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Stick to the facts
People respond well to someone who speaks directly to them and who does not have any
hidden agendas. Be clear about your motives; make sure that you talk about the costs as
well as the benefits of any change that you suggest. You must make an effort to under-
stand your audience: being a straight-talker to a sales manager is much different than
being one to a programmer, so you need to really think about who you are presenting
these ideas to before you do it. Learn their perspectives and frame your arguments in ways
that are interesting to them. Another important part of being a straight-talker is having a
solid grasp on the ideas behind the changes that you are making. If you really understand
them, then you can put the ideas into terms that anyone else can understand.
“It’s too risky” can be the best possible objection that you can hear. It means that the peo-
ple you are talking to are listening, thinking about implementing the change, and coming
up with ways that it could go wrong. They are really thinking about what it would take to
do what you are suggesting. This means that they can be convinced with facts, not just
persuaded with emotions and politics.

In a situation like that, you can get approval to start a pilot project, and show the benefits
of changes on that pilot. You can present research that shows that the changes you want
to make are accepted industry standards. You could get approval to study the problems
that exist in the organization, and plan an improvement project to come up with an
answer to those problems. You can figure out how much the projects cost in terms of time
and effort, and show how your changes will reduce those numbers. And, most impor-
tantly, you can show how it’s even riskier to keep things the way they are. That’s a pro-
ductive conversation any way you look at it, because you’ll come out of it with a list of
problems that you need to address with your improvement effort.

(Unfortunately, “It’s too risky” can also be the worst possible objection that you can hear.
It could mean the person you are talking to has shut you out, and is no longer listening.
When this happens, you can’t make any more progress from this angle.)

Plan for Change
Once you have made some headway in overcoming resistance, the most important way to

ensure the success of your change in your organization is to plan for the change. Planning
for a change is similar to planning for a software project, in that the scope must be defined
and tasks need to be assigned to people who will carry them out. By treating a change to
your organization like its own project, you can use the same planning tools as you would
for a software project.

There is a fundamental difference between a project to change an organization and a
project to build software: the bulk of the effort in a software project is devoted to building
work products, while the effort in changing an organization is focused on training (or
retraining) the people who will then turn around and build the software differently. But
in both cases, the scope should be written down and agreed to, and the resources assigned
and trained.

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