In my previous post Meaningful Engagement vs. Buy-In: What's the Difference and Why Should I Care?, I posed two questions.
- “… why do we continue to manage change in ways that do not truly engage people and foster conditions where “meaningful engagement” can occur commonly?
- Why do we continue to settle for “buy-in” when we want and actually need much more?"
I suggested five reasons why many organizations settle for buy-in rather than aspire to meaningful engagement. I refer you to the previous post for the specifics (Buy-In vs. Engagement: What’s the Difference and Why Should I Care?). Briefly, though, I argued that buy-in more often triumphs as the objective of change management because it doesn’t require the same level of leader or manager commitment that meaningful engagement does. Aiming for buy-in just doesn’t demand as much time and effort and, in the end, unfortunately, expedience wins.
BUT, and it’s a big but, I argued that tacit buy-in doesn’t produce nearly as much commitment as meaningful engagement and the co-creation of change can. Done right, meaningful engagement in organizational change has the potential to:
- Strengthen everyone’s understanding of the need for and direction of change
- Deepen commitment to the change process and objectives
- Stimulate co-creation of solutions
- Build business literacy and other important business skills
- Accelerate the pace of change, and
- Propel the change beyond the envisioned outcome
In this post, we’ll continue this exploration of meaningful engagement and pose two additional questions.
- How does meaningful engagement produce more than simple buy-in?
- What are the dynamics at work?