The Financial Controller and CFO's Toolkit, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2Leading and Selling the Change

OVERVIEW

Far too many well-meaning initiatives fail because we have not understood the psychology behind getting change to work. This chapter explores the work of Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan in The Three Laws of Performance and John Kotter's Leading Change. It covers the importance of Harry Mills' “self-persuasion,” sets out an eight-stage process that will help you implement the practices in this book, and offers guidance on delivering persuasive presentations.

Before we venture on to the process of implementation, we need first to address selling the change within our organization. Finance teams around the world have wanted to embrace lean practices but are weary because many initiatives both inside the finance team and in other teams fail far too often.

As we will know from past experiences, this sales process is not easy and can be prone to failure. I would argue that more than half the initiatives that are declined at the concept stage were undersold. In other words, given the right approach, the initiative would have gone ahead.

If you are not prepared to learn the skills to cover the common deficiencies in a selling change process, I would argue that you are resigning yourself to providing the same service level for years to come. Selling change requires a special set of skills and we all can, and should, get better at it.

Three books have opened up the way for us to rethink change and to apply techniques that will get change ...