4 years ago I led a team of 10 to launch an enterprise fintech product.
The lesson that most helped me turn our vision into reality was this:
Buy-in is something you build. In previous roles, I blamed everyone else when my projects stalled. “Woe is me, no one wants to do research.” “Grumble grumble, we can’t get sign-off to clean up our Segment events.” “This stinks, they’re asking us to ship work no one even wants.”
But to launch this product, I changed my approach. I stopped trying to *get* buy-in.
Instead, I used every product problem on my desk as an opportunity to *give* buy-in to someone else.
Three examples:
1. How did we decide what to put in our MVP?
We found a manual process that ate up approximately 1000 hours per day for one of our executives. Then we automated it. We found data another exec needed and delivered it in a few clicks instead of a thousand emails. Then we found another person with a problem that needed solving. Then another and another and another.
In this way, we built coalitions of people all around our org who wanted to see us succeed because we were helping them succeed.
2. How do I ask a team of 10 to abandon the product and user base they supported for 3 years to launch a brand new product for a brand new user group – in under a quarter?
We opened channels to hear our team out on the discomfort our new vision brought into their worlds. We acknowledged the bumpiness we introduced as we shared our vision. And we asked our team to be active participants in smoothing the path.
As we gave our team buy-in on the uncertainty we brought to their worlds, they gave us buy-in on our short- and long-term visions.
3. How did we maximize our product’s impact on revenue?
We asked our sales counterparts to tell us what they needed to sell more licenses. Then we followed up and listened to their sales calls to hear everything in our prospects’ words. We used what we learned to ship work that allowed our champions to expand their coalitions. We evolved our product’s vision from its origins as a program monitoring tool into an intelligence suite.
And in this way: we made the vision we had back in 2022 reality. Work we shipped to help our sales team sell was born on the whiteboards we used to brainstorm our MVP back in 2022.
Back then, our vision was too much, too soon. Instead of fighting for it, we built a new reality by chipping away at the many problems and opportunities people brought us along the way, by letting others bring demand to us. We didn’t build our vision by taking a stand.
We built it by building trust.
Buy in is something you build.
Buy in is something you give.