Introduction to Leadership
On March 9, 2020, Chief Executive published an article titled “What CEOs Can Learn From Bloomberg’s Failed Bid.” The lead was:
The billionaire mayor learned an expensive lesson: if you don’t connect with your stakeholders, your message will fall on deaf ears.
Connect is a synonym for engage!
Google search results – WIIFM and Leadership
A recent Google search for WIIFM yielded about 137,000 results, and a search for Leadership yielded approximately 5,720,000,000 results. Yet there is no leadership without WIIFM!
WIIFM defined
WIIFM is the acronym for What’s In It For Me.
It means we all analyze messages by thinking about how the information will impact us. Think about the infamous inventory control model of first-in, never-out! While the analysis takes a short time, the results are long-lasting.
Leadership defined
When I was in ROTC in college, the Army defined Leadership as
“The art of getting people to willingly do what you want them to do.”
Today, according to the Army’s leadership doctrinal manual, Field Manual (FM) 6-22, Army leadership is
“the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.”
So, the Army has updated the words but not the intent.
Interesting, but why should I care (WIIFM in action)?
You set yourself up for major disappointment if you give an order, a suggestion, a challenge, or a request without considering WIIFM.
Simon Sinek wrote one of the best business books ever published: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Of the 50,000+ TEDx talks ever given, Sinek’s September 2009 “How great leaders inspire action” is the most popular of all time, with 48,800,800 views at the time I was writing this post. TEDx’s Sinek biography is:
Simon Sinek explores how leaders can inspire cooperation, trust and change. The video of the author of the classic “Start With Why”; his latest book is “Leaders Eat Last.”
To motivate people to take action, you must start with why and show them why it is essential for themselves and everyone else.
And a recent Harvard Business Review article, “Don’t Just Tell Employees Organizational Changes Are Coming — Explain Why” said:
Don’t forget to articulate “What’s in it for me?”: One of the most important phrases you may come across in change communications is “what’s in it for me?” If your employees understand what’s in it for them personally, you’re more likely to see individuals commit to and own the change. Failing to articulate “what’s in it for me” will only hinder your efforts.
Some examples of using WIIFM for change
If your office is in the C-suite
You are probably working on several significant initiatives that will impact all your employees and maybe even most or all of your customers. You know you have some heavy lifting before your stakeholders have adopted any initiative.
In June 2014, Strategy & Business published an article about change; 10 Principles Of Leading Change Management by DeAnne Aguirre and Micah Alpern. Here are the ten principles:
- Lead with the culture
- Start at the top
- Involve every layer
- Make the rational and emotional case together
- Act your way into new thinking
- Engage, engage, engage
- Lead outside the lines
- Leverage formal solutions
- Leverage informal solutions
- Assess and adapt
It’s about communicating with people, changing the culture, and getting them to do what you want willingly. And the way to achieve your objectives is to clearly and frequently share the reasons for the team to get fully onboard. Anything less is almost a guarantee that the initiative will either wholly or partially fail.
The previously noted HBR article also included this summary:
But according to one survey of more than half a million U.S. employees, almost one-third don’t understand why these changes are happening.
This can be detrimental for any company trying to implement change. When employees don’t understand why changes are happening, it can be a barrier to driving ownership and commitment and can even result in resistance or push back. And employees’ resistance to change is a leading factor for why so many change transformations fail.
Executives and those responsible for leading change cannot assume that employees understand the reasoning behind them. You must spend time explaining the changes and why they are important. Based on my experience supporting organizational change initiatives, there are four key aspects to helping employees understand change, to drive commitment, and to ultimately contribute to your success.
- Inspire people by presenting a compelling vision for the future.
- Keep employees informed by providing regular communications.
- Empower leaders and managers to lead through change.
- Find creative ways to involve employees in the transition.
If you are in Sales
Back in the day, star salespeople memorized the features of all the products they were selling. And buyers, who did not have the internet to access, made sexy PowerPoint charts comparing the features of the short list of salespeople’s offerings and eventually selected the one that stood out the most. Then someone discovered VALUE, and the talk shifted from features to business outcomes.
The salesperson’s role changed from the famous “always be closing” to being a consultant and showing the prospect how, and how much, their business outcomes would improve by using the product and service offered.
The desired business outcome is the WIIFM!
If you are the head of Service
You may be rolling out new processes and workflows:
- Predictive maintenance which reduces the required skills of the field service engineers (FSE)
- Use of third-party service organizations for the more routine work that will result in job cuts and less opportunity for career growth
- They are asking the FSEs to sell service contract renewals and new supply contracts. This will cause many FSEs to rebel for fear of having to put pressure on their customers and hence lose their “trusted advisor” role, plus discomfort at moving into the dark side of selling.
Especially with more experienced FSEs, changes like these can be highly upsetting. After all, they have been doing things the old way since entering the profession, earning customer loyalty, job satisfaction, and employment security. Now you want to change everything. Many people are so deep into your technology, customer environment, and internal relationships that they fear disruption.
Whenever you talk with all or even one of these people, you must focus on why the changes are necessary to maintain their role in the company. They don’t care that your organization will save money or even that some customers will receive faster service. They care about how the changes will impact their and their family’s lives and their view of themselves. They care about what’s in it for me.
What to do
When initiating any change actions, first think about what each group of your employees and customer segments will get from the change. These WIIFMs become the focus of your frequent communications. Expect some pushback and possibly some defections, but if you do things correctly, the overall impact of each change will be positive.
About Middlesex Consulting
Middlesex Consulting is an experienced team of professionals with the primary goal of helping capital equipment companies create more value for their clients and stakeholders. Middlesex Consulting continues to provide superior solutions to meet the needs of its clients by focusing on our strengths in Services, Manufacturing, Customer Experience, and Engineering. If you want to learn more about how we can help your organization create change, please get in touch with us or check out some of our free articles and white papers here.