Engineering Buy-In
9 months ago
- #engineering-buy-in
- #team-collaboration
- #leadership
- The most important tactic for gaining buy-in is to individually discuss your project idea with relevant people before pitching it to a decision-making group.
- Pre-meeting discussions help refine your proposal by addressing non-fatal issues, understanding team norms, and reframing the idea to resonate with existing initiatives.
- Human biases play a role; long discussions can hurt approval odds, while preempting misunderstandings and heel-digging can smooth the process.
- Incorporate decision-makers into your project early to create an endowment effect, making them feel invested in its success.
- Practical execution involves different formats for 1:1 discussions (e.g., Google Docs, Slack, casual chats) and group pitches (e.g., demos, formal docs, dedicated meetings).
- Signal existing buy-in during the group pitch by highlighting contributions and having supportive colleagues speak next.
- Engineering buy-in applies to leadership as well, ensuring team morale and smoother project adoption.
- Benefits of engineered buy-in include fostering autonomous collaboration and enabling collective truth-seeking.
- Potential downsides include groupthink, exclusion of opposition, and collaborative deception, which can harm the company.
- Leaders must balance buy-in with critical inspection to avoid supporting weak proposals.
- Over-engineering buy-in can backfire, leading to support for bad ideas and personal accountability for failures.