620: You Know What Needs to Change. Why Can't You Get Executive Buy-In?

Speaker A: Do you ever have it happen to you that you can see exactly what needs to change in your organization or what you need to do, but somehow you cannot get everyone else to see it, especially the top executives. Today you're going to learn how to fix this in a way that does not involve day drinking. Welcome back to Speak up, the number one ranked business communication podcast where we help high performing introvert leaders, including you, social introverts, turn your ideas into influence and improve business outcomes. Because being brilliant, unfortunately does not make you influential. I am your host, Laura Camacho, your career accelerator, executive presence strategist and godmother. By the end of this episode, you'll know how to stop over explaining your expertise and start communicating in a way that resonates with executives. You're going to learn how to connect your specific recommendations to actual business priorities and build your arsenal of allies before the meeting. So executive buy in starts forming long before you even walk into the room. You know you've got a solid recommendation, you've done the analysis, you understand the problem, you can see clear as day, this time being wasted or other resource. And then you explain the idea to senior leadership in a meeting and you get nothing. No disagreement, but no excitement, no decision, no question. So you start explaining it again, you add a little bit more context and you give another example, maybe some more evidence, and you're like in your head you're going to, I know this is what we need to do, what's going on. So if this has ever happened to you, I want you to consider something. Of course it's not an expertise problem. And it's not that you're wrong at all, it's that you have a translation problem. And it's an uh, increasingly prevalent problem because of, uh, the way the world is evolving. So today we're going to talk about something that becomes so much more important. Once you reach director level or say partner, senior counsel at that level, your job actually changes. And your value is not just knowing what needs to happen, what we need to do, in a way that becomes the easy part. Your value is to get the power, more powerful people to see the, see it the way you see it and move forward. And I recently had a conversation with this very accomplished senior leader and she has transferred from the corporate world to a large university system and she's expressing this frustration, right, that she brings these solid recommendations to senior university leadership and she says, I feel like I'm not landing the plane and they're not really getting it and they don't seem to care. It's just very frustrating. I think we've all been there. And she had a funny, uh, way of putting it. She said, it's like we're on the Titanic and I have this itty bitty or right, just paddling fast, fast. And if you've ever been trying to create change inside a large organization, you know how this feels. You can see where the ship needs to go and you're paddling like crazy, but the ship is not moving. So this is where very smart, highly conscientious leaders make a, a mistake by assuming that they haven't explained it clearly enough. So that's what I'm hearing. Oh, Laura. I was not able to explain it clearly enough. And they tend to go into more explanation. But the thing is, being right is not enough. In fact, it's just the beginning. Because the organization doesn't change simply because you have correctly diagnosed the problem. Even if you have the solution, somebody has to care. Prioritize it, allocate resources. And some people may have to give up something. Some people may take on risk, political or financial, and sometimes several people have to agree that this deserves attention. And maybe they don't even like each other. I'm not making it up. You're not imagining it. Researchers Jane Dutton and Susan Ashford coined the term, quote, issue selling unquote to describe how people direct senior management's attention towards issue that they believe are important. And the premise of this research is so simple that senior leadership has very little time and attention. Those are very scarce resources and you're competing against other people's solutions, but not just other solutions, but other priorities. And the executives are thinking about revenue and customers and a board meeting and potentially an acquisition budgetary issue, a regulatory problem, a, uh, technology implementation. At the enterprise level. There is a lot going on. And researchers studying dozens of real attempts to influence organizational change found that successful issue selling is not just about the merits of the issue, it's how it is packaged, who is involved and the timing. So later work translating this research for leaders identified practices like tailoring your pitch to the goals and knowledge of the decision maker, connecting your issue to strategic priorities, involving other people and bringing forward solutions. And that validates something I see constantly in my work and that is that, ah, the quality of your idea and your ability to create executive buy in are two completely different competencies. And you have to throw in relationship building in there so you can be excellent at developing ideas, solutions, even strategies. But it's a totally different competency to get buy in. There's something called the expertise trap. And a lot of you listening, like, you have had massive success in your careers precisely because of your expertise and things that other people don't see. You see the complexity. You know, why the current situation is not working. So when people tend to doubt you, you just go deeper because you've got it. Like, you can bring it on. More data, more background, more explanation, more detail. But the person that's pushing back is not asking, like, does Laura even understand the issue? They probably assume that you do. They're saying, what is this doing for me? Why is it important now? What happens if we don't do it? What is this really going to require? Really? What am I going to have to give up? How does this help me look good to my stakeholders? That is where you need to get your brain right. You need to stop selling your initiative and sell what the initiative makes possible. Those of you who work in things like governance, data, governments, governance, compliance, sustainability, you can talk about structures, decision rights, processes, committees, accountability all day long and why the current system is not working. And it can all be true. But people want to know, what is this going to do for me? Are you going to save people time, money, increase profitability, market share? That's what you have to figure out so you can connect your message to growth. Lowering risk, better customer experience, higher retention, fewer delays, more revenue transformation. And any of those things, though, have to be what's the burning issue for your target audience. Your job is not just to make executives care more about your work. Your job is to connect your work to something they already care about. That is executive translation. And the higher you go up in the organization, the more this matters. You are needing to influence people you cannot control your peers, other functions, C suite board, external stakeholders, investors. Expertise is not enough. You need influence. So before your next executive, um, conversation, I want you to not think about what's the best way to explain it? Think about, what does this person already care about? What pressure are they under? What's their pain point? What outcome are they responsible for? What might they have to sacrifice if they say yes? Is there any status risk? Is there anything I'm missing? Right. You need to figure that out or investigate. Right. But to connect what you want to do with what they already want is your ticket. Now, if you can't do that, there are other things you can do, but start there. You don't want to always be pushing your idea up the mountain. You want to attach it to momentum that's already there. And another thing to keep in mind, Is that a lot of this communication is not inside the meeting, it's before the meeting. Having one on ones with key stakeholders before the official meeting is so important. That is how you get leverage. Executive influence is rarely some heroic presentation where you walk into the room and you own them and you deliver that brilliant argument and everyone says, laura, you're absolutely right. Here is $7 million. No, that's the movie version. Real organizations are networks of relationships. People talk before and after meetings, they text each other during meetings, they test ideas with people they trust, they ask their friends what they think and buy in is usually accumulated before the meeting. So if you don't learn this, this is where it becomes a career issue. Because you're still operating on an out of date system, right? You're going to hit the ceiling. Not because you're not smart enough or your idea is not good enough, but you haven't learned the influence. Right? It's actually easier for people with less expertise to do this because they don't know enough to get into the wee like you do. And that is why you see those people become more strategic leaders sometimes because they're able to influence more effectively. So your next level is not another certification. Knowing more, I'm sure, more than enough. It's about becoming the person who takes what you know and you make it interesting and you make it matter to the people who have the power to act on it. It's not about convincing them that you're right. It's making it relevant to what they are trying to accomplish. And that should make your messages shorter, your recommendations more clear, better stories, less context, getting into their world. Maybe you're going to get better questions, you're going to accelerate decision making. And that's how you get to be where people say, hey, we need you in this room. That is executive influence. So if you're already director or above, vice president, partner or something, and you know that you've got the ideas, but you're frustrated because you're not consistently getting senior stakeholders to understand them, support them or act on them. This is exactly what I teach inside the Executive Presence Mastery System. It's an executive support program, highly individualized. We look at your stakeholders, your meetings, your presentations, your organizational dynamics. If you are interested in seeing if this is right for you, there's a link in the show notes. In any case, have a fantastic day and I will catch you on the next episode.