Why Can’t We Get Buy-In for L&D Initiatives?
Begging for buy-in means we might be approaching our work backwards.
If we are going to change our L&D profession for the better, it’s time to leave our complaints behind and use our frustrations as fuel to reframe, recalibrate, and approach our challenges from a different angle. After all, complaints alone never changed anything.
So, in continuation with this series of articles (see links to other articles at the end), let’s address another common L&D complaint, the inability to get “buy in” for our programs, and explore the actions we can take to reframe and work differently.
If you are frustrated with attempts to attain the needed buy-in for your L&D programs from senior leadership, you aren’t alone. This complaint seems to surface frequently. Sometimes I hear it voiced directly, “I can’t get buy-in for my L&D work, the company doesn’t support us or see our value,” and sometimes I hear it in the form of a question, “Why can’t I get buy in?” or “How do I get buy in?”
As in most cases, the questions are a bit more productive than the complaint alone as they hint at a start to investigating the problem. However, if we need to convince someone to buy-in to our learning initiatives, there's a chance we are coming at the problem a bit backwards. Ideally, we will be able to change our approach so that buy-in will exist automatically without the need to convince anyone, including senior leaders.
Alignment Cancels the Need for Buy-In
Author, Liz Wiseman writes about this concept in her book, “Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact.” Before Liz was an author and leadership expert, she was a well-respected learning leader at Oracle. One of her colleagues observed that Liz always seemed to get solid support from upper leadership for her projects. When struggling with gaining support for her own programs, she came to Liz asking, “Can you give me some advice? I’m having trouble getting buy-in for my projects, but you seem to have the ear of the execs, and they easily support your work. How did you do that? How can I get this type of buy-in for my projects as well?”
When Liz tells this story, she mentions that she was surprised by the question because she didn’t feel that she was ever attempting to gain buy-in for projects. Instead, she explained that she had never put anything important to her on the executive’s agenda. She simply “made a habit of working on what was important to her stakeholders.” Their priorities were her priorities.
If L&D and the business are truly aligned and working in partnership, buy-in isn’t needed because L&D isn’t creating ideas for programs alone. We aren’t trying to do things for the business and convince others that they are needed. Instead, we are working in lockstep with the business. We are collaboratively tackling the biggest talent problems and moving strategic initiatives forward.
Alignment – Easy to Say, Hard to Do
Business alignment has become a bit of a buzzword in L&D circles for good reason. It truly can change the way we work from reactive to transformative. But achieving alignment, especially the type of alignment where asking for buy-in becomes obsolete, isn’t an easy task. Especially in organizations where the order taking narrative is deeply embedded.
If you truly want to leave the need to ask for buy-in behind in favor of a strong business partnership, you will need to exercise a bit of patience. The speed of progress will correlate directly to the depth of the order taking narrative in your organization. The deeper the narrative, the longer it will take to move away from it. But there are three actions you can do to get started, without needing to ask anyone else.
Alignment Action #1: Know the Business
If you want to follow Liz Wiseman’s approach and work on what’s most important to the business, it goes without saying that you will also need to know what that is. Sometimes you can begin your search through openly available information like annual reports, company all-hands meetings, or shared strategic plans and initiatives. This will give you a high-level knowledge, but it likely won’t be enough.
Knowing how the organization aims to achieve these goals, formally or informally as well as the barriers that exist will also be important. This may require some additional conversation with your stakeholders. The barrier for a contact center team may look different than a leadership team. I’ve found that a combined approach of my own research as well as regular conversations with stakeholders and even observations of the work getting done if appropriate is generally the best way to learn more.
Alignment Action #2 – Think Like a Senior Leader
Imagine you are in the seat of the senior leaders from whom you are seeking support. What is their day like? What pressures are they under?
Senior leaders and execs are ultimately responsible for the organization’s success or failure. The pressure they feel to make the best decisions is intense. Yes, they make decisions about strategy and initiatives, but they must do that strategically and intentionally, based primarily on data.
Every company that I have worked with seems to have more requests than resources. That means that senior leaders are constantly fielding requests and making the best decisions possible regarding where to best allocate finite resources. Given the need to make these tough decisions, which of these scenarios would you support as a senior leader?
The L&D team’s request to fund a program without any tie to strategy, any guarantee of results, or any data to indicate the investment in resources is worth the commitment.
Another function that comes forward with strong data indicating the achievement of strategic objectives is dependent on new programs or additional headcount.
If you understand the direction that the business is going, the strategic initiatives, and what’s most important to achieve success and remove barriers and you add in measurement and data that shows a learning program will achieve not detract from this overall mission, the yes is generally a no brainer.
Next time you are wondering about whether to pursue a project, imagine you are a senior leader. What information would you need? What data would tell you this is a good decision and/or investment of resources for the organization overall? How will this project ease, not increase, the pressure you are under to achieve company success?
Alignment Action #3: Show Up With a Partner Mindset
Showing up with the mindset of a partner means that you acknowledge L&D’s purpose as a single part of the whole organization, designed to achieve overall objectives. Organizations are created because the goals and initiatives designed for success can’t be completed by any one function. L&D’s part in this story, therefore, is to use our expertise to solve the largest talent challenges that slow progress, to remove performance barriers, and to equip people with the skills needed to enable forward momentum for the organization overall.
To truly achieve that purpose and the mission of the organization, it’s critical that we show up as partners in the overall work. Sometimes we might take the lead with a learning and performance strategy, but other times L&D might step back and allow others to utilize their expertise. We focus on what’s best for the organization overall above our own agendas and ideas.
When we fight for the best outcomes alongside our business counterparts, whether or not those are L&D related, we eventually build a reputation of contributing L&D solutions only when they are the best solutions. As a result, we rarely find ourselves lobbying for buy-in.
Start with Small Shifts
Knowing more about the business, thinking like a senior leader, and showing up as a partner committed to the bigger picture ahead of our own agenda are small actions that can start us on our journey. Eventually, they will be the foundation for shifting the work of L&D closer to that of a strategic business partner and further away from the team that needs to continuously lobby for buy-in.
Related Articles
This is the third in a blog series focused on how L&D can get out of the complainers playground and step into the champions camp. Be sure to check out the past articles in this series about abandoning the complainer’s playground and stepping into the champion’s camp and stay tuned for more!
Stay tuned for articles on how to combat these common frustrations in the coming weeks:
Complaint: No one in this company understands what we do or how long it takes us to do it. They can't just bring us in at the last minute and expect a miracle!
Complaint: If we push back on requests for training, no one will want to work with us any longer. They won't see us as partners, but as the team who says "no" and refuses to do the work.
