How do we manage change in our organizations? Not very well, apparently. According to statistics, the success rate for many planned change implementations is low: 37 percent for Total Quality Management; 30 percent for Reengineering and Business Process Reengineering, and a whopping 3% for some software implementations.
Regardless of the industry, situation, levels of people involved, or intended outcome, change seems carry a real possibility of failure:
Change initiatives can be far more successful if we include systems thinking in our change management models.
THE SYSTEMS ASPECT OF CHANGE
I believe change is a systems problem. But let me start at the beginning with my definitions of change and systems.
CHANGE: Change is an alteration to a system and entails modifying an existing structure that has been working well-enough for some time, accepted by all, and habituated into the daily norms while maintaining balance.
All change must include a way for the elements – the existing behaviors, roles, policies etc. – to buy-in to, and incorporate, new outputs while maintaining the rules and beliefs of the foundational status quo.
SYSTEM: Any connected set of elements that agree to, and are held together by consensual rules and beliefs that generate a unique set of behaviors and exhibit a unique identity. Because change represents risk to the status quo, systems defend themselves by resisting when feeling threatened.
In order to facilitate congruent change, it’s necessary to get agreement from all who will touch the final solution. A good way to encourage this is to not only include everyone involved with the status quo (including front line workers) in the problem definition and brainstorming of possible solutions, but to develop a path forward (There are specific, sequential steps in all change processes.) that is agreeable to all.
When leaders define the problem and solution and then attempt to get agreement, they run the risk of insulting the core Beliefs that are the very foundation of everyone’s jobs.
Too often change is approached with an eye on altering activity without ensuring that the core system maintains balance, thereby putting the system at risk. When we attempt to push behavior change before eliciting core Belief change, we
Herein lies the problem: until or unless the full complement of elements that created and maintain the problem and will be affected by the new agrees to change, the system will resist change regardless of the problem that needs fixing. The system is sacrosanct.
Here’s where change agents face problems: In general, outsiders cannot know what norms must be maintained. Change is an inside job. Congruent, resistance-free change must teach the system how to change itself. My new book How? explores this topic thoroughly.
ALL CHANGE MUST ADDRESS SYSTEMS
Most influencing professions (leadership, coaching, consulting, sales etc.) begin with a goal to be met, adopt an outside-in approach that uses influence, advice, ‘rational’ scientific ‘facts’, and overlooks the fact that anything new, any push from outside the system, represents disruption.
We put the cart before the horse, attempting to change behaviors and elicit buy in before the system is certain it won’t be compromised. Until the system knows it will remain in balance, whatever problem is being resolved will continue as is – it’s already built into the system:
Until all above are managed the system will resist change (or buying, or learning, or eating healthy or or) regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. Indeed outside influencers actually cause resistance.
But we can actually lead Others through to their own change:
Note: the issues that must be addressed for change without resistance are the same regardless of the problem or number of people of people involved – a company resisting reorganization, a patient refusing meds, a user group resisting new software, a buyer who hasn’t figured out how to buy, or a group not taking direction from company leadership. As outsiders we too often push for our own results and actually cause the resistance that occurs.
It’s possible to use our positions as outside influencers eschew our bias and be real Servant Leaders and teach the system how to manage its own change.
CASE STUDY: SYSTEMS ALIGNMENT
Here is a case study that exhibits how to enable buy-in and change management by facilitating a potential buyer through her unique series of steps to change.
I was with a client in Scotland when he received a call from a long-standing prospect – a Learning and Development manager at a prodigious university with whom he’d been talking for 11 months – to say, “Thanks, but no thanks” for the product purchase. After three product trials that met with acclaim and excitement, an agreed-upon price, and a close relationship developed over the course of a year, what happened? The software was a perfect solution; they were not speaking to any other providers; and price didn’t seem to be a problem.
At my client’s request, I called the L&D manager. Here is the conversation:
SDM: Hi, Linda. Sharon Drew here. Is this a good time to speak? Pete said you’d be waiting for my call around now.
LR: Yes, it’s fine. How can I help? I already told Pete that we wouldn’t be purchasing the software.
SDM: I heard. You must be so sad that you couldn’t purchase it at this time.
LR: I am! I LOVE the technology! It’s PERFECT for us. I’m so disappointed.
SDM: What stopped you from being able to purchase it?
LR: We have this new HR director with whom I share a leadership role. He is so contentious that few people are willing to deal with him. After meeting with him, I get migraines that leave me in bed. I’ve decided to limit my exposure to him, discussing only things that are emergencies. So I’ve put a stop to all communication with him just to keep me sane. He would have been my business partner on this purchase.
SDM: Sounds awful. I hear that because of the extreme personal issues you’ve experience from the relationship, you don’t have a way to get the necessary buy-in from this man to help your employees who might need additional tools to do their jobs better.
LR: Wow. You’re right. That’s exactly what I’ve done. Oh my. I’m going to have to figure that out because I’ve certainly got a responsibility to the employees.
SDM: What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to work through the personal issues and figure out how to be in some sort of a working relationship with the HR director for those times your employees need new tools?
LR: Could you send me some of these great questions you’re asking me so I can figure it out, and maybe use them on him?
I sent her a half dozen Facilitative Questions to facilitate a path to a collaborative partnership with the HR Director. Two weeks later, Linda called back to purchase the solution. What happened?
1. While the university had a need for my products solution, the poor relationship between the HR director and the L&D director created hidden, ongoing dysfunction. The information flow problem could not be resolved while the hidden problem remained in place – details not only hidden from the sales person but used as a deterrent by Linda (who resolved the problem by walking away). So yes, there was a need for the solution and indeed a willing partner, but no, there was no buy-in for change.
2. The only viable route was to help her figure out her own route to a fix.
3. This was not a sales problem but a change management issue. I helped Linda resolve her own problem. Current change management models attempt to rule, govern, constrict, manage, influence, maintain the change, rather than enable the system to recognize and mitigate its own unique (and largely unconscious) drivers and change itself congruently.
Linda was willing to do something different once she knew how to avoid personal risk.
Rule: Until or unless people grasp how a solution will match their underlying criteria/values, and until there is buy-in from the parts that will be effected from the change, no permanent change will happen regardless of the necessity of the change, the size of the need, the origination of the request, or the efficacy of the solution.
Too often change management initiatives assume that a ‘rational’, information/rules-based change request and early client engagement will be enough to inspire change; they forget that until the proposed change meets the foundational values and beliefs of the culture, the status quo prevails.
Rule: Whether it’s sales, leadership, healthcare, coaching or change management, until or unless the folks within the system are willing to adapt to, and adopt, the requested change using their own rules and beliefs, they will either take no action or resist to maintain the system.
Until the elements within the system understand the risks of the proposed change, they cannot agree to it. Too often, outsiders try to push change when it doesn’t match the unspoken rules and beliefs of the system.
Rule: Until the risks that a proposed change are known and agreeable, until it’s understood that the risk of the change is less than the risk of staying the same, no change will occur.
Before introducing any change initiative, give up the need to push the change, listen without bias, and enable Others to traverse their route to discovery:
Until now, we’ve assumed that resistance is a normal part of the change process. But we’ve effectively been pushing our own biased needs for change into a hidden system. We’ve forgotten that the change we are suggesting will encounter resistance if it doesn’t match the system of the original culture. It’s possible to get buy-in without resistance. Change really needn’t be hard.
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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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen March 31st, 2025
Posted In: Communication
Your important nonprofit or exciting startup will help the world be a better place. But now you’ve got to raise money. You’ve created a terrific pitch deck; have a highly competent management team and terms; have access to good outreach lists; are sending out slick marketing missives that show your professionalism and integrity; and have identified donor prospects with major gift potential. You’ve designed a multi-channel approach to build relationships with small investors and donors to excite them to give more.
Why aren’t you raising all the funding you deserve?
It’s a decision issue. Somehow your investors must choose between giving their money to you or putting it somewhere else that seems equally promising. With a finite amount to donate, they must decide where to put their funds.
CRITERIA VS. CONTENT
Ultimately, people choose to donate based on their own choice criteria and beliefs. While your purpose is undoubtedly important, unless folks know how to choose one worthy beneficiary over another, they will do nothing, regardless of how compelling your goals, marketing, market share, or growth potential.
In reality, funds are not sitting there waiting for you to show up. You may be requesting money that
Knowing we’ve got an important offering, we assume a great marketing piece or a great pitch will engage, excite, and explain, and entice a donor’s better angels. So why aren’t we attracting more funding?
We forget that, for the most part, decisions are made unconsciously, before content is even considered; we have no access to the hidden or historic arrangements, political mind-fields, or unconscious biases that dictate someone’s choice criteria.
The more successful choice is to help people or groups discern their decision/choice criteria and then offer the exact pitch to match it.
HOW PEOPLE CHOOSE
Since most decision-making criteria is unconscious, raising funds must assume:
In other words, just because we’ve got a worthy cause or important product, people won’t give us money unless it meets their unspoken criteria.
While we don’t have access to anyone’s personal decision-making strategies, we do know: unless it’s a small donor, there’s usually a decision team who decide together – several people or just a spouse; there’s a set of criteria that govern their choices – political, humanitarian, profit, trust, etc.; there are personal standards that must be met; and content details are only useful once primary choice criteria are met.
I suggest we begin with questions to lead people directly to their unconscious choice criteria, such as:
These questions (a form of question I invented [Facilitative Questions™]) enable the Other’s discovery and make it possible to expand their criteria beyond their automatic choices. So if I never contribute to causes that involve for-profit business, if a big-box store is fundraising to give their employee’s children better healthcare and I recognize I must go beyond my unconscious criteria, I might have greater choice.
At my suggestion, one of my clients posed an initial Facilitative Question™ when seeking Round B funding, before pitching. As a woman, she understood she had less than a 4% chance of getting funded and hoped to trigger the investor’s better angels:
What would you need to know about me, my level of skill and professionalism, and my ability to manage a start-up, to trust that as a woman I was worthy of your investment?
Two of the ten potential investors walked out. The other 8 actually applauded, saying they hadn’t realized they had an unconscious bias against women before they even walked in. She had no problems getting funded.
WHEN AND HOW
There’s a difference between sending out marketing content or speaking with someone personally: in one-to-one conversations it’s possible to continue questioning, for example, or provide further information. And of course sharing the details of your organization is necessary.
But both vehicles share the same rules: offer content after helping the donor/investor understand their unconscious criteria for giving you money. Obviously, in personal conversations, use the uncovered criteria as the focus of your pitch.
For people who have donated or invested previously, the focus should be on how they’ll decide to invest or donate again. These folks seem to be obvious patrons, but unfortunately not all recommit.
While we assume we can encourage them to donate or invest more, we might not know what they need to hear from us to do so: What do they need to know about what we’ve accomplished in the meantime? Are they looking for some sign of ‘success’ or to know if we’ve made the change or addition they were hoping for? Do they still trust us? Again, we can assume, but we don’t know for sure.
Good questions might be something like:
Ultimately, investors and donors need to know they’re giving money to groups that match their goals and beliefs, and your content and marketing must be creative and representative.
But don’t rely on the details of your organization to be the only selling point: either do market testing to discover the beliefs and goals of your population, or rely on questions that help them recognize their unconscious biases and then offer content that meets most criteria.
Giving money is a choice that involves personal criteria: don’t assume people will invest or donate merely because you’ve got a great idea.
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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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen March 17th, 2025
Posted In: Communication, News
We all know the importance of listening; of connecting with others by deeply hearing them share thoughts, ideas, and feelings; by being present and authentic. We work hard at listening without judgment, carefully, with our full attention. But are we hearing others without bias? I contend we’re not.
WHAT IS LISTENING?
Listening is far more than hearing words and understanding another’s shared thoughts and feelings. Listening is actually a brain thing. It’s about puffs of air.
There are several problems with us accurately hearing what someone says, regardless of our intent to show up as empathetic listeners. Generally speaking, our brains determine what we hear. And they weren’t designed to be objective because:
This second point paves the way for misunderstanding: our ears hear what they’re set up to hear, not necessarily what a speaker intends to share.
Just as we perceive color when light receptors in our eyes send messages to our brain to translate the incoming light waves (the world has no color), meaning is a translation of sound vibrations that have traversed a very specific brain pathway after we hear them.
As such, I define listening as our brain’s progression of making meaning from incoming sound vibrations.
HOW BRAINS LISTEN
I didn’t start off with that definition. Like most people, I had thought that if I gave my undivided attention and listened ‘without judgment’, I’d be able to hear what a Speaker intended. But I was wrong.
When writing my book WHAT? on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I was quite dismayed to learn that what a Speaker says and what a Listener hears are often two different things.
It’s not for want of trying; Listeners work hard at empathetic listening, of caring about the Speaker and the conversation, of responding collaboratively and caringly. But the way our brains are organized make it difficult to hear others without bias.
Seems everything we perceive (all incoming sensory) is translated (and restricted) by the circuits already set up in our brains before it gets sent on to our mind for meaning.Our brains have a purely mechanistic approach to translating signals. Here’s what happens when someone speaks:
– the sound of their words enter our ears as mere vibrations (puffs of air with no meaning),
– get turned into electro-chemical signals (also without meaning) that
– get sent to existing circuits
– that have a ‘close-enough’ match (but may not match fully)
– previously used for other translations,
– discards the overage – whatever doesn’t match,
– then sends whatever remains to our mind for translation and understanding,
– causing us to ‘hear’ the messages translated through circuits we already have on file!
It’s mechanical, automatic, meaningless, and electrochemical.
The worst part is that when our brain discards the ‘overage’ signals, it doesn’t tell us! So if you say “ABC” and the closest circuit match in my brain is “ABL” my brain discards D, E, F, G, etc. and fails to tell me what it threw away!
That’s why we believe what we ‘think’ we’ve heard is accurate. Our brain actually tells us that our biased rendition of what it thinks it heard is what was said, regardless of how near or far that interpretation is from the truth.
In other words, we ‘hear’ only what our brain sends to our mind for translation based on our historic circuits – or, our biased, subjective experience.
With the best will in the world, with the best empathetic listening, by being as non-judgmental as we know how to be, as careful to show up with undivided attention, we can only hear what our brain allows us to hear. Being unwittingly restricted by our past, just about everything we hear is naturally biased.
IT’S POSSIBLE TO GET IT ‘RIGHTER’
The problem is our automatic, mechanistic brain. Since we can’t easily change the process itself (I’ve been developing brain change models for decades) it’s possible to add new circuits and interfere with the process.
I’ve come up with two ways to listen with more accuracy:
To make sure I understood what you said accurately, I’m going to tell you what I think you said. Can you please tell me what I misunderstood or missed? I don’t mind getting it wrong, but I want to make sure we’re on the same page.
Listening is a fundamental communication tool. It enables us to connect, collaborate, care, and relate with everyone. By going beyond Active Listening, by adding Brain Listening to empathetic listening, we can now make sure what we hear is actually what was intended.
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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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen March 3rd, 2025
Posted In: Communication, Listening
Have you ever wondered where your thoughts come from? Everything we think – and notice, are curious about, believe in – emerges from neural circuits in our brain that store our history. In other words, due to the way brains process, everything we experience is unconsciously biased by our lived lives.
From birth, our parent’s beliefs become part of our unconscious, personal, ecosystem; the cultural norms of our youth begin creating our lifelong beliefs, habits, behaviors, and identity; the schools we attend introduce us to the way the world works and how to behave accordingly; our professions are chosen to comfortably maintain the biases we’ve accrued and person we’ve become.
Net net, our lives are a conglomeration of our history and unconscious biases, causing us to live and work, marry and spend time with people whose norms, interpretations, and beliefs are very similar to ours.
WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND OTHERS
We unwittingly listen through biased filters and hear distorted versions of what was said; we play and read and watch according to what we’re comfortable with and rarely venture far afield; and aided by the way our brains filter and prune incoming data, we notice what we notice in response to our personal norms, values, and learned habits. We even restrict our lives accordingly – our politics, our curiosity, what we read, our professional choices.
Our lives are lived in a reality of our own making, believing, with certainty, that what we see, hear, and feel is ‘real’. We each live in a unique reality that gets maintained every moment of every day, a reality so automatic and habituated that we’re often unaware how different it might be from those around us.
Given the subjective nature of our lives and our idosyncratic filters, we sometimes make assumptions and judgements of others with different lifestyle choices, education, assumptions, race, or political beliefs. And when we notice these biases and attempt to change our behaviors we are often unsuccessful: changing core biases must be resolved within the system that created it.
This article explains the elements that trigger our biases and offers a route to systemic change.
WE MUST UNDERSTAND SYSTEMS TO ADDRESS BIAS
I’ll start by explaining ‘systems’ as they’re at the root of change: A system is a conglomeration of things that all agree to the same rules. Our ‘human system’ includes a composite of our physiology, biology, and neurology mixed with our norms, culture, history, values, beliefs, dreams that we hold largely unconsciously and formed during our lifetimes.
As a dedicated whole, our personal systems enable us to show up every day as unique individuals: although unconscious, they define our politics, our mate selection, even how we listen to others.
Because we’re often unaware of how deeply rooted our biases are, we are sometimes surprised when they show up. Problems occur when we try to change them and they resist. For permanent change to occur, to modify unconscious bias, it’s not enough to try to change our actions, as you’ll see. We must change our system. Here are a few of our naturally occurring practices that would need to be reconsidered for change:
To change our biases it’s necessary to change the system that created them to begin with. And this cannot be accomplished by merely trying to change. Remember Einstein’s saying that you can’t resolve a problem using the same thinking used when it was created?
CHANGE IS A SYSTEMS PROBLEM
Change is the alteration of something that has existed in a certain way, using specific and accepted norms, in a specific configuration, for a period of time. To amend our responses to bias, we must first modify the status quo that triggered them.
Change is basically a systems problem: Anything new, any problem to fix, any new activity the system is asked to take, poses a risk to the system and demands changing the status quo in a way that maintains the beliefs and norms. Indeed, any new decision is a change management problem.
When we attempt to problem-solve without systemic agreement, without a way to incorporate something new with the existing system so the system doesn’t implode, no change will happen regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. The risk of disruption is too high.
Too often we try to change behaviors via Behavior Modification practices. But these attempts will not cause permanent change. To change our unconscious, automatic responses our system must be reconfigured to produce alternate outputs. Offering any sort of information before the system knows why, how, when, or if to do anything different will only inspire resistance as the system won’t know how to apply it.
CHANGE IS A SYSTEMS PROBLEM
Let’s put this all together: Real change demands a systemic shift to create new triggers, new assumptions, new neural pathways, and ultimately new behaviors. The goal is not to not to get rid of unconscious bias but develop new beliefs. New behaviors will emerge as a result.
We must become Facilitators, not Influencers. We must teach folks to create and habituate their own new neural pathways and filters.
I believe it’s time we had the tools to permanently change and become non-judgmental, accepting, and kind. And above all, cause no harm. All of our lives depend on it.
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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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen February 24th, 2025
Posted In: Change Management, Communication, Listening
As a preamble to a discussion about failing consciously, I’d like to retell a story. Many years ago Xerox was beta testing a then new-type digital printer. The testers sent back complaints: it was hard to figure out how to work the damn thing, and the user guide was confusing. Obviously, User Error, the designers concluded. Yup. More stupid users. So an internal focus group was set up by senior management to test what exactly was happening.
Three middle managers were brought in and put into a room with the new printer and user guide. Mayhem ensued. The designers watched from behind a one-way mirror while the managers got confused by the directions, spent hours arguing amongst themselves, pressed the wrong buttons, and finally gave up – never getting it to work.
User Error, they again said. Obviously, went the thinking, the managers weren’t smart or savvy enough to understand simple directions. Except they didn’t know a trick had been played on them: the testers were actually PhD computer scientists. Oops. It wasn’t User Error at all. The designers had failed to develop an intelligible user guide. So while the printer itself might have been a marvel of machinery for its day, it couldn’t be used. It was a failure. Or was it?
WHAT IS FAILURE
I contend that until every ‘failed’ step was taken, and every ‘failed’ assumption made, there was no way to know exactly what problems needed to be fixed or if indeed their printer was a success. The failure was part of the march to success.
We call it failure when we don’t achieve a goal whether it’s starting up a company, reaching a job goal, learning something new, or starting a new diet.
I think that as humans we strive to succeed, to be seen as competent, to be ‘better than’, even if we’re only in competition with ourselves. It’s natural to want our products, our teams, our families, our competitive activities, to reap success. To be The Best. And we plot and envision how to make it happen.
But the road to success isn’t straight; sometimes we face disappointment, shame, and self-judgment. We get annoyed with ourselves when results don’t seem to comply with our mental images, and tell ourselves maybe we didn’t follow the original plan, or didn’t plan well enough, or maybe we’re self-sabotaging. We blame teammates or vendors, spouses or neighbors.
I’m here to tell you that failure is a necessary part of success. It’s built in to learning and succeeding, actually a natural part of the process of change and accomplishment. Before we win we gotta fail. Tiger Woods didn’t wake up the best in the world. Neither did Pavarotti or Steve Jobs.
For anyone to get to the top, to achieve success in any industry, any endeavor, any sport, it’s necessary to fail over and over. How surprising that no one teaches us how to fail consciously. I suggest we develop conscious failing strategies that become built in to our success procedures.
WHAT IS OUR STATUS QUO? AND WHY IS IT SO STUBBORN?
Getting to success is a sequential process that includes trial and error – i.e. winning and losing are both part of the same process, and each adding a piece of the puzzle. Of course there’s no way to know what we don’t know before we start – no way to even be curious, or ask the right questions because we don’t know what we don’t know. And unfortunately, part of the process is internal, unconscious, and systemic.
Change – and all success and failure is really a form of changing our status quo – has a large unconscious component, and when you only try to add new behaviors you miss the automatic, habituated, and unconscious elements that will rear their ugly heads as you move toward hitting your goals: you can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior. It just doesn’t work that way.
Let me explain a few things about how your brain works in the area of change. To begin, all change is systemic. Anything new you want to do, anything new that requires, ultimately, new behaviors, or added beliefs or life changes, requires buy-in from what already exists in your make up – your status quo.
Indeed, as the repository of your history, values, and norms, your status quo won’t change a thing without congruency. Indeed it will reject anything new, regardless of how necessary it is, unless the new has been properly vetted by the originating system.
Setting a goal that’s behavior-based without agreement from the system, without incorporating steps for buy in, assures resistance. Sure, we lay out the trajectory, attempt to make one good decision at a time, and use every feeling, hope, data point, guess, to take next steps. But when we don’t take into account the way our brains unconsciously process, it may not turn out like we envision. Lucky there’s a way to manage our activities to take into account what a brain needs for congruent change and a successful outcome.
THE STEPS TO FAILING CONSCIOUSLY
In my work on how brains facilitate change and make decisions to shift what’s already there (my The How of Change program teaches how to generate new neural routes) I offer ways to create new synapses and neural pathways that lead to new behaviors. Take a look at the Change Model chart I developed, with a careful look at The Trial Loop – the steps we each take to learn, to add/trial something new:
The Trial Loop is where the brain learning occurs. It’s here we iterate through several touch points: new data acquisition, buy-in, trial behaviors, and the stop/go/stop action (double-arrowed line between Beliefs (CEN) and red Stop) as each new element is tried and considered before new behaviors are formed.
It’s important to understand that no change will occur until these elements are addressed; merely hearing something new – a directive, an interesting piece of information, an internal decision to change a behavior – doesn’t insure something different will happen. Unless our system buys in, until there’s a specific circuit created for the new, no change will occur. You can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior.
So as we try out new stuff, our personal mental models of rules, beliefs, norms, history, etc., go through iterations of trial, acceptance, rejection, confusion, trial, acceptance, rejection, etc. until the new is congruent with the norms of the system, something we cannot know before we go through this process. So let’s call our disappointments part of the iteration process that precedes success. Here is a closer look at my chart:
Now you know the steps to conscious change. Should you want to learn more here’s a one-hour sample of me laying out the foundation of the How of Change course and explaining how change occurs in the brain.
THE STEPS TO CONSCIOUS FAILING
Now let’s plot out the steps to conscious failure to avoid large-scale malfunction.
The Beginning: to start the process toward succeeding at a goal, you need:
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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen January 6th, 2025
Posted In: Change Management, Communication
Have you ever wondered why folks who get trained don’t retain the new knowledge? According to Harvard studies, there’s a 90% failure-to-retain in instructor-led classrooms. Surely students want to learn, trainers are dedicated professionals, and the content is important. But the problem goes beyond the students, the motivation, the trainer, or the material being trained.
I suggest it’s a brain change issue: current training models, while certainly dedicated to imparting knowledge in creative, constructive, and tested ways, may not develop the necessary neural circuitry for Learners to fully comprehend, retain, or retrieve the new information. You see, learners may not naturally have the proper pathways to understand or retain the new knowledge.
The primary problem is how brains ‘hear’. Due to the nature of how brains handle incoming words (puffs of air that face distortions and deletions before being translated by neural circuits to meaning), an instructor’s content may be mistranslated, misunderstood, or misappropriated. Certainly there is no way to retain it as intended unless the learner has precise circuitry that matches the instructor’s content.
Trainers assume their content will be heard accurately. But it’s not, due to the automatic, habituated, physiological, neurological, electrochemical, biological set up of how brains listen. But it can be mitigated by helping students generate new circuits specifically for the new knowledge.
For those interested in learning how brains ‘listen’, my book WHAT? explains it all (with lots of funny stories and learning exercises) and offers workarounds.
As an original thinker who’s been inventing systemic brain change models for decades, I’ve developed a Learning Facilitation™ model that first trains the brain before presenting the core content.
When training begins by first generating new neural circuits, students can accurately translate, understand and retain the new knowledge and avoid any misunderstanding or failure-to-retain.
I presented my Learning Facilitation™ model at the Learning Ideas Conference in June 2024. Here is a link to the full one-hour presentation. Enjoy.
If you have questions, please get in touch: 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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen December 23rd, 2024
Posted In: Communication, News
Decades ago I had an idea that questions could be vehicles to facilitate change in addition to eliciting answers. Convention went against me: the accepted use of questions as information gathering devices is built into our culture. But overlooked is their ability, if used differently, to facilitate congruent change.
WHAT IS A QUESTION?
Standard questions gather information at the behest of an Asker and as such are biased by their words, goals, and intent. As such, they actually restrict our Communication Partner’s responses:
Need to Know Askers pose questions as per their own ‘need to know’, data collection, or curiosity.
These questions risk overlooking more relevant, accurate, and criteria-based answers that are stored in a Responder’s brain beyond the parameters of the question posed.
Why did you do X? vs How did you decide that X was your best option?
Manipulate agreement/response Questions that direct the Responder to respond in a way that fits the needs and expectations of the Asker.
These questions restrict possibility, cause resistance, create distrust, and encourage lying.
Can you see how doing Y would have been better? vs What would you need to consider to broaden your scope of consideration next time?
Doubt Directive These questions, sometimes called ‘leading questions’ are designed to cause Responders to doubt their own effectiveness, in order to create an opening for the Asker.
These narrow the range of possible responses, often creating some form of resistance or defensive lies; they certainly cause defensiveness and distrust.
Don’t you think you should consider doing X? vs Have you ever thought of alternate ways of achieving X?
Data gathering When worded badly, these questions limit the possible answers and overlook more accurate data.
What were the results of your search for Z? vs How did you choose the range of items to search for, and what results did you get?
Standard questions restrict responses to the Asker’s parameters, regardless of their intent or the influencer’s level of professionalism, care, or knowledge. Potentially important, accurate data – not to mention the real possibility of facilitating change – is left on the table and instead may promote distrust, bad data collection, and delayed success.
Decision Scientists end up gathering incomplete data that creates implementation issues; leaders and coaches push clients toward the change they perceive is needed and often miss the real change needed. The fields of sales and coaching are particularly egregious. The cost of bias and restriction is unimaginable.
Sharon-Drew’s new book came out 9/16/2023
WHAT IS AN ANSWER?
Used to elicit or push data, the very formulation of conventional questions restricts answers. If I ask ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ you cannot reply ‘I went to the gym yesterday.’ Every answer is restricted by the biases within the question.
So why does it matter if we’re biasing our questions? It matters because we don’t get accurate answers; it matters because our questions instill resistance; it matters because we’re missing opportunities to serve and support change.
Imagine if we could reconfigure questions to elicit accurate data for researchers or marcom folks; or enable buyers to take quick action from ads, cold calls or large purchases; or help coaching clients change behaviors congruently, permanently, and quickly; or encourage buy-in during software implementations. I’m suggesting questions can facilitate real change.
WHAT IS CHANGE?
Our brain stores data rather haphazardly in our brain making it difficult sometimes to find the right answer when we need it, especially relevant when we want to make new choices.
Over the last decades, I have mapped the sequence of systemic change and designed a way to use questions as directional devices to pull relevant data in the proper sequence so influencers can lead Responders through their own change process without resistance.
This decision facilitation process enables quicker decisions and buy-in – not to mention truly offer a Servant Leader, win/win communication. Let’s look at how questions can enable change.
All of us are a ‘system’ of subjectivity collected during our lifetime: unique rules, values, habits, history, goals, experience, etc. that operates consensually to create and maintain us. It resides in our unconscious and defines us. Without it, we wouldn’t have criteria for any choices, or actions, or habits whatsoever. Our system is hard wired to keep us who we are.
To learn something new, to do something different or learn a new behavior, to buy something, to take vitamins or get a divorce or use new software or be willing to forgive a friend, change must come from within or it will be resisted.
To manage congruent change, and enable the steps to achieve buy-in, I’ve developed Facilitative Questions™ that work comfortably with conventional questions and lead Responders to
It’s possible to help folks make internal changes and find their own brand of excellence.
Facilitative Questions™ (FQs) use a new skill set – listening for systems – that is built upon systems thinking and facilitating folks through their unconscious to discover their own answers.
Using specific words, in a very specific sequence, it’s possible to pose questions that are free of bias, need or manipulation and guide congruent change. And it requires trust that Responders have their own answers.
Facilitative Question™ Not information gathering, pull, or manipulative, FQs are guiding/directional tools, like a GPS system. Using specific words in specific sequences they lead Responders congruently, without any bias, down their unique steps of change to Excellence. How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle? Or What has stopped you from adding ‘x’ to your current skill set until now?
When used with coaching clients, buyers, negotiation partners, advertisements, or even teenagers, these questions create action within the Responder, causing them to recognize internal incongruences and deficiencies, and be guided through their own options. (Because these questions aren’t natural to us, I’ve designed a tool and program to teach the ‘How’ of formulating them.).
The responses to FQs are quite different from conventional questions. By word sequencing, word choice, and placement they cause the Responder to expand their perspective and recognize a broad swath of possible answers. A well-formed FQ would be one we formulated for Wachovia Bank to open a cold call:
How would you know when it’s time to consider adding new banking partners for those times your current bank can’t give you what you need?
This question shifted the response from 100 prospecting calls from 10 appointments and 2 closes over 11 months to 37 meetings and 29 closes over 3 months. FQs found the right prospects and garnered engagement immediately.
Instead of pulling data, you’re directing the Responder’s unconscious to where their answers are stored. It’s possible Responders will ultimately get to their answers without Facilitative Questions, but using them, it’s possible to help Responders organize their change criteria very quickly accurately. Using Facilitative Questions, we must
FQs enable congruent, systemic, change. I recognize this is not the conventional use of questions, but we have a choice: we can either facilitate a Responder’s path down their own unique route and travel with them as Change Facilitators – ready with our ideas, solutions, directions as they discover a need we can support – or use conventional, biased questions that limit possibility.
For change to occur, people must go through these change steps anyway; we’re just making it more efficient for them as we connect through our desire to truly Serve. We can assist, or wait to find those who have already completed the journey. They must do it anyway: it might as well be with us.
I welcome opportunities to put Facilitative Questions into the world. Formulating them requires a new skill set that avoids any bias (Listening for Systems, for example). But they add an extra dimension to helping us all serve each other.
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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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen December 9th, 2024
Posted In: Communication, Listening
As instructors you’re committed to collaborating with your students, inspiring their creativity and sparking their original ideas. You pose interesting questions to enthuse them and work hard at offering knowledge in a way that inspires their learning.
But are they hearing what you intend to convey?
When I heard two highly intelligent people having a conversation in which neither were directly responding to each other (“Where should my friends pick me up?” “There’s parking near the bottom of the hill.”) I became curious. Were they hearing different things that caused disparate responses?
I spent the next 3 years studying how brains listen and writing a book on it (WHAT? Did you really say what I think I heard?). I ended up learning far more than I ever wanted to: like most people, I had assumed that when I listened I accurately heard someone’s intended message. I was wrong.
HOW BRAINS LISTEN
Turns out there’s no absolute correlation between what a Speaker says and what a Listener hears – a very unsatisfactory reality when our professions are based on offering content that is meant to be understood and retained. Sadly there’s a probability that students are not taking away what we’re paid to teach them.
To give you a better idea of how this happens and how automatic and mechanical this process is, here are the steps brains perform when hearing spoken words.
1. A message (words, as puffs of air, initially without meaning) gets spoken and received as sound vibrations.
2. Dopamine processes incoming sound vibrations, deleting and filtering out some of them according to relevance to the Listener’s mental models.
3. What’s left gets sent to a CUE which turns the remaining vibrations into electrochemical signals.
4. The signals then get sent to the Central Executive Network (CEN) where they are dispatched to a ‘similar-enough’ neural circuit for translation into meaning.
Note: The preferred neural circuits that receive the signals are those most often used by the Listener, regardless of their relevance to what was said.
5. Upon arrival at these ‘similar-enough’ circuits, the brain discards any overage between the existing circuit and the incoming one and fills in any perceived holes with ‘other’ signals from neighboring circuits.
What we ‘hear’ is what remains. So: several deletions, a few additions, and translation into meaning by circuits that already exist.
In other words, what we think we hear, what our brain tells us was said, is some rendition of what a Speaker intends to convey biased by our own history. And when applying these concepts to training and instruction, neither the instructor nor the student knows the distance between what was said and what was heard.
I lost a business partner who believed I said something I would never have said. He not only didn’t believe me when I told him what I’d actually said, but he didn’t believe his wife who was standing with us at the time. “You’re both lying to me! I heard it with my own ears!” and he stomped out of the room, never to speak to me again.
HOW TO CONFIRM STUDENTS HEAR US
What does that mean for instructors? It means we have no idea if some/all/few of the students hear precisely what we are trying to convey. Or they might hear something similar, or something that offends them. They may hear something quite comfortable or something vastly different. They may misinterpret a homework assignment or a classroom instruction. It means they may not retain what we’re offering.
To make sure students understand what we intend to share, we must take an extra step when we instruct. Instead of merely assuming we’re presenting good content or asking creativity-building questions, we must assume we don’t know what the students have heard, regardless of how carefully we’ve worded our message.
In smaller classrooms I suggest we ask:
Can you each tell me what you heard me say?
Or, with a large class, say the same thing in several different ways: you can begin by explaining –
Because of the way brains hear incoming words, you’ll each translate what I’m saying differently. To make sure we’re all doing the same assignment, I’m going to tell you the homework assignment in several different ways:
Write a 3-page paper on [how your creativity is inspired]. Let me repeat this in a different way:
In 3 pages, explain what’s stopping you from [being as creative as you can be]. Or maybe this is clearer for you:
How do you ‘do’ your [creativity to end up with a new concept]? Explain in a 3 page paper. Or:
Hand in a 3 page paper that explains [your thinking process that triggers new ideas].
It might sound like extra work but the learners will:
Since students sometimes fear offering original thoughts as they don’t want to hand in a ‘wrong’ answer, this type of exposition ensures they’ll all hear your intent and be willing to share their authentic responses. And, they’ll understand that if they don’t precisely grasp what their instructor is offering, it’s their brain’s fault.
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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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen November 25th, 2024
Posted In: Communication, Listening
Our viewpoints, interpretations and assumptions are so unconsciously biased that we unwittingly restrict our ability to accurately understand, or act on, incoming information. Our brains are the culprit, as they construct the way we make sense of the world; we don’t question what our brains tell us.
Responding from historic personal norms and beliefs, we instinctively assume our perceptions, actions, interpretations, are based on reality. But we invent our own reality. As David Eagleman says in The Brain,
“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]
Our brains actually restrict us to seeing, noticing, hearing, understanding, and learning what we already have circuits to translate – what’s comfortable and acceptable – causing deep seated biases. Our subjectivity maintains us.
In this article I will explain how our brain biases us and what we can do to override the patterns.
SUBJECTIVITY VS OBJECTIVITY
We live our lives subjectively, based on the way our brains code and retrieve our personal, unique, and idiosyncratic beliefs, assumptions, history and norms. We think we’re making good choices when we choose or consider one thing vs another, when we easily reject something because it makes no sense or annoys us. Or worse, when it’s ‘obvious’ to us that one thing should be valued differently than another.
We like to think we’re objective. But we’re not.
The Wikipedia definition of objectivity is “… the elimination of subjective perspectives and … purely based on hard facts.” And “a lack of bias, judgment, or prejudice.” But is this possible? What are ‘hard facts’ when our brain rejects them as faulty? When our brains determine what ‘reality’ is? I suggest that objectivity is only slightly less biased than subjectivity.
Indeed, it’s pretty impossible to experience or interpret most anything without bias. We act, make decisions and choices, communicate with others, raise children and have friends, all from a small range of favored, habitual mental models and neural circuits that come from oft-used superhighways in our brains that we’ve spent a lifetime culling and assume are accurate.
Indeed, our worlds are very tightly controlled by our unconscious, habituated, and brain-based biases, making it quite difficult to objectively hear or understand anything that is different. It takes quite a bit of work to act beyond our perceptions.
WHY CAN’T WE BE OBJECTIVE?
Each of us interpret incoming messages uniquely. Indeed, objectivity is not, well, objective. Here’s what happens: Sometimes
We each live in worlds of our own making. We choose friends and neighborhoods according to our beliefs and how our ears interpret ‘facts’, choose professions according to our likes and predispositions, raise our kids with the same norms and beliefs that we hold. In other words, we’ve created rather stable – certainly comfortable – worlds for ourselves that we fight to maintain regardless of how our biases may distort.
When communicating with others, ‘objective facts’ might get lost in subjectivity. In business we connect with different viewpoints and attempt to convince other’s of our ‘rightness’, and either they don’t believe us or they feel we’ve made them ‘wrong’. Our children learn stuff in school that we might find objectionable regardless of its veracity, or we might disagree with teachers who have different interpretations of our child’s behavior.
And of course, most scientific facts we deem ‘objective truth’ may just be opinions. Folks like Curie, Einstein, Hawking, and Tesla were considered to be cranks because their ideas flew in the face of objective science that turned out to be nothing more than decades and centuries of perceived wisdom/opinions.
The problem shows up in every aspect of our lives. Sometimes there’s no way to separate out objective fact from subjective belief, regardless of the veracity.
I remember when my teenage son came home with blue hair one day. Thinking of what his teachers would say (This was in 1985!) or his friend’s parents, I wanted to scream. Instead I requested that next time he wanted to do something like that to please discuss it with me first, and then told him it looked great (It actually was a terrific color!). But his father went nuts when he came to pick him up, screaming at both of us (“What kind of a mother lets her son dye his hair blue!!!”), and taking him directly to the barber to shave his head. For me, it was merely hair. We both had different ‘objective realities.’
CASE STUDY IN OBJECTIVITY VS SUBJECTIVITY
I once visited a friend in the hospital where I began a light conversations with the elderly orderly helping her sit up and eat. During our chat, the orderly asked me if I could mentor him. Um… Well, I was busy. Please! he begged. Not knowing what I could add to his life and having a bias that folks who asked me to mentor them just wanted me to give them money, I reluctantly, doubtfully, said ok.
He emailed me and invited me to dinner. Um… well, ok. I’d donate one night. He lived in a tiny room in a senior living center, on the ‘wrong’ side of the tracks. It was very clean and neat, and he had gone out of his way to prepare the best healthy dinner he knew how to offer. Shrimp cocktail. Nice salad. Hamburger and beans. Ice cream. During dinner he played some lovely music. Just lovely. I was transfixed. Who is that playing, I asked.
“It’s me. I wrote that piece, and I’m playing all the instruments. I have several CDs of music I’ve composed and self-produced. Can you help me find someone who might want to hear it and do something with it? I’ve never met anyone who could help me.” I helped him find folks who helped him professionally record at least two of his compositions.
By any ‘objective’ measure, using my own subjective biases and ignoring the objective truth that we’re all equal and everyone is capable of having talent, I didn’t initially consider that someone ‘like that’ (old, black, poor, uneducated) had the enormous talent this man possessed, regardless of my advocacy of non-bias and gender/race equality.
Unwittingly, we seriously restrict our worlds the way we process incoming data. We live subjective lives that restrict us. And as a result, we end up having arguments, misunderstandings, failed initiatives; we end up having a smaller pool of ideas to think with and don’t see a need for further research or checking; we make faulty assumptions about people and ideas that could bring benefits to our lives. I personally believe it’s necessary for us to remove as many restrictions as possible to our pool of knowledge and beliefs.
HOW TO COMPENSATE
To recognize bias and have a new choice, we must first recognize the necessity of noticing when something we believe may not be true, regardless of how strong our conviction otherwise. It’s quite difficult to do using the same biases that caused us to unconsciously bias in the first place.
Here’s a tip to help expand your normalized perception and notice a much broader range of givens, or ‘reality,’ to view an expanded array of options from a Witness or Coach or Observer position on the ceiling:
Since the difference between subjectivity and objectivity is one of perception, and in general our brains make our determinations unconsciously, we must go to the place in our brains that cause us to perceive, and make it conscious. Only then can we have any objective choice. And next time we think we’re being objective, maybe rethink the situation to consider whether new choices are needed.
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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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen November 18th, 2024
Posted In: Communication, Listening, Sales
I recently heard yet another excuse as to why a buyer didn’t buy: seller/buyer misalignment. Seriously? Because the seller didn’t close a sale (That was expected by the seller? In the mythical pipeline? According to the expectation of the seller?) there was a relationship problem? No. The problem stems from sellers not understanding what a buyer is, and what a buyer must know before self-identifying as a buyer. In this case, there was no buyer to be ‘misaligned’ with.
The fact is, selling doesn’t cause buying.
FROM PERSON TO BUYER
A decision not to purchase has very little to do with the seller, the solution, the relationship, or the need. In fact, making a purchase is the very last thing a buyer does. Just because a situation seems like a perfect fit with your solution does not make it a buying/ selling opportunity; just because someone really needs your solution does not mean they are ready, willing, or able to buy.
Let me begin by defining ‘Buyer’: a person (or group) who has
and decides that purchasing an external solution is their best option.
As the thought-leader behind how buyers buy (programs, books, models, steps, terms, since 1985) , the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the person who coined the terms Buy Cycle, Buying Patterns, Buying Journey, Buying Decision Team, and How Buyers Buy, I’d like to offer some thoughts:
1. A buyer isn’t a buyer until they’ve bought something. Until then they are people with a problem who may, if they can’t resolve the issue themselves and the risk is manageable, seek an external solution.
2. Solving a problem never begins as a decision to buy anything (unless a small personal item), regardless of ‘need’. People don’t want to buy anything; they merely want to resolve a problem in the most efficient way with the least risk. Hence, they won’t respond to or read your marketing or sales content based on ‘need’.
3. People prefer to resolve their own problems. Workarounds are always the first option, a purchase the last.
4. Unless the risk of making a purchase is lower than the risk of staying the same, there will be no purchase regardless of the need or the efficacy of your solution. By seeking folks with ‘need’, sellers only find the low-hanging fruit and reduce their potential prospect audience by 80%.
5. A purchase occurs only when the stakeholder group has found the risk of change manageable and buys-in to something new. It’s only when there’s agreement from all elements that created the problem that
that the full scope of a bringing in a new solution (i.e. buy something) is understood. Until then ‘need’ isn’t fully defined, people haven’t yet self-identified as ‘buyers’, they won’t read your content or take a meeting (unless to pick your brain), and no external solution is required. Here is where sellers often get caught thinking there’s a ‘need’ before the folks with the problem think there is one.
‘Need’ is NOT the criteria people use to buy. Until they are convinced they cannot solve their own problem and change without much disruption, until the understand and can accept the risk of change, they are not buyers and won’t heed pitches or appointment attempts.
6. There is a defined series of 13 (generic) steps that determine if, when, why, how, what to buy. A buying decision is a risk/change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue. Until the full set of stakeholders have agreed they can’t fix the problem with familiar resources AND have developed a plan for congruent change with minimal risk, there is no willingness to seek an external solution. In other words, before people become buyers they’re merely people trying to fix a problem themselves.
7. People don’t need you to sell to them. They can get all the data they need from your site. They really need your help in traversing their decision steps: the time it takes them to figure this out (non-buying, cultural, systems/ rules based) is the length of the sales cycle, and sales overlooks this entirely.
8. Making a purchase is a risk/change management issue before it’s a solution choice problem. The first question people consider is how they can achieve Excellence with the least ‘cost/risk’ to the system; the last question they consider is what solution they’d need from ‘outside’. With a focus on placing solutions, there is no element of the sales model that facilitates systemic change. Sales overlooks the largest portion of the buyer’s journey – how to manage the change a fix will cost to the system.
9. Until any disruption caused by a purchase (i.e. all purchases are ‘foreign’ to the system) is understood, planned for, and agreed to, no purchase will take place. The existing environment is sacrosanct; keeping it running smoothly is more important to them than fixing a problem that’s already been baked into the system, especially if it would cost unwanted internal disruption.
10. Everyone and everything who created the current problem and would potentially touch a new solution must agree to any modification (purchase). This is why pitches, marketing, presentation will only be noticed by those who have completed their decision path.
11. The time it takes people/buyers to discover their own answers and know how to manage change in the least disruptive way, is the length of the sales cycle. It has nothing to do with selling, buying, need, relationship, content, or solutions until the route to congruent change is defined and agreed to. It’s a risk/change management issue before it’s a solution choice issue. And the sales model ignores this, causing 5% close rates instead of 40%.
12. The last thing people want is to buy something. With their criteria of ‘solution placement’, sellers often enter at the wrong time, ask the wrong questions, and offer the wrong data – and end up selling only to the low-hanging fruit (the 5% who have planned their route to change already).
13. Buyers buy using their own buying patterns, not a seller’s selling patterns. Using a specific type of sales effort further restricts the population of those who will buy. We don’t necessarily object to the products Robocalls promote. It’s the invasive selling patterns we object to.
14. There is a difference in goals, capability of changing, and level of buy-in between those who CAN/WILL buy vs those who sellers think SHOULD buy. By entering to seek folks in the process of solving a problem your solution can resolve, we can find and capture 40% of those on route to become buyers.
15. The time it takes people to come up with their complete set of buy-in and change-based answers is the time it takes them to seek an external solution – i.e. become a buyer. Let me say this again: Buying has nothing whatsoever to do with their need, your solution, or your relationship.
By only listening for clues that lead you to assume a ‘need’ for your solution, by entering into ‘relationships’ based on what you’re selling, by only asking questions to ‘prove’ a need/solution match (too often with only one or two members of the full Buying Decision Team), you’re not only biasing the interaction, but limiting your sales to closing those who have gotten to the point when they’re ready, willing, able to change – the low hanging fruit; you’re missing the opportunity to enter earlier, develop a real relationship, and facilitate the path that people who CAN buy must take before they are buyers.
The current sales model ignores the possibility of facilitative buying, or becoming real relationship managers and true consultants and Servant Leaders.
In other words, the sales model enters too early in the buying decision journey to reach or serve the maximum number of prospects.
BUYING FACILITATION®
Potential buyers need your help figuring out how to figure it all out much more than they need a product pitch, or more biased questions, that attempt to uncover a ‘need’ they don’t yet know they have.
I’ve developed a model (Buying Facilitation®) that uses wholly unique skills (Listening for Systems, Facilitative Questions, etc.) to facilitate a prospective buyer’s route to Excellence.
A generic model used for coaching, management, leadership, healthcare, Buying Facilitation® finds folks trying to solve a problem in the area of your solution, then leads them down their decision path and turns them into buyers in one-eighth the time it would take them to close.
I’ve been quite successful teaching it to global corporations ( i.e. 100,00 sales professionals at companies such as IBM, Kaiser, Wachovia, P&G, KPMG, etc.) to increase their sales. In fact, over 30 decades, my client’s pilot training groups close 8x more sales on average over the control groups, regardless of product or price.
Currently you’re now wasting 95% of your time running after those few who have finally arrived at step 10 – the low hanging fruit – ignoring the much larger pool of those who are on route, and fighting for a competitive advantage.
By adding new functionality to the front end of your sales model, you can enter earlier, be a Servant Leader, and facilitate congruent change and THEN be on board as a provider as they go through their buying decision process.
Buying Facilitation® is NOT sales; it’s NOT selling/purchase-based; it IS change- and decision-based. Right now you’re waiting while buyers do this anyway (or merely running after those you THINK have a need but end up fixing the problem in other ways) because all people must manage their change before they are buyers. Why not add a skill set, stop wasting time/effort, and close more. Then you’ll never be ‘misaligned.’
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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.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com
Sharon Drew Morgen October 14th, 2024
Posted In: Communication