4
Presenting the Product to Upper Management

In this phase, based upon the activities in which you will be involved, you may think you have been transferred to marketing. Make no mistake about it—this is a sales job! Furthermore, you will give a different type of sales pitch to different groups (upper management or users). Yet each sales pitch will have the same basic philosophy; you will always employ a soft sell.

The reason you have to take on this role has to do with the fact that during implementation, you will be effecting a cultural change. We discussed this aspect of the process in Chapter 1 when we discussed your own commitment. Now, however, we will get to the heart of the matter, which is simple and perhaps obvious: People naturally resist change. The overwhelming majority of us are quite comfortable with the way things are and do not see any reason to change.

Overcoming Resistance

In fact, sometimes data processing people are particularly averse to change. One explanation for this apparent contradiction relates directly to the nature of their work. Anyone who has ever developed and maintained systems understands the complexity of introducing change to software. Invariably, whenever a change (either to fix a problem or to enhance the system) is introduced, numerous problems crop up in other seemingly unrelated parts of the system. This phenomenon results not only in a reluctance to change software, but in a more generalized tendency to maintain the status quo procedurally or organizationally. Thus, in addition to being overworked and behind schedule, data processing people are also conservative.

We once had an extremely talented programmer in our group. He was an expert on the internals of the UNIX operating system, the type who proposed modifying the kernel (part of the operating system) for every system we developed. Every day he had a dozen suggestions, ranging from ways to optimize each program’s performance to innovative methods that allowed user flexibility. But in relationship to his own habits of developing software, he was extremely rigid. For example, one portion of the system was PC-based and was to be developed using GWBASIC in an MS-DOS environment. The PCs, with which we were provided, already had the MS-DOS editor installed. Now our guru, who was responsible for this development effort, was accustomed to the UNIX VI editor. It was inconceivable that someone as bright as he would have required more than an hour to master the miracles of any editor. However, he spent almost an entire work day phoning all his friends until he succeeded in locating VI software for the PC!

What we have is the simple and obvious truth that it is difficult to implement productivity improvements because of human resistance. But it is not so simple—nor is it obvious—how to overcome this resistance. You and your group are few in number and yet you will be trying to modify the daily work habits of many (possibly even several hundred) individuals. It is no wonder that many brave souls have faltered in the face of this task. I have even heard people speculate that this is one reason so many crusaders remain in the selection and evaluation phases so long; it is certainly easier, and safer politically. However, you should not be unduly apprehensive, because in fact you have already moved safely through and past those phases. Moreover, formidable as it may seem at the outset, this cultural change has been effected successfully, and you will be provided with techniques to follow and suggestions about what to avoid, just as you were in the first three phases. In fact, the remaining chapters of the book deal with the step-by-step procedures that change agents can follow during the dramatic but gradual process of successfully implementing change.

Before we proceed with the presentation phase, let’s do a quick check of all the assets available to you in the role of salesperson:

1. You have thoroughly analyzed your organization and its need for productivity improvement, as well as its readiness to accept change.

2. You have looked within yourself and realistically appraised your own commitment and willingness to take risk.

3. You have carefully selected the target area for change and quantified the projected benefits.

4. You have clearly stated the requirements of the productivity tool and/or technique.

5. You have surveyed the market and have detailed information about many products.

6. You have selected a few candidate products to be evaluated in detail.

7. You have performed a trial of each product that includes a reasonable test of the requirements, as well as each product’s advertised capabilities.

8. You have talked to other customers and have analyzed their experiences as well as your own.

9. Based on all these factors and all the information, you have reached a sound conclusion and come up with a recommendation.

10. You have documented the entire process in an evaluation report that includes a business case, the requirements, and the recommendation.

You can now feel quite confident about communicating your plans for improving productivity in the target area. You have acquired substantial information, gained considerable experience with the product, and will be able to share this knowledge with others.

The Importance of Management Commitment

The first group you will want to approach is upper management, because this is the point in the implementation beyond which you cannot proceed without their consent. Moreover, if you already have this consent, a sales job is still in order. After all, there are varying degrees of support, and what is required is a high degree of commitment. Exactly why you need this commitment will be explained here, but first let’s consider why we are placing such emphasis on this point at this particular time.

Up till now, everything you have done has involved only yourself, your group, and possibly your boss. Given the nature of what you were trying to accomplish, that was appropriate. In a certain sense, the first three phases were preliminary, and the time for you and a few others to prepare yourselves with facts, figures, and experience was essential. However, now you are entering the main phases of the change process. The first step involves raising the awareness of your department in connection with the product of choice. Obviously, this cannot be accomplished while your endeavors remain secret. Moreover, not only do you want your crusade to become public knowledge, but you want the implementation of this productivity improvement to become your acknowledged job. In other words, this mission you are on, must be viewed as a management directive.

Remember, however modest the change you are trying to implement, however desperately it is required in the target area, people will have a tendency to view what you are doing as disruptive. Notice the word tendency, because it is not inevitable that the process will be viewed as disruptive: See the concrete suggestions we offer in Chapters 8 and 10.

Aside from the quality of your own interactions with users, there are some corporate realities that can definitely ease the way. These realities hold just as true in a small company as in one of the Fortune 500 companies. If you have the sanction of upper management, who represent the corporate structure, then it will provide your users with some political incentive to cooperate or at least listen with an open mind. Keep firmly in your own mind the strength and magnitude of resistance you face. Of course, if you do not begin this effort with good tools and techniques, it does not matter if everyone is willing and able to adapt immediately. But you have taken all the steps to ensure that you do have the appropriate tools and techniques; and what remains is politics, people, and the management of the change process.

What lies ahead, then, is a very substantial job that is difficult to achieve. This is why you need the official blessing of management. Indeed, why else would anyone (even your best friends) be willing to take time out of their already busy days? You must arrange for it to be to their advantage (politically expedient) to cooperate to some extent. In fact, the higher in the hierarchy that you and your boss can reach and convince, the more secure your efforts will be. The following story illustrates this point painfully clearly.

Many years ago a friend of mine was part of a team that was developing a new personnel system for a large corporation. This was an interdepartment effort that had received approval by all the directors of the involved organizations. The team had spent 6 months traveling around the country, gathering and analyzing user requirements. Members were in the process of writing the system definition when the president decided to instigate some drastic budget cuts. The new personnel system was one of the most dramatic items on the budget, so he called each of his vice presidents in turn and queried them about the ramifications of canceling the new system. Since the sales pitch (a clear understanding and conviction) had stopped at the director level, not one VP had a firm and convincing answer. The project was canceled (see Figure 4–1).

This story also illustrates the fact that an organization’s or indeed even a company’s budget is fixed, and therefore people are competing for resources. In order for any level of your management chain to be able or willing to defend to her management or peers the necessity of implementing this particular productivity improvement, she must understand and appreciate it herself. Therefore, every management level that is committed results in a higher probability of obtaining the necessary resources, as well as generally securing the future of the change effort.

This turns our attention away from politics to some concrete reasons to obtain and maintain management support. Such a substantial undertaking cannot be accomplished without some dedicated resources in terms of time and people. For example, you will require a staff to accomplish the objectives you have set for improving productivity. You will also probably need to spend considerable money to purchase the products, associated hardware/software, and arrange the appropriate training. You obviously cannot do this without management approval.

You have already laid all the groundwork for this expenditure and justification for staff in your business case. Thus, this is where we recommend that you begin the conversation when you actually meet to discuss your plans. However, before we cover the topic of the actual meeting, let’s take a few minutes to summarize:

1. The main activity in which you will be engaged during this phase is selling.

2. You have this role because successfully overcoming resistance is the secret to effecting change.

3. Data processing people are unusually resistant to change.

4. You do not have to be unduly worried about these facts, because you are thoroughly prepared by the steps you followed in the previous phases.

5. The first sales pitch will be to upper management.

6. It is critical that you get management commitment at this particular time.

7. You need this commitment at as high a level in the management hierarchy as possible.

8. There are political as well as concrete reasons that necessitate this management support.

9. This corporate sanction will ensure a degree of open-mindedness and cooperation on the part of your users.

Figure 4–1 Limited Communication up the Organizational Hierarchy.

The View From the Top

Unless your upper management is atypical, you can prepare yourself for a trip to an alternate reality. It is a fact that directors and vice presidents view the world of data processing from a different vantage point than project managers and department heads.

Remember when you were traveling around the country visiting work centers so you could estimate the number of processors required for your distributed system? You had gathered a tremendous amount of detailed information, completed a very complicated analysis of the situation, and were finalizing your recommendation. At that very moment you discovered that your director was in the midst of merging the regional areas, and therefore a corresponding work center consolidation was imminent. Naturally your recommendation was now invalid, since it was based on information that was no longer current. The result was that your director’s effort required you to rethink your entire study. Did you have a temper tantrum? Of course not! Did you privately curse all people responsible for the bigger picture? Definitely! Reasonably early in your corporate life, therefore, you realized that your current assignment (which surely more than filled your days) was only a small portion of your upper management’s life. Moreover, your director’s view of the change process will be no different from his view of any other project for which you have ever been responsible. In fact, implementing change may well have a lower priority, since it provides no immediate relief for the myriad crises currently besetting him.

You can employ empathy in this situation just as successfully as you did when you were selecting the products. Remember our discussion in the last chapter in relationship to your users; you can exercise the same skill in relationship to your upper management. Try to imagine how your effort might appear from their point of view. Mentally placing yourself in their position will enable you to determine the best way to approach them as well as to sell them.

Arranging the Meeting

The first thing you must do is arrange a meeting, and this act alone may require considerable persistence and patience. After you have established a date and time with her secretary, be prepared to have the time of the meeting delayed or the meeting deferred to another day. Don’t be discouraged, and above all don’t take it personally! Keep in mind how busy you are, and how many crises arise in your daily life. Remember that your director has even more commitments, more crises, and many more people to keep track of. For example, her boss (the vice president) may have called her into an emergency meeting to explain why he should not transfer your entire organization from San Francisco to Bismarck, North Dakota. Thus, you should be tolerant of delays, since they can, after all, have a significant effect on your own personal future.

What you do need to do is politely persist: In the case of cancellation, immediately reschedule the meeting; in the case of delay, wait patiently until the meeting can take place. If you have a conflict that will prohibit you from being there after close of work day, we recommend taking strong measures to resolve the conflict and arrange to wait. As a working parent, I know the stress placed upon the family when a schedule that is already strained to the limit is stretched even more. The few times a year that I find myself in this position, I (without hesitation but with guilt) beg my spouse and impose unmercifully upon neighbors to pick up, drive, and keep my kids for a few hours. However distressing this might be, keep in mind that meetings with upper management are not a frequent occurrence, and therefore this type of inconvenience is as rare as it is critical.

If you are persistent and patient and yet still have not succeeded in meeting with the manager, there is one other tactic that we have employed in extreme cases. Next time you see your director heading from her office to the cafeteria, walk along with her and casually mention some arresting piece of news. For example, share the information that a similar productivity improvement at a friend’s corporation saved 15%. Another possibility is to point out that when this productivity improvement has been successfully implemented, your organization will be the first in the corporation to have it. The first “commercial” should attract her attention based on budget considerations, while the second is designed to appeal to her competitive instincts. With any luck, you will soon be in the director’s office explaining your plans. The point we are making is that a good salesperson must take advantage of unscheduled opportunities as well as rehearsed and organized ones. In your role as a data processing manager, you rarely have all the needed resources, and life in your role as a salesperson will be no different.

Preparing for the Meeting

Before you begin this much sought after meeting, there are quite a few steps you can take to ensure its success. Obviously you must prepare for this presentation just as you would prepare for any other one. You must create view graphs, flip charts, or slides. My experience suggests that a few quality slides with summary type information will be better received by busy executives than an elaborate and lengthy “dog and pony show”; you should prepare for a brief but formal presentation. You will also need to prepare yourself mentally in several ways. It is almost a certainty that the meeting will be brief, so you will need to make your points quickly. This ability relates to the skill of speaking, which we will cover in detail in the next chapter when we discuss making presentations to your users. However, there is one useful technique we always employ. Before this very important meeting, mentally organize your thoughts into an agenda comprised of the main points you want to make sure you share. Keep this mental checklist in mind during the conversation. Your preparation is not unlike that of an athlete psyching himself for an event: You want to be composed, but very alert.

Another aspect of this conversation for which you want to be as prepared as possible is that upper management is definitely oriented toward the bottom line. When your people talk to you or in fact when you are communicating with your boss, meeting mutual objectives involves a considerable exchange of detailed information. However, during this meeting, since you do not have much time, you must begin with your conclusions and recommendations. If the director requires or is interested in details, she will stop you and ask questions. In addition, she will probably ask very direct questions and expect decisive answers and even commitments. One technique that you might want to follow involves anticipating her questions. Some of the more common ones that you might expect are these:

1. How many copies of the product do you need?

2. How long will it take you to implement this change?

3. If you get additional resources, can you cut the time in half?

4. How many additional staff members will you require?

5. What particular skills and/or experience will they need?

6. How much will all this cost?

7. How much will it save this year? next year?

8. When can you give me a demo? the other directors? the vice president?

Your experience will be slightly different, but these are fairly standard questions, so give them some serious thought and have answers prepared. Moreover, spend some time framing and answering other questions your own management might initiate.

Who Attends the Meeting?

Since it is quite likely that there is at least one level of management between yourself and the director or vice president, it is also quite possible that you may not be invited to the meeting. If this is the case, the situation may not be easy for you to accept. Even if the productivity improvement was an idea of your boss in the first place, surely by now you are the principal change agent. Not only are you the primary zealot, but you are also the person with the knowledge of the organization’s needs, of all the products currently available to fulfill those needs, and the details about the product being recommended. You are in reality the best salesperson to secure support, commitment, and resources from upper management. Therefore, it is your job to ensure that whoever does the presenting is thoroughly prepared and armed with as much information as possible. Several scenarios might result in this situation. Since they are quite diverse, we will consider them separately. The first case is the one in which you and your boss are an effective team with a healthy, open relationship. Moreover, it is not his decision to bar you from the meeting, but an edict from the top. Even though you will not be participating in the formal presentation, you might ask if you could be included in the meeting as a technical resource to provide assistance if required. If this is not an option, then all you can do is to work with him so that he can give the best possible presentation under the circumstances.

On the other hand, you may have the misfortune to work for a boss who is insecure enough to have arranged this state of affairs. In that case you will still need to work with him to prepare a quality presentation as well as to ensure that he is adequately informed. There is one additional tactic you can employ under these circumstances, but you must utilize this technique very sparingly and only when the following set of conditions exist. First, you must clearly determine that your boss is not well intentioned and deliberately presenting obstacles. (Be very careful, avoid paranoia, etc.) On some rare occasions, by some serendipity, you may have previously established a rapport with his boss. Then you may consider breaking a sacred code of corporate etiquette and go around your management. The possible adverse affects of this maneuver are obvious and potentially severe, but circumstances (both adverse ones and the serendipity) may make such drastic action necessary and possible.

The other extreme possibility is that when the meeting does take place it happens on the spur of the moment, is quite informal, and has only you and the director in attendance. Have your materials on hand at all times so that you can grab them at a moment’s notice. You should probably also bring additional information that you can show if the opportunity presents itself. For example, she may not have read your evaluation report. If you have a copy of the report and time permits, you may be able to share portions with her during the meeting. Although it is highly unlikely your director will be interested in details, such as the product literature, she may want you to walk through the business case and conclusion. Do not forget that facts and figures will be what will sell her or what she will need to sell her peers and management.

The Meeting

The moment has finally arrived, and you are in middle of the actual meeting. What is certain is that you cannot count on events progressing the way you thought they would. When we were implementing Excelerator, my group and I spent weeks preparing for our presentation to the director. I had been given total flexibility by my boss in connection with the agenda as well as the details of the presentation. The day before the meeting, I approached him, view graphs in hand, and offered to review my materials with him. He politely declined with the comment that he had complete faith in anything I had prepared.

Bright and early the next morning, the meeting took place as scheduled; and all his peers as well as the director were assembled to receive the fruits of my wisdom. My boss began the meeting by writing an agenda on the board that had absolutely no relationship to anything I had prepared. I uttered some small sound of alarm and he glanced my way in a surprised and concerned manner. My panic was undeniable as I rapidly attempted to formulate a strategy to extricate myself from this most unpleasant situation. What I did was to very simply declare that there had been some communication mishap and proceed with the agenda that I had planned. Since my boss and I had an excellent working relationship, there were no hard feelings. Moreover, we did achieve our objectives via the presentation. But I surely did suffer!

To be sure, this story had a happy ending; timing could not have been better, the product was a fine choice for our needs, and the entire management team was progressive. By the end of the meeting we were not only fully funded, but also staffed and commissioned to implement CASE tools in our department. In reality, however, such an ideal conclusion is rare; the most common occurrence is a delayed decision. Typically the director will perceive some benefit, which will be cautiously acknowledged, and you will be informed that the issues of funding and staffing are under consideration. In that case the most practical course of action is to rely on the technique of gentle nudging. Patiently persist by resurfacing your request on an occasional but regular basis, and eventually a decision will be reached.

There is always the possibility that you will have to face refusal, either at the actual meeting or following a period of gentle nudging. If you are confronted with this disagreeable reality, do not be unduly disheartened. Time will pass, managers will come and go, reorganizations will occur, and new products will appear on the market. All you, as a change agent, must do is wait for an opportunity to present itself, and you will soon be able to improve productivity in your organization.

Finally no matter what the outcome, for whatever part you do play, you must exude confidence in order to convey a positive and lasting impression. Answer any questions as directly as possible, with as little hesitation as possible, and with all the conviction you possess. Remember you are not having one of your numerous interactions with your boss, who is probably already more than comfortable with your success rate. If you experience any doubts, relegate them to the back of your mind for when you are alone after the meeting. It is also likely that you and your boss will make the presentation together, and thus you can both answer questions and provide support for each other. But even if this meeting happens on the spur of the moment and you are the only presenter, you do not have to be at all worried: You are well informed, armed with statistics, and absolutely correct in attempting to implement this particular improvement.

Summary

• The main objective of this phase is selling, because the majority of people are quite comfortable with things the way they are and thus do not want to change.

• Not only is overcoming resistance the key to successfully effecting the change process, but it is also difficult to accomplish.

• The first group that you must sell is upper management, and you must have a strong commitment at as high a level as possible.

• Upper management is focused on different issues, so you must use empathy to understand their perspective before and during the meeting.

• Always have the bottom line in mind; management expects and demands direct answers, commitments, and specific recommendations.