You think something needs to change in your organisation. How do you make sure your ideas get on the agenda? What are the best things to do and what not to do to achieve this? Professor of Organisational Design and Development Kristina Lauche researched the success of different forms of issue-selling in organisations. Lauche: 'You can also bring about change from a subordinate position. Be smart, find the connection with the other person and persevere.’
For your research, you followed six product development teams and analyzed their method of 'issue-selling'. What exactly is 'issue-selling'?
‘Issue-selling is about how individuals raise their concerns, dissatisfaction or ideas about the organisation. It looks specifically at the perspectives of the employee and middle management; people who do not necessarily hold formal power in the organization. For my research, I was allowed to attend meetings of several product development teams and observe how they presented their ideas to their senior managers. I was also allowed to film these situations, which allowed me to later return to the material and analyze it in great detail.’
Employees appear to be most successful when they communicate through the style of 'productive confrontation'. What does that look like?
‘We have seen that people achieve the most when they discuss their issues directly and dare to speak out. What we also see is that it is effective if the 'issue-seller' links his or her own goal to a strategic goal of the organisation, for example to stay financially sound or be a better employer. So being able to connect with the organisation is very important. In addition, not giving up is crucial. As an issue-seller, you often initially get told no to your story. So you have to keep looking for new entrances and allies.’
My findings show that naming frustration, anger or fear directly can actually help get things on the table.
'Productive confrontation' sounds fierce, in the sense of clash or struggle. Isn't that precisely what you should avoid?
‘Literature has told us in the past: 'Stay away from emotions. Convey your idea or concern to the other person as rationally as possible'. That is not what I have found. My findings show that naming frustration, anger or fear directly can actually help get things on the table. A prerequisite for productive confrontation is that managers also listen and there are no major non-negotiable conflicts. Being the only individual to use productive confrontation in an environment where no one else is doing so can actually be difficult. Someone can then be judged harshly for something that is 'not done'.’
How decisive is the culture of the organisation on the impact you can have as an issue-seller?
‘For an employee, it is not so easy to step out of a prevailing organisational culture. Which is about patterns that are reproduced over and over again by groups of people. In my research, I discuss three of them: productive confrontation, avoiding escalation and collective complaining. The pattern of avoiding escalation is the trickiest because there are often mutual conflicts and power differences. To people in such a pattern, I would say: make sure you protect yourself, be careful not to burn yourself out, try to approach change more instrumentally. In a pattern of avoiding escalation, the basis of listening and taking the other person seriously is often missing.’
What do you say to employees who have given up hope of change in their organisation?
‘To those who feel that way, I would say: you are not powerless. Even in a position with less power, you can use your ideas and energy to generate interest in others. Indeed, in our research, we found that dissatisfaction can actually stimulate issue-selling, especially if 'sellers' and 'receivers' observe each other's perspective.
My advice to today's issue-sellers? Find allies, consciously choose your strategy, get others to buy into your idea and empathise with the other person's perspective. What then turns out to be possible and impossible in an organisation, that always depends on the people in the organisation and their practices. And the managers? They have a great responsibility to create the very environment in which employees can be most successful.’
Also watch the video 'Ideas for Change - how to sell them and how to respond to them' in which Kristina Lauche explains more about her research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv__To6lgtk.
Text: Annette Zonnenberg