – all of which can be misinterpreted, misread, or objected to, regardless of our intent.
While it certainly can make people more aware, these attempts will not cause permanent change: they develop no new habituated triggers or neural pathways to set off a new response to a stimulus. Let’s delve into this a bit.
Behaviors are what we do – transactions automatically initiated by our core system of beliefs, norms, and experience – to express who we are. We all develop behaviors that ‘be’ who we are, to represent us. Behaviors are the output, the forward movement of the robot, the actions others see.
To permanently change a behavior, a system must:
To change our unconscious, automatic responses that cause us to respond defensively, the system that has created and maintains the status quo must be reconfigured to produce alternate outputs while still maintaining Systems Congruence. Offering any sort of information before the system knows why, how, when, or if to do anything different – a belief change – will only inspire resistance as the system won’t know how to apply it. It’s a belief change issue: when we change our habituated beliefs and norms (our programming), our behavior will automatically, and permanently, change.
CHANGE IS A SYSTEMS PROBLEM
Real change demands a systemic shift to create new triggers, new assumptions, new neural pathways, and ultimately, as an outcome, new behaviors. No one, no information, no person, from outside is able to go into someone’s unconscious to (re)create all these things. And permanent change will not happen until it does.
The goal is not to train someone to rid themselves of unconscious bias; it’s to help their system discover the underlying beliefs that cause them and enable them to develop new beliefs and responses.
Over the past decades, I’ve coded the 13 steps that constitute the route to systemic, human change so people can make their OWN internal changes that will lead to new choices, i.e. new behaviors. I’ve taught this model in sales as Buying Facilitation® to global corporations (KPMG, Morgan Stanley, IBM, P&G, Kaiser, etc.) for over 30 years, and written several books on it. The book that details each of the stages is Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell.
We must become Facilitators, not Influencers. We must teach folks to create and habituate new neural pathways and filters.
I’ve developed a new way to train that facilitates self-learning and permanent change from within the system. For those wishing a full discussion, I’ve written an article on this that appeared in The 2003 Annual, Volume 1 Training (I’m happy to send you a more specific discussion of this if you’re not already bored) Just note: my process leads people, without any bias, to those places in their brains, into their system of beliefs and cultural norms, which made the decisions to employ their biased behaviors to begin with, and teaches them how to reconfigure their system to adopt something new (so long as its aligned with their beliefs). We are making the unconscious conscious and developing more appropriate triggers and behaviors.
How will you know that by adding systemic change elements to your training that you can enable more people to make more appropriate behavioral choices around their bias?
If you would like my help in designing a program that resolves unconscious biases permanently, I’d love to help. I believe it’s an important task. I believe it’s time we had the tools to enable learners to permanently change and become non-judgmental, accepting, and kind. And above all, cause no harm. All of our lives depend on it.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen May 15th, 2023
Posted In: Change Management, Communication, Listening
Trust. The big kahuna. The sales industry seeks it; doctors assume it; couples demand it; change can’t occur without it. But what is it? Why isn’t it easier to achieve? And how can we engender it in relationships?
I define trust as the awareness of Another as being safe, similar, and sane enough to connect with, and occurs when they
Unless these criteria are satisfied, trust can’t occur no matter how kind, professional, necessary, or well-intended another person or message is. It’s a Belief issue.
BELIEFS DEFINE US
Every one of us has Beliefs unique to us. Our Beliefs are the norms and rules we live by, developed over our lifetimes to make decisions and act against. We gravitate to, and trust, folks with similar foundational Beliefs and world views that match well-enough with our own to proclaim “safety”.
Largely unconscious, illogical to others and hard to change, our Beliefs regulate us, define who we are and enable us to show up congruently in the world. We even listen through ears biased by our Beliefs.
Beliefs instigate our habits and assumptions, restricting our life choices such as our occupations, politics, values, mates – even our child rearing practices. And our Beliefs are the initiators of our behaviors – behaviors being Beliefs in action.
Sadly, because everyone’s Belief systems are unconscious and idiosyncratic, and because we each view the world through our own Beliefs and perceptions, it’s difficult to accurately perceive Another’s internal world view. It’s here, in our Beliefs, where our world views collide.
For those folks whose jobs are to influence, there’s an immediate problem. The content they share, or even their unique delivery style, may unwittingly offend the Belief system of the Communication Partner (CP). Bad news for sellers, coaches, managers, etc. who attempt to promote change or buy-in by pushing their ideas and instead cause resistance and distrust.
DRIVERS FOR TRUST
I’d like to offer thoughts on some of the ways we fail when trying to engage trust, then provide some ideas of how to stimulate it.
Relationship Building: We’ve been led to believe that having a relationship encourages buy-in to new ideas. But it’s a conundrum: polite as an interaction appears or how necessary our message, we can’t easily build a relationship with folks with divergent Beliefs, or fight their automatic filters that react to us immediately. In other words, “pushing in” doesn’t work, even if our data and intent are accurate, and even if we think we have a relationship that entitles us to ‘share.’ We might have a superficial connection, but not a relationship; “making nice” does not constitute a relationship, or engender change or trust.
Information: As influencers we often attempt to “get in” with the information we assume our CPs need, without accounting for how it will be perceived. Sometimes the “right” data inadvertently tells our CP that they’re wrong (and we’re right). We fail to realize that our CPs only understand our intent to the degree it matches their Beliefs, or how their listening filters translate it for them. With the best will in the world, even with good data to help folks who need what we’ve got to share, we aren’t heeded.
In fact, information is the last thing needed to facilitate change or buy-in since people unconsciously defend their status quo. It’s our brain’s fault! Because all incoming data is translated for us automatically by our historic neural circuits, new ideas aren’t always interpreted accurately and run the risk of causing resistance. (See my book on this topic.) So save the information sharing for when a clear path to mutual Beliefs and trust has been developed.
Think about it: if you’re an environmentalist, the “rational/ scientific” data you offer to “prove” climate change won’t persuade those who disagree; if you’re a proponent of the medical model, you won’t use alternate therapies to manage an illness no matter how strong the data for changing your nutrition.
Clear Communication: We all think we communicate clearly, yet we’re not as effective speaking in ‘Other’s language’ given our CPs unconscious, biased listening filters that end up preventing our “risky” data from being heard accurately. Certainly we believe we’re choosing the “right” words and approach to convey our intent. Yet our message is heard accurately only by those with similar Beliefs and resisted by the very people who need our information the most.
FACILITATE BELIEF CHANGE FIRST
Since our great ideas and eager strategies don’t engender trust in folks with different Beliefs, and without trust we can’t change minds, what should we do?
As coaches, sellers, and leaders, we must carefully initiate conversations based on them discovering their own answers, with a goal to match their Belief criteria before offering new ideas. In this way we can help our CPs open up new possibility that actually creates trust:
In other words, create a Beliefs-based bond that will open the possibility of you offering information later, once they’ve discovered exactly where they need it and how to use it.
FACILITATING TRUST THROUGH QUESTIONS
I’ve developed a new form of question (Facilitative Questions) that teaches others to scan their own internal state. These questions are unbiased, systemic, formulated with specific wording, in a specific order, and based on systemic brain change, not information gathering. They also take our CPs into a Witness state, beyond their automatic responses, and from which they can have a neutral, unbiased look at their status quo to notice if it’s operating excellently, and consider change if there might be a more congruent path.
Take a look at a conventional question vs a Facilitative Question:
Conventional: Do you think it’s time for a haircut? or Why do you wear your hair that way?
Telling someone they need a haircut, or asking them if they noticed they need a haircut, or giving them an article on new types of hair styles – all based on your own need to convince your CP to change – will cause defensiveness and distrust.
Facilitative Question: How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle?
This leads your CP
By using this type of question we offer a route for the CP to discover their own best answer that aligns with their Beliefs and engenders trust. No push, no need for a specific response. Serving another by helping them discover their own Excellence.
I designed these questions as part of my Buying Facilitation® model, a generic change facilitation model (often used in sales) that enables congruent change. Sounds a bit wonky, I know, and it’s certainly not conventional. But worth researching. I’ve trained large numbers of sales folks and coaches over the past 40 years against control groups and consistently have a 40% success rate. When we facilitate our CPs down their path to conscious choice, we
Until your audience is able to accomplish this in their own way, using their own Beliefs, they will hear you through biased ears, maintain their barriers, and engender trust only with those who they feel aligned with – omitting a large audience of those who may need you.
Stop using your own biases to engender trust: facilitate your CPs in changing themselves. Then the choice of the best solution becomes a consequence of a system that is ready, willing, and able to adopt excellence. And they’ll trust you because you helped them help themselves.
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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 February 20th, 2023
Posted In: Change Management, Listening
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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
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:
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
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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 January 9th, 2023
Posted In: Change Management
I was once fired from a Speaker’s Bureau for posing this question to the audience:
Why aren’t you closing all the sales you deserve to close?
“You’re too provocative! No one wants to hear from a disruptor!” was the reason.
When speaking with a friend recently I referred to myself as a Breakthrough Disruptor. “Don’t call yourself a disruptor! No one wants disruption!” he said.
Can these folks be right? Haven’t all new ideas been disruptions? Certainly so much of what seems standard today was initially a breakthrough disruption: our phones and computers, plastics – even knives! Why would disruption be a bad thing? How else can change happen?
DISRUPTION IS NECESSARY
I believe there are several business practices sorely in need of disruption.
It’s outrageous that we’ve not only condoned substantial failure rates but built them into our personal habit change activities, causing us to feel shame for not having the ‘discipline’ to succeed, and into our businesses, accepting minimal revenue, needs for additional resource (people, technology), as well as high turnover rates and hiring/training costs as standard practice.
Seems to me a bit of disruption wouldn’t hurt: you can’t change the status quo without disrupting the status quo.
ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS
Below I’ve posed a few questions using a breakthrough (disruptive!) model of questions I developed called Facilitative Questions that eschew curiosity and information gathering to traverse a direct route into a Responder’s brain to often-unconscious values-based answers stored in their brain circuitry.
We’ve assumed that offering/knowing details of fixes would prompt success. But you know by now that doesn’t help. Offering new information doesn’t cause change:
– Because of the way our brains take in words/sound waves, people don’t hear new ideas accurately and the resultant distortion and misunderstanding makes resistance inevitable.
– Because of the way biases limit questions to the needs of the Asker, incomplete data is collected, wrong assumptions made, and necessary answers are overlooked.
– Because of the biased assumptions and persuasion/push tactics built into current change models, folks who really need change experience resistance before being willing to consider doing anything differently.
To make a change it’s necessary to know the full set of factors in the status quo that maintain the problem, and have a specific route to change that includes all stakeholders, buy-in, and risk management. Any change must be congruent with the values of the original.
MY DISRUPTIONS
Over the past 40 years, I’ve wrestled with the problems inherent in change and realized that since it’s our brains that instruct our actions, we must resolve the neural issues that cause the behavior problems. Hence I’ve developed unique models that discover and shift the neural circuitry that causes and maintains change, decision making, and choice. The breakthrough innovations I’ve developed
Here they are. And note: these are flexible and can be used in coaching, sales, leadership, surveys/questionnaires, AI, healthcare. Take a look and see if any of them trigger some curiosity.
Buying Facilitation® – a change-based add-on to sales that finds folks who will become buyers and facilitates their discovery through the change management issues they must address to recognize if they can withstand the risk of bringing in something new. BF closes 8x more sales because it targets the change and buy-in issues (both largely unconscious) of stakeholders to lead them through their decisions as they self-identify as buyers and the sales model takes over;
Change Facilitation – a servant-leader model that traverses the 13 stages of change to lead folks through their (largely unconscious) beliefs and values; instigates buy-in; and discovers and incorporates possible risks to avoid resistance and garner maximum buy-in and creativity;
Learning Facilitation – a wholly original training model that gets directly into the necessary neural pathways so learners accept new actions, permanently;
How of Change™ – a mind -> brain, conscious -> unconscious model that creates new, permanent cell assemblies for new, permanent behaviors and habits.
Listening without bias – offering choice beyond the automatic, habitual routes sound vibrations take through the brain to instigate accurate interpretation of incoming words.
I understand that most folks prefer to remain within mainstream thinking and employ conventional workarounds for failures. But for those who are willing to go outside the box with tools that cause real change in Leadership, Coaching, Change Management, and Sales, call and let’s figure out a way to install new thinking in a way that’s least disruptive.
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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 January 2nd, 2023
Posted In: Change Management
In the late 1970s, I approached my studies for an MSc in Health Sciences (Community Health Education) 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, but now have merely a passing understanding of what’s going on. Lately I’ve had some opportunities to look more intimately into the healthcare profession/industry, and I’m both gladdened and saddened.
On the plus side, there’s a committed effort in this country to assist the under-served. Food services that offer nutrition to hospitals and training in healthy eating for patients; outpatient groups 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. (How could I have known this? News sources focus on the bad stuff.). Houston Spore’s dedication to creating addiction services that work with whole families. Esther Dyson’s Wellville.net lets us track the progress of 5 groups of caregivers around the US as they design and implement innovative projects to promote preventative health care. We’re on our way to understanding that prevention is preferable to relying on 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 change and choice – are facing non-compliance: even with adequate funding, multi-faceted prevention services, and supervised support, patients are resisting not adopting the necessary changes that have the capability of making a difference in their 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. Let me begin with a brief discussion of change and how our ‘system’, our status quo, fights 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 even before we start 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.), finding things to blame, or new approaches using the same thinking.
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. And buy-in is much more intricate than knowing there’s a problem, or offering good ideas and recommendations, or getting people to sign up for healthful activities.
Let’s look at the problem from a different lens and understand why people keep doing what they do, regardless of any evidence that points to a need for other options.
OUR STATUS QUO LIKES STABILITY
Each person, each family (everyone, actually), is an internal – often unconscious – system of rules and goals, beliefs and values, history and foundational norms often called our Mental Models.
It’s 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, and unfortunately (when we want to make a change) will do whatever it takes to keep doing what it’s most comfortable with.
Any proposed change challenges the status quo, offering a potentially disruptive outcome. 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
they will not change, regardless of its efficacy of the value of the solution.
In other words, until or unless someone recognizes at their deepest levels that change can be accomplished without permanent disruption to who they are and how they live, 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. [Note: I’ve been teaching the same premise to sales folks and coaches for decades.]
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. 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 itself congruently.
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 norms.
THE INTRICACY OF BUY-IN
With the best will in the world, using rational arguments, ‘good’ data, stories, or facts will not make a difference because it enters our unconscious in the wrong place, in the wrong way, at the wrong time. We try to offer new choices, new behaviors, before we have enabled internal, unconscious agreement to change.
And here’s the interesting bit: behaviors will change themselves once the core beliefs have shifted (Personally, because I’ve now defined myself as a Healthy Person, I have no choice but to go to the gym. And I hate going. But now it’s who I am.).By focusing on behavior change before facilitating belief change, trying to cause change without a buy-in is actually creating resistance because it puts our unconscious status quo at risk. Our status quo must, by the laws of Systems Congruence, maintain balance and stability at all costs (literally).
Behaviors are merely the expression – the representation – 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 programming. Trying to explain why a different output, or behavior, is necessary is useless, even when our information is ‘rational’ or ‘right’.
WHY PROFESSIONALS DON’T PROMOTE CHANGE
Here’s what happens. Influencers wrongly believe that if they share, advise, gather, or promote the right information in the right way, using the right words and offering good rational reasons why change is necessary, Others will comply. But our patients and clients
They cannot even consider, understand, or recognize the validity of, our information appropriately.
Everyone actually listens through biased filters that only allow us to hear what we’re programmed to hear as per our histories and mental models our brains as they interpret, understand, and translate what’s been said according to what’s been programmed in, regardless of what’s been said. To make it even worse, when our brains misinterpret what they’ve heard, they don’t even tell us they’ve made a mistake and we’re left believing we heard accurately.
We all do this unconsciously, leaving us to assume that what we hear is what’s been said. (Note: I just wrote a book about this – What? Did you really say what I think I heard? – and was quite surprised to learn how effectively our listening controls our status quo.) So my brain might tell me you said ABX when you actually meant ABC, and I believe my brain is accurate (and it didn’t tell me what it left out) Any information we hear or read that goes against our historic programming actually that can’t even be heard or absorbed appropriately.
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 change themselves; change can’t come from the outside. Instead of seeking better and better ways to offer plans, rules, and advice (and getting rejected and ignored), we must help people make their own discoveries and systemic changes; for real change, we each must design a path to our own change so they can remain congruent.
The sad truth that all influencers must understand is that the need for balance (Systems Congruence) is of greater importance (unconsciously) to the system than the need for change, regardless of how necessary the change is. That’s how people end up refusing smoking cessation programs when they have lung cancer, or continuing to eat unhealthful foods with diabetes (or voting for candidates that go against our best interest).
Here are some ways you can enter a change conversation to enable buy-in and avoid resistance:
Here are some examples of how I’ve added Change Facilitation to elements of health care in a way that promotes belief change first (Note: these below exemplify only a portion of what would need to be included on forms, in groups, etc.):
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. It uses no information pull or gathering and has no bias. 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 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 the trust/belief that the professional has the patient’s success in mind, rather than a dependence on the information (and viewpoint) they wish to espouse.
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.
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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 October 10th, 2022
Posted In: Change Management
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how hard ‘change’ is so I decided to write an article explaining what’s going on causing the difficulty. 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 new, permanent change to occur (new habits, behaviors, decisions, change management initiatives) it’s necessary for the brain to send out different instructions than the ones that instigated the original behaviors. Current change management/ behavior change models omit making the necessary alterations to the brain circuits.
In other words, we’re seeking change but not developing the new brains commands to cause it. 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, offering our brains reasons to change (as rational as they might be) doesn’t cause new circuit configurations. Let me explain.
While a known fact in neuroscience, most of us don’t realize that 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.
I’m currently writing a book (The How of Change) that goes into great detail about the mind-brain connection and how to construct the specific circuitry to generate the choice we desire. In this article I’ll explain the mind-brain connection so you’ll understand how our brains cause change, and why your attempts at permanent change aren’t more consistent.
Since the topic is far too complex for a short article I’ll put in some links at the end for those seeking further knowledge. And I’m always available to chat about it; I’ve spent my life unwrapping the elements necessary for permanent change, so I’m happy to discuss.
CHANGE ISN’T HARD
Sadly, change gets a bad rap. The 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. 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 they prefer to send incoming content to the most used circuits that carry ‘similar enough’ signals for interpretation – and you end up with exactly what you’re trying to 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, organ activity, colors, what we hear (sounds and words).
An easy way to realize this is to think about Alzheimer’s disease. My dad died from it; I watched while he lost his memory first, then slowly lost his physical functionality – muscles and organs failed when they stopped receiving instructions from his brain.
We forget this when seeking change. Using conventional change models – Behavior Modification, Cognitive Behavior Change – we attempt change by trying to change behaviors with mind-based mastery like discipline, regulation, rational thinking, habit creation, practice, and training.
But without specific instructions from our neurology, 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 80% 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 through 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. This will provide insight into how our brains instruct our choices and the problems involved with the way we’re currently addressing change.
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, normalized 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 hundreds of 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:
Again, there is no meaning, no intent, no thinking involved. Mechanical. Electro-chemical. Automatic. Take a look:
Notice that actions are outputs; without inputs, no outputs can exist. So behaviors are a result, an end product and cannot be modified as such.
HOW WE GET RESISTANCE
All outputs that emerge are specific to that circuit: the brain always directs incoming signals/inputs to circuits with matching (‘similar-enough’) signals and will always produce the same output when the same/similar words, 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.
All this occurs in five one-hundredths of a second. Given there are billions of bits of data coming into our brains every second (most of it unconsciously) our mind ignores, overlooks, forgets, most of it. It only alerts us to obvious changes that are incongruent with our personal belief system.
When we request an action that differs from the similar-enough circuit that receives it, or input wholly new requests that don’t yet have a circuit, we end up getting 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 converted to a potentially inappropriate existing pathway or 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 outputs emerge from established circuits (called Superhighways) that have been created and sustained during our lifetime, our choices emerge from whatever we’ve done or believed before regardless of any differences we desire. We do what we do because it’s how our circuitry is programmed, obviously limiting us 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.
LISTENING AND CIRCUITS
One more bit I’d like to mention: the way brains ‘listen’. The problem begins as soon as we hear requests to change and come up against the way our brains interpret incoming words/sounds/ideas.
The listening process in and of itself causes problems: incoming sound vibrations traverse the same neural pathway as incoming instructions and ideas: the vibrations get turned into signals that eventually get sent to ‘similar enough’ (existing) circuits for translation.
Obviously, this limits what we think was said to what we’ve understood before. (I wrote a book on this and how to fix it.) Our outputs (what we understand or misunderstand) will be skewered accordingly.
Let me say this another way as it’s important. Since words are merely puffs of air with no meaning until our brain translates them, incoming ideas or instructions will be defined by the circuits we’ve used before. In other words, what we think was said is a subjective translation, possibly some degree off the intended message.
Of course that makes communication and understanding difficult: regardless of how carefully we listen, how much Active Listening we use, or how passionately we buy-in to making a change, we listen with ears that interpret what’s said by the circuit configuration that received the input and sort-of matches. And it’s totally, completely, out of our control.
As you know by now, any misunderstanding or confusion that occurs has nothing to do with ‘reality’ and everything to do with subjective, unique brain circuitry. This makes it virtually impossible to understand anyone else fully, especially difficult for those in the helping professions trained to ‘understand’ and advise accordingly: everything Others say and do is received and translated through our subjective filters and circuits. I always suggest people say: ‘I want to make sure I understand you accurately, so I’ll tell you what I think I heard and please correct me where I got it wrong.’
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?
CONCLUSION AND GOING FORWARD
Now that you know exactly why change seems hard, I’ll mention the models I’ve developed to forge a conscious route into the unconscious for permanent and congruent change – great additions to tools given to coaches, docs, leaders, and change agents. It’s taken me decades to identify the elements to include, then create models to apply them.
All of my models hinge on a systems orientation, given we are all systems and systems seek congruence. For any change to occur, for us to do something different and our brain to send out new/different instructions, we must end up congruent (i.e. Systems Congruence and homeostasis). This is how we remain who we are; no matter what want to do, our brains maintain our values. Even our brain’s neuroplasticity is informed by our individual, unique, and systemic norms.
That means any requested change must be at least equal to or less than the cost/risk of staying the same. Too often, when we input directions to make a change, we inadvertently provoke unconscious elements within our systems. This is especially true when change is being requested without collaboration and consultation from initiatives designed and directed by Others.
Here are the models I’ve developed that generate permanent brain circuit change while maintaining our Systems Congruence.
1. Change Facilitation. Often used by sales professionals (i.e. the generic model Buying Facilitation®) this model facilitates the capture and recognition of the appropriate and congruent criteria necessary for new decisions, behaviors, and choices, using
a. Facilitative Questions – A brain-directed facilitation model that uses specific words in a specific order along a very specific sequence to get into the unconscious circuits necessary to recognize the full set of systemic choices for new outputs.
b. 13 steps of change – I’ve unpacked each of the decision stages that all new decision making requires for congruent change.
c. Listening for patterns – Standard listening hears content, but content gets translated into our ears subjectively. To hear what someone intends to say, it’s necessary to listen from a different place in our brain, without the automatic circuits we unconsciously prefer to listen and interpret from that bias incoming data according to existing circuits.
Ultimately, change facilitation is used by influencers, coaches, sellers, change agents, trainers, managers, to enable Others to discover their own answers, using their own criteria, and governing their own systemic change while maintaining Systems Congruence and with no bias from outside.
In sales, my clients close 8x more in half the time using this process as it finds would-be prospects such earlier and serves them around their own change issues rather than through the needs of the sale. I’ve trained Buying Facilitation® to 100,000 sales people, coaches, lawyers, and leaders in many global corporations (i.e P&G, DuPont, KPMG, Morgan Stanley, Kaiser, IBM, GE, ATT, etc.). The model is generic and independent of initiative or product.
Using Change Facilitation in OD and change management, resistance is almost non-existent and the length of the initiative is a fraction of standard change management models as all – all – stakeholders/elements are discovered and included from the start, and systems are set up to avoid potential resistance.
2. The How of Change ™. I’ve decoded the conscious route to getting into the unconscious to either repopulate the internal components of the status quo to enable new/different outputs, or create a wholly new circuit for new choices. It resolves habits people try to break, resistance, and confusion.
I’ve created a 5 session program to lead folks through to brain change and to new, permanent habits and behaviors. Here is a video of the first session with me explaining what the brain does and how it’s possible to get to the unconscious: http://buyingfacilitation.com/blog/courses/the-how-of-change-sample/?lesson=62
The How of Change™ is used by folks seeking to change habits: diets, smoking cessation, routinization (i.e. exercise, organization). I would very much like to get this into healthcare so doctors can use it instead of telling patients what to do (and face resistance and misunderstanding, or non-compliance).
If anyone has interest in designing a model for a change initiative in their company, or licensing the material to train, please contact me.
Here are links to articles/podcasts on change:
Influencing Congruent, Unbiased Change
You Can’t Change a Behavior by Trying to Change a Behavior.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen July 18th, 2022
Posted In: Change Management
The terms ‘buying’ and ‘buyer’ seem to be defined by sales and marketing to denote purchase-related activities. After almost 40 years of thinking, training, and writing several books on issues related to the Buy Side, I’d like to offer a clarification: buyING is
a process; a set of systemic, procedural, decision making tasks; a possible result following essential change management practices that may lead to fixing a problem with external solutions.
In this article I’ll explain the buyING process and when, why, and how it sometimes leads to folks becoming buyERS – and when it doesn’t I’ll explain why. I’ll also define each step so sellers and marketers can use them to facilitate their route through to becoming buyERS.
As of now, neither sales nor marketing facilitate the systemic progression of change management steps to buyING decisions, instead use solution-placement, and needs-based content that merely engage the low hanging fruit (currently less than 5%) – those who have already self-identified as buyERS and will probably discover your site anyway.
But the buyING decision sequence is very specific and, with different goals, could easily be added to the front end of sales and marketing to reduce and make efficient the decision time needed to accomplish off-line tasks. Obviously this would produce more sales.
WHAT IS A SYSTEM AND WHY THEY’RE IMPORTANT
To explain the buying decision process, I’ll begin with an explanation of systems. You see, buyING is systemic, not needs-based. Hence what I believe to be the main reason it’s been overlooked by sales and marketing.
I define systems as any group of components that agree to the same rules. Systems are necessary for survival: You’re a system. Your group, your company, your family, are systems.
All systems are based on unique norms, identities and beliefs that designate their individuality and maintain the integrity of their relationships and purpose. Google is obviously a different system than IBM: different management styles, different people hired, different marketing and sales processes.
A unique standard of all systems is that they don’t judge themselves even when they appear inappropriate to others. Systems aren’t logical; their identities and beliefs just represent the unique norms that caused their formation. Have you ever noticed friends in a bad marriage and couldn’t understand why they stay together? Their system was configured that way from the start and maintains its normalized trajectory.
It’s only when a system begins to malfunction that a warning is sounded. And because it has operated in a ‘good enough’ way until then, doing anything different is not a foregone conclusion. The status quo is good-enough.
And here’s a trap we all fall into when we think someone’s system must change: one of the goals of systems is to maintain balance (Systems Congruence), maintain the same configuration of rules and norms through time. Any change, any additions or subtractions, risk disruption.
BUYING IS SYSTEMIC
Here is where buyING comes in. When a system (in this case a possible prospect and the alleged problem that needs fixing) exhibits a problem, it will always use the rules of Systems Congruence to resolve it:
It’s only when all of these issues are handled is the system willing to change. This is what sales and marketing overlook. BuyING is a systemic process, certainly not so simple as having a need or making a purchase. Once the problem is fully defined, AND workarounds are tried, AND there is buy-in, AND the risk is fully understood and managed, THEN they become buyERS.
Sellers and marketers start off assuming their solutions can resolve a problem after posing some very biased questions and without full knowledge of the system of hidden politics, relationships, history, or goals that caused and maintain the problem.
But until the group/person has gone through their unique and systemic change trajectory (I call this change management) to figure out if they can withstand change and still function to meet their goals, they’re not seeking an external solution, don’t consider themselves buyERs and ignore your outreach. They’re not even prospects, need aside.
Indeed, your targeted outreach seeks and uncovers only those who have already become buyERS, thereby limiting your success to those already seeking your solution. Unfortunately, this overlooks those who WILL become buyers once they’ve completed their systemic change work.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PRECEDES BUYING
Change management is an obligatory part of a buyING decision – the systemic decision making process that results in a congruent resolution and may or may not include making a purchase. Here’s what happens.
When a problem presents itself, people start off trying to resolve it themselves (not as buyERS); they take specific steps (see below) on route to a solution to make sure that the system ends up in balance. This route, these systemic laws, determine the buyING process and outcome – whether or not someone becomes a buyER. It’s only after they’ve gone through this and determined
that they are buyERS. Until then, they don’t even self-identify as buyERS or notice your marketing or sales outreach. People really don’t want to buy anything, merely resolve a problem at the least ‘cost’ to the system. Again, buyING is systemic.
Viewing the sales and marketing in this light, it becomes obvious how you restrict your audience: when you offer content directed toward a product or solution, only people who have completed their change process and have deemed the ‘cost’ of a purchase manageable will be interested.
But there are about 80% more potential buyERS who are still in the buyING decision process, haven’t yet gotten their ducks in a row, and can’t buy until they do. You overlook them, mistakenly assuming you can engage them with clever outreach/content or data capture.
But you’re failing, and your closing numbers are diminishing. You call this ‘no decision’, and yet they are making decisions without you, without reading or heading your outreach. And the sales process itself is going the way of the landline.
Why not add a decision facilitation process to serve people where they really need your help?
WHERE BUYING NEEDS SELLING
In 1983 I founded a tech start-up in London. Because I had previously been a very successful sales professional dedicated to discovering ‘need’ and placing solutions, I was surprised at the complexity of making a decision to buy anything. I had to:
To my surprise I discovered that my buyING decision had little to do with making a purchase but was a complex set of collaboration processes to facilitate group buy-in and understand the downside of making any changes. Ultimately, all problems had to be resolved with minimal disruption.
As a seller I had been indoctrinated in the normalized thinking of ‘needs-based’ outreach: ‘get in’ to the ‘right’ people with a ‘need’ that matched my solution; write ‘good’ content to engage; make my site compelling to differentiate from the competition, always assuming I could make a compelling case that my solution was the answer.
But as an entrepreneur I discovered that until people were near the end of their decision path they didn’t even seek out or notice content; they might have been in the buyING process, but weren’t yet buyERS. And reading content on a solution I might not need, or my group hadn’t approved of, possibly having only partial facts on how our problem originated or was maintained, or until workarounds were tried, was a waste of time.
Eventually, in 1986, I developed Buying Facilitation® to facilitate the buyING process in my company. I then used the process to double our own sales and have since trained it to over 100,000 people in global corporations such as IBM, Kaiser, Bose, KPMG, Wachovia, Morgan Stanley, DuPont, etc.
Buying Facilitation® is
a generic change management process (used for coaching and leadership also) that makes it possible to execute the decision making steps in a way that leads to a congruent solution and quickly leads those involved in the buyING process to become buyERS where relevant.
In control group studies, used as a front end to sales, it has an 800% increase over using sales on its own. Buying Facilitation® to lead folks through their buyING decisions; sales to help buyERS decide on the purchase. And marketing throughout, although initially focusing on leading each stage until they become buyERS when content-specific data is employed.
To help you understand what goes on in the buyING process, here are the 13 steps in a systemic Buying Decision Path between problem recognition and a resolution (or purchase) that all people must go through as they work at resolving a problem.
It’s quite possible for sales and marketing to enter during these steps, recognize who will be a buyer on the first call (Remember: you’d be wearing a change facilitation hat first, not a sales hat.), and lead them through their buyING steps to become buyERS. Note: these are relevant for any decision making process.
1. Idea stage: Is there a problem? Who needs to be involved to gather the full fact pattern?
2. Brainstorming stage: Idea discussed broadly with colleagues. Begin discerning who to include in ongoing discussions. Begin gathering full fact pattern of problem.
3. Initial discussion stage: Initial group of chosen colleagues begin discussing the problem in earnest to gather full fact pattern: how it got created and maintained; posit who to include on Buying Decision Team; consider possible fixes and fallout. Action groups formed to bring ideas for possible workarounds to next meeting. Invites for new, overlooked stakeholders to join.
4. Contemplation stage: Workarounds (previous vendors, inhouse solutions) discussed for efficacy. People who will touch the solution to discuss their concerns to engage before they resist. More research necessary on possible solutions, ways to determine if workarounds are viable.
5. Organization stage: Group gathers research to determine if a workaround is possible. Discussions of downsides of each. Viability of workarounds determined.
6. Change management stage: If workarounds acceptable, group goes forward to plan to implement. If workarounds deemed unacceptable, group begins broad discussion to consider downsides of external solutions: the ‘cost’ (risk)of change, the ‘cost’ of a fix, the ‘cost’ of staying the same, and how much disruption is acceptable. Broad research to be done for next meeting on solutions that might meet the criteria and ‘cost’ minimal disruption.
7. Coordination stage: Dedicated discussions on research in re risk factors, buy-in issues, resistance. Delineate everyone’s thoughts re goals, acceptable risks, job changes, and change capacity. Once agreement is reached, folks resisting must be heard; group must decide how to include and dismantle resistance. Specific research now needed. Discussions on next steps.
8. Research stage: Discussion on research that’s been brought in for each possible solution. Who is onboard with risk? How will change be managed with each solution? To include: downsides per type of solution, possibilities, outcomes, problems, management considerations, changes in policy, job description changes, HR issues, etc. and how these will be mitigated if purchase to be made – or discussion around maintaining the status quo instead of resolving the problem at all (i.e. cost too high). List of possible solutions now defined; research for each to be ready for next meeting.
9. Consensus stage: Known risks, change management procedures, buy-in and consensus discussed for each possibility. Buying Decision Team makes final choices: specific products and possible vendors are named. Criteria set for solution choice.
10. Action stage: Responsibilities apportioned to manage the specifics of Step 9. Calls made to several vendors for interviews, presentations, and data gathering. Agreed-upon criteria applied with each vendor.
11. Second brainstorming stage: Buying Decision Team discusses results of calls and interviews with vendors and partners, and fallout/benefits of each. Favored vendors pitched by team members among themselves, and then called for follow on meetings.
12. Choice stage: New solution/vendor agreed on. Change management issues that need to be managed are delineated and put in place. Leadership initiatives prepared to avoid disruption.
13. Implementation stage: Vendor contacted. Purchase made. Implement and follow on.
Given these steps, you can see that people aren’t buyERs until Step 9. Before then, they are people trying to fix a problem internally, and aren’t seeking out products or solutions to purchase so there’s no way ‘in’ with traditional sales and marketing. But if you lead folks through their Steps of change, both sales and marketing can influence the buyING so folks become buyERS.
ADDITIONAL SALES AND MARKETING OUTREACH
To help those in the buyING process become buyERS, marketers can write change management-based content with different focus: help them determine the full set of stakeholders; teach them how to engage buy-in etc. Sales can begin each contact by helping them notice where they are in their change process (i.e. instead of need). And once they get to the end of their buyING process, they would be buyERS and ready to purchase and receive relevant content.
I have actually created a Buying Enablement process to help marketers achieve this, complete with titles for content outreach. Note: it’s vital that content do NOT include any product pitches as folks truly are not considering this until the later stages. Of course a great footer and linked articles will lead to solution content.
Folks must go through their decision making/change management process anyway, with you or without you. So it might as well be with you, especially since you’ll know the specific components of each step better than they do.
It’s obvious that with websites and search being what they are, people no longer need sellers or marketers to provide content. But because the buyING process is so much more complex these days, this is where they need the most help. HELP THEM BECOME BUYERS by facilitating them through their buyING process. It’s a win/win folks.
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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 March 21st, 2022
Posted In: Change Management