Re-framing procurement transformation through mindset to foster better adoption

Continuing our guide to Procurement Transformation we take a look at tackling mindset to encourage adoption.

Neurocognitive research tells us that most people do not welcome change; that’s because our brains are wired to avoid uncertainty and prefer certain gains over uncertain ones. This bias can affect decision making, but that’s a whole other story. This means that we often give more thought to what we lose vs. what we gain.

In any business transformation, there are always two perspectives:

• The sponsor or initiator of the change whose perspective is defined by the gap between desired objectives and actual results – the gap between tomorrow and today. 
• The people impacted by the change whose perspective is more self-centered – the gap between yesterday and today.

The sponsor is concerned with whether the project will be a success; those impacted will be thinking about what they are losing. 

To prove this principle, behavioral economists, like Dan Ariely, have performed several studies and tests.

So, if we accept this concept, it explains why people facing change think that yesterday was better! When designing a business transformation program, this is something to take into account and is a good reason not to oversell on what you can deliver. A better approach is to position today’s situation as no longer acceptable.

Selling change

Spend Matters procuretech industry analyst Bertrand Maltaverne once wrote that when selling ‘change’ to procurement stakeholders the “future state must be close to the promised land to get people to actually move! And that over-selling may be tempting! But that’s wrong.”

He goes on to explain how to frame a procurement transformation, involving digital change, to foster better adoption, without promising a solution that is so superior to the incumbent system or process that it is nigh-on impossible to deliver.

One of the challenges for Procurement in particular is the amount of stakeholders that must be convinced that the change is necessary (not to mention developing a solid business case). 

It’s sometimes easier to lower expectations in the first place than to sell higher ones, then under-deliver. But as entrepreneur, strategist and author Seth Godin once said: “A good way to sell change is not through promise or gain. It’s with the fear of loss.”

So re-framing the problem and demonstrating or explaining that what we have today is inadequate – read inefficient, costly, risky, etc. – seems a viable alternative.

And it’s always good to have an example up your sleeve:

“If we continue to do xxx, then in x months/years, we will have lost xxx.”

Of course, we do have some ammunition that will help us sell the case:

• Regulations, because they are non-negotiable and tend to create a sense of urgency.
• Internal directives and company values or goals that procurement must align with. 
• The competition … 

One example to use for this type of communication is:

Today, we are not compliant regarding ___ (insert relevant directive, law…). It means we cannot get ___ (insert relevant certificate, accreditation…) which prevents us from entering/staying on the ___ (insert relevant industry, region, country…) market.

And 

Our competitors are ___ (insert whatever competitive advantage that is related to the project). This threatens our position on the market. To stay in business, we have to ___ (insert the purpose of your project).

A quick way to find good points to explain that today is no longer acceptable is to identify what the new solution will bring and to ‘mirror it.’

Whether you are sponsor, project manager or advocate, you can see the benefits, but your state of mind is very different from that of the people you are trying to convince. So it’s much easier for you to list the benefits and to transpose them onto the mindset of the people who will live through the change.

Here’s an example for a communication for this:

Thanks to project xxx that will last xxx months, you will be able to save xxx amount of time. Today, we estimate that we lose xxx amount of time doing xxx. This is an inefficient use of our time which has to stop.

A few ‘perception’ techniques like these can go a long way to re-framing a transformation so that people want to adhere to it.

Read more on the Adoption phase of our Digital Transformation series.