Every time I introduce something new into my team, my project or the organization I am working for I am reminded of how well I can count. Let me explain: it’s all about buy-in.
The below text is quoted from Marshall Goldsmith’s book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. It describes exactly the false illusions, desperations, frustrations and plain trouble I often get myself into.
Has the following ever happened to you? your boss gives you a major assignment to find out what’s going on at a trouble spot within your company. You do what any well-trained MBA would do. You study the situation, identify the problem, report the findings and recommendations to the boss, outline a new approach, and turn it over to the appropriate people to implement the strategy.
A month goes by. Nothing happens. Another month. Still no progress. Six months later, the trouble spot remains unchanged. What did you do wrong? It’s simple: you committed "one, two, three, seven."
You failed to appreciate that every successful project goes through [the] seven phases [of the schedule below]:
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t pay close attention to the phases four, five and six – the vital period when you approach your co-workers to secure the all-important political buy-in to your plans. […]
These three phases are the sine qua non for getting things done. You cannot skip or skim over them. You have to give them as much, if not more, attention as you do in phase one, two, three, and seven. If you don’t, you may as well be working alone in a locked room where no one sees you, hears you, or knows you exist. That’s the guaranteed result of committing one, two, three, seven.
