Time to ‘PULL’ to effect change in your business…

The mere mention of the word ‘change’ may cause some members of your team to feel uneasy.  It is common for us to resist change, as it can have a perceived fear or risk associated with it.

BUT – everyone has something they’d like to change. In your business, you might want to recruit additional people, open another branch, upgrade or change your computer software or start a new product line. Doing any of these things means asking your team to make changes to the way they work in your business.

You feel that these changes will improve your business, so why do you have such a hard time initiating or following through with your desire for change?

Because change is hard…

If you push for change, people resist, they push back harder.

Dominic Cummings led the ‘Vote Leave’ organisation that resulted in the UK leaving the EU in June 2016. He knew that running a ‘PUSH’ campaign would alienate the voter.

Instead, he ran a ‘PULL’ campaign to win over the hearts and minds of the UK people.

Cummings wrote in his blog, ‘we hate losing things, especially control.’

He knew that remaining in the EU needed no explanation. The people of the UK had been living with this as the status quo for 46 years. He had to change people’s minds and persuade people to vote against the status quo.

If you want to implement change in your business, you have to do the same.

Standing still in your business will lead to irrelevance and ruin. You have to change the minds of your team, without pushing them.

Dominic Cummings approach was unconventional – he bought a very British red bus. On the bus, he showed everyone what the Leave campaign believed was the cost of continuing with the status quo – £350 million, every week!

He made the cost of inaction obvious and the cost of the change emotionally powerful by suggesting that the money that was currently going to the EU could be funding the NHS.

Rather than push people towards the change, he gave people the choice of how the money could be spent instead.

He reduced the barriers to change and made the decision a simple one by using the rallying cry: ‘Let’s take back control.’

Cummings cleverly used a ‘PULL’ strategy to influence the choice of the people of the UK.

You can use the same strategy in your business to influence your team and make the changes you want.