The Science of Getting “Buy-In”
About Case Study Authors
Ibex Tactics LLC, was founded by Alex Bolowich & Ben Foodman. Before starting the company, Alex and Ben were working with athletes on an individual basis, helping them improve their mental performance using sport psychology-based interventions. While both professionals had incredible success working with some of the world’s most elite athletes, a significant portion of the time they were unable to help some of their clients due to the poor cultures these athletes were immersed in. As a result, Alex and Ben created Ibex Tactics LLC, which dedicated towards providing science-driven solutions to helping teams build resilient cultures.
Introduction: Getting Buy-In on a Deadline
Whether you are a leader in an organization, or a support member on a team, at some point you have probably heard the term ‘buy-in’. Buy-in can simply be defined as an agreement to support a decision, and if you talk to any organization whether that is in sports or the private-sector, getting buy-in is as important as needing to fill your car with gas…you can’t drive without it. Ironically, as important as it is for organizations to secure consistent buy-in, they often don’t employ strategies that increase the odds of regularly having it.
Furthermore, many organizations don’t recognize the difference between individual buy-in vs. collective buy-in, which is critical to understand if you want to achieve your goals. Because this is such a common issue that our clients deal with, we wanted to provide a case study that explores the difficulty with securing buy-in, the science that explains what “buy-in” is and how we used Ibex Tactics to help our client overcome these issues. Let’s begin first by exploring the complexities of the concept buy-in through our case study: a NASCAR Xfinity team.
Part I. How to get Buy-in from NASCAR Teams
We were contacted by Jim, a successful NASCAR crew chief who had served on multiple teams for over 10 years in the series. Jim didn’t arrive at his position with ease as he had to grind out a career doing odd jobs in the motorsports industry for quite some time before he became one of the top crew chiefs in NASCAR. However, these odd jobs helped give him a “birds-eye” view of all the different moving pieces involved with managing a race team. He was also fortunate to have many high-quality mentors throughout his time in NASCAR, which gave him advanced knowledge on how to lead in tough environments. Jim was at a critical point in his career with his eye on working with elite-level cup teams, but was running into macro-level problems that were quickly spiraling out of control.
One of the main problems Jim was having difficulty with was “getting buy-in from the guys”. Jim told us that it seemed as though everything he said never “stuck with each member” of the team. For example, he would suggest to his drivers that they regularly engage in heat training. Even though during those conversations the drivers seemed enthusiastic, when Jim would check on the status of their training, they would always say they didn’t have time but would get to it next week. These deficiencies would show up in training when drivers would '“complain about how hot the cockpit was”. This was just one example of Jim being unable to connect with his team. To make matters worse, Jim was only two weeks away from the start of the season beginning at the Daytona 500. Jim needed results, and he needed them fast.
Part II. Tier 3 Service Delivery
After getting some more information from Jim, it was recommended that he sign up for Ibex Tactics Tier 3 services for several reasons. First, during the assessment it was clear that Jim was only “reacting” to problems rather than having a system and being “proactive” in reducing potential issues that could arise. Second, Jim didn’t have a clear purpose driven mission that he could confidently say was shared amongst all members of the team. But how did this information and the Tier 3 services address his concerns on “buy-in”? As previously mentioned, buy-in involves one party agreeing to decisions made by another party. But how can you truly agree to something if you don’t understand what you are agreeing to and why you are agreeing to the specific decision? Let me explain further.
When we ran Jim and his team through the first part of Tier 3, we asked all members of the group to write down what they thought the mission of the group was and share their answers with the class. While the wording varied somewhat amongst the group, the mission was mostly the same “win races”. But when we started to question individuals within the group what their own personal goals were, we found that not only did these goals differ greatly from the team’s supposed purpose-driven mission statement, more often than not their own personal goals were more important than the team’s goals. In order to have buy-in both collectively and individually, all members of the group must understand and be in alignment when it comes to the mission. If the mission is not identical and primary to all members, you won’t get buy-in when you need it.
For the second part of Tier 3 services, we reviewed the four pillars of culture with the group and how this connected to buy-in. One strategy that clients learn when going through the second part of Tier 3 services is that you can get buy-in by using tactical listening skills and asking the right questions as your first tool, rather than demanding that people do things. People ALWAYS respond better to being asked to do something, rather than being told to do something. Jim realized very quickly when we went through this phase that he had been telling his drivers what to do, rather than asking them what their thoughts were or how they felt about what he was asking them. He knew that he would have ended up at the desired destination, he just had to take the right route to get there. At the end of Tier 3, we then gave the group standard skills to apply with each other to help sustain the culture they were building,
Part III. The “Before & After” Tier 3 Services
Before we began working with Jim and his team, he had been unable to secure buy-in with everyone in the group. He would instruct them to do certain things with the expectation that these tasks would be completed before race weekend, but they would either never be accomplished or only done “half-ass”. His team also had no alignment on the mission of the group as evidenced by the fact that all of their sub-goals turned out to be primary over the team’s needs. After completing Tier 3 services, Jim’s team was able to have alignment on the team’s goals, and he was using Ibex listening tactics to more effectively get buy-in from his drivers.
In the days leading up to the Daytona 500, Jim noticed that not only were individual tasks were being completed thoroughly, but many members were going out of their way to get ahead on other issues Jim hadn’t asked them to work on. Jim decided to take the strategies we had reviewed with him in Tier 3 and create regular team meetings to specifically review the mission statement and check in to see if all members were still in alignment. Even though he regularly found that some members would be distracted with their own sub-goals, this process helped keep the group aligned and reminded everyone what their collective purpose was for being there.
Part IV. The Next Steps After Tier 3 Services
Like all of our clients that use Tier 3 services, at the conclusion of the in-person presentations we review standard skills that clients can use to practice enforcing the 4 pillars of culture long after we have exited from the environment. We followed up with Jim via a video call one month out from the conclusion of our work to see what progress had been made. Jim had made Tier 3 knowledge a regular part of the team’s regimen and was seeing consistent and reliable buy-in from all members of the team. Even more important was the fact that Jim was having one of the best starts he had had of all the teams he had worked with and attributed much of the team’s success to the Ibex Tactics skills they had been implementing. Jim told us that if he wanted to go deeper into our additional services he would reach out when he felt the time was right.
NOTE TO READER:
Alex and Ben wanted to compile their expertise in the Ibex Tactics Case Studies to help teams in the sports and corporate sector better understand how many of the issues they are dealing with are more often than not related to culture. Most teams recognize that culture is an important component of their success, but do not always have the resources or expertise to analyze the complexity of culture. If you are interested in learning more about the services that Ibex Tactics offers to help with culture development, use the contact form below and sign up with your email to receive updates on new services and case studies!
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