Home Discussion: Gaining Buy-In and Creating a Vision for Organizational Change

Discussion: Gaining Buy-In and Creating a Vision for Organizational Change

*PLEASE USE THE ARTICLE ATTACHED*

In Week 5, you examined the myriad reasons employees resist change, which can include fear of the unknown, perceived lack of control or support, and poor communication on behalf of leaders about why the change is necessary. In this Discussion, you will explore a related topic: lack of employee buy-in for change. Employee resistance to change often leads to lack of buy-in for the change, particularly if employees strongly believe in the status quo or fail to see the benefits of the change to themselves and others. Lack of buy-in to the change may ultimately stall or sabotage the change if employees decide not to take action to support and implement it. Therefore, addressing a lack of buy-in to change goes beyond calming employee fears to actively “selling” the change. One of the best ways to “sell” a change is to create a compelling vision.

In this Discussion, you will explore the importance of gaining employee buy-in and creating a compelling vision to successfully manage organizational change.

To Prepare

Review the resources on change management models. Consider the role of leaders in each stage of the change process.
Read the article “Defining “Buy-In: Introducing the Buy-In Continuum.” Focus on the descriptions of each stage in the buy-in continuum and leadership strategies for helping employees move to higher stages in the continuum (ATTACHED).
Consider how to develop compelling vision statements for organizational change and the characteristics of well-written vision statements.
Review the article “Positive Leadership in Action: Applications of POS by Jim Mallozzi, CEO, Prudential Real Estate and Relocation.” Consider positive leadership practices for successfully managing change (ATTACHED).
Identify an organizational change you experienced in your current or former workplace that was unsuccessful. Reflect on the employee attitudes and behaviors that led you to believe they did not buy in to the change. Create a 3- to 4-sentence vision statement that you think would have motivated the employees to buy in to the change.

By Day 3

Post a response to the following:

Explain the role of leadership in the change management process. Then, briefly describe an organizational change you experienced in your current or former workplace that was unsuccessful due to a lack of employee buy-in. Describe the employee attitudes and/or behaviors that led you to believe that they did not buy in to the change. Finally, create a 3- to 4-sentence vision statement that you think could have motivated employees to buy into the organizational change.

81Mathewsand Crocker

Defining “Buy-in:” Introducing the Buy-in Continuum

Brandon W. Mathews
Colorado Technical University

Ty Crocker
University of Colorado – Denver

Brandon Mathews is the Director
of a non-profit criminal justice program
in Colorado. He is actively involved
in the implementation of evidence-
based practices and the practice of

organizational change in criminal justice systems. He
is a third year Doctorate Student at Colorado Technical
University with a research focus on organizational culture
and its relationship to the successful implementation of
practices and programs in community corrections agencies.

Ty Crocker is currently an
Implementation Specialist with the State
of Colorado’s Evidence-Based
Practices Implementation for Capacity
(EPIC) Resource center in the Colorado

Department of Public Safety’s Division of Criminal
Justice. He has extensive experience using Implementation
Science to help create the capacity for agencies to change
and implement evidence-based practices to scale. He is
also a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network
of Trainers (MINT) and currently coaches and trains
criminal justice professionals across the State of Colorado
in Motivational Interviewing skills and strategies.

Contact Information:

Brandon W. Mathews
Phone: 719-216-1979

3651 Heather Glen Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80922

Email: brandonwmathews@gmail.

com

Ty Crocker
Phone: 303-249-3655

20661 East Hamilton Avenue
Aurora, Colorado 80013

Email: ty-lee.crocker@state.co.us

Abstract

When discussing organizational change the term

“buy-in” is often used and can be found throughout

the popular and technical literature. It is a near

conceded point that obtaining individual buy-in

for organizational change is not only important,

but critical to success. However, the term is rarely

defined and little support exists to help concretely

elucidate its meaning. Thus, the purpose of this

article is two-fold: to offer a definition of individual

buy-in as it relates to organizational change, making

the term less ambiguous to the field, and to introduce

The “Buy-in Continuum” to the organizational

change lexicon. The Buy-in Continuum is a

conceptual model rooted in individual change

theory, though specifically relevant to organizational

level change, and developed to provide practitioners

with a roadmap to gauge employee buy-in during

change efforts. The continuum is comprised of the

following six linear stages: Denial, Consideration,

Decision, Action, Sustainment, and Resolution.

Ultimately, this article will review the theoretical

82 Organization Development Journal l Summer 2016

Research on organizational change

continues to persist in both the technical and

popular literature. A cursory search for the terms

“organizational change” and “organizational change

or readiness” in the text of articles in the Emerald

and Sage databases over the last five years returns

more than 28,000 publications. These impressive

numbers are indicative of the attention being paid

to the subject of organizational change. Within

the subject of organizational change lies an oft

cited term that is commonly identified as important

and critical to successful change: “buy-in.” The

term buy-in is prominent throughout the change

literature, especially in popular trade journals and

publications; however, rarely is there any definition

provided to support its meaning or any explanation

about how to quantify its presence or absence.

For instance, a brief review of the trade

literature uncovers several articles referencing buy-

in and its importance to change. Ashford and Detert

(2015) offer seven tactics for getting your boss to

buy-in to change, including: tailoring your pitch,

framing the issue, managing emotions, getting the

timing right, involving others, adhering to norms,

and suggesting solutions. Martin (2012) identifies

buy-in as a critical step in getting leadership

to adopt the use of social channels to connect

with their customers. Jain and Toussaint (2010)

reviewed a case study example of the importance

underpinnings of the continuum, introduce and

explain the continuum and its stages, and conclude

with a discussion of implications for future research

and practice.

Keywords: buy-in, change, organizational

change, individual change, the buy-in continuum

_______________

83Mathews and Crocker

of gaining buy-in from physicians to implement

lean practices in a hospital setting. They provide

three suggestions that can be used to gain buy-in,

including: leaders anticipating and responding to

questions about concepts unrelated to healthcare

into their organizations, using simplified language

and concepts familiar to physicians, and focusing

on the outcome of the implementation—better

care. Sharma (2008) presented six principles of

stakeholder engagement for large-scale supply

management operations. He discussed obtaining

stakeholder buy-in as an important criterion of

success, emphasizing the need to secure buy-in

for implementation instead of forced compliance.

Though each of these articles provides an example

of buy-in as an important criterion across disciplines

and contexts, they share one similarity: each fails to

define the concept or provide any explanation about

how to quantify whether it has been achieved.

The academic literature provides a similar

treatment of buy-in. Kotter and Whitehead (2010)

published an entire book on the subject of obtaining

buy-in for good ideas and initiatives, “Buy-in”:

Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down.

The book’s main purpose is to help readers

recognize the top four strategies used to attack good

ideas and organizational change: (1) death by delay

or putting off discussion of the idea to force a loss of

momentum, (2) confusion or flooding the field with

information to create distraction, (3) fear mongering

or building anxiety about the idea, and (4) character

assassination or tearing down one’s credibility to

sabotage support (Kotter & Whitehead, 2010).

Lauby (2011) conducted an interview of Professor

John Kotter with a focus on the concept of buy-in.

In the interview, Kotter cited the prevalent statistic

that 70 percent of change efforts fail. However,

he emphasized the unsuccessful efforts are largely

due to leaders failing to obtain enough buy-in

from their people. Green and Aarons (2011) used

Concept-Mapping and Multidimensional Scaling

(MDS) to identify barriers and facilitators of

change and implementation in large mental health

agencies. The analysis uncovered a variety of

constructs important to change and implementation.

Two of them, the system readiness and staff

development constructs, explicitly identified

buy-in from staff and stakeholders as critical

facilitators of implementation success. Pinedo-

Cuenca, Gonzalez-Olalla, and Setijono (2012)

examined Six Sigma implementation in a British

manufacturing organization. They discovered that

buy-in was important to the level of involvement

and participation gained from members of the

implementation project team. Shtivelband &

Rosecrance (2010) investigated organizational

change and buy-in in the field of ergonomics. They

uncovered four overarching domains necessary to

84 Organization Development Journal l Summer 2016

gain buy-in for change: “(1) establish credibility,

(2) know the organization and key stakeholders,

(3) know your opportunities, and (4) align with

business objectives” (p. 1277). Similar to the trade

literature, each of these studies originates from

a different field or discipline; however, they also

share the same fundamental characteristic: each

study identifies buy-in as an important component

of change, but provides no definition, quantification,

or elaboration of the concept.

Even in the rare instance when a definition

of buy-in is included, there is often no discussion

elaborating on the particulars of the concept. Moon

(2009) developed a model of sensemaking and

common sense for organizational change buy-in. In

his discussion of the model he asserted that gaining

buy-in is a boon for successful organizational change

management” (p. 522) and included the following

description of the term: “buy-in is a commitment

to agreements about work, and it involves some

degree of trust between the change agent and

stakeholders…buy-in depends on psychological

contracts” (p. 528). Though Moon (2009) provided

a description of buy-in and even identified buy-in

as a psychological contract, he failed to elaborate

further or provide details about what that means.

Additionally, no offering was made about how to

measure or accurately assess whether buy-in has

been obtained.

Buy-in is clearly a dominant and important

concept in the study of organizational change;

however the extant literature is missing a conceptual

framework explaining what buy-in entails and how

to gauge the extent to which it is actually present.

Additionally, the literature presents buy-in as either

present or absent, which inaccurately constrains

the term to a dichotomous variable. This paper

seeks to add to the body of literature by offering a

new perspective on a wildly popular term through

application and adaptation of the Transtheoretical

Framework (TTF) and its accompanying Stage of

Change Model (SOCM) (Prochaska & DiClemente,

1982; 1983). Rather than focus on buy-in as

an ambiguously defined criterion necessary to

facilitate successful change, this article concedes

its importance. Instead, this article focuses on

the development of a framework that defines

buy-in and provides an avenue of evaluation to

determine an individual’s level of buy-in related

to an organizational change effort. The TTF and

SOCM (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1982; 1983)

provide the building blocks for the creation of an

adapted model, branded “The Buy-in Continuum.”

This continuum helps clarify that buy-in is not a

dichotomous dimension; rather it exists along a

continuum according to an individual’s cognitive

and behavioral stage of change. The TTF asserts

that behavior change as a process unfolds over time

85Mathews and Crocker

and involves progress through a series of stages that

individuals purposefully navigate (Prochaska, 1994;

2008). Guided by this view, this paper makes one

main proposition: buy-in is an individual cognitive

and behavioral activity related to an employee’s

commitment to a specific change effort that exists

on a continuum from denial to resolution.

In order to support this proposition a

review of the TTF and SOCM is offered and “The

Buy-in Continuum” introduced to elucidate the

definition and process by which individual’s buy-

in to organizational change. This continuum can

serve as a starting point for discourse about the

buy-in continuum and how its stages influence

and impact the outcomes of organizational change.

Additionally, the introduction of the continuum

opens new avenues for instrument development

to empirically measure buy-in during and prior to

organizational change efforts.

Transtheoretical Framework & Stage

of Change Model

DiClemente and Prochaska (1982)

developed the TTF and SOCM in the early 1980s

to meet the need for a more integrated model of

behavior change. The field of psychotherapy was

in a state of confusion with a flood of new therapies

and approaches aimed at addressing behavior

change (Prochaska, 1979). The solution was the

development of a common theoretical foundation

explaining how people change that could be applied

across a variety of problematic and target behaviors

(Prochaska & DiClemente, 1982).

The TTF as a conceptual framework

emerged from a comparative analysis of 18 leading

approaches to therapy and was later applied to

a study of 872 subjects working to change their

smoking habits (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1982).

The study revealed a deep understanding about

how people make self-change. Rather than making

a dichotomous “ready” or “not ready” decision to

change, individuals progress through a series of

stages based upon their level of motivation and

cognitive condition (Prochaska & DiClemente,

1983). Prochaska (2008) asserts that behavior

change does not occur as a single event like other

action based decisions. Rather, decisions about

behavior change are dynamic with extremes of

stability and instability. The Stage of Change Model

(SOCM) was developed to help further explain

this phenomenon and to be used as a tool to gauge

an individual’s stage of change related to specific

behaviors. The SOCM is comprised of five stages

that are applicable to all types of people and change

behaviors. They include: (1) Precontemplation

– the behavior is not a problem and there is no

intention to make a change, (2) Contemplation –

the behavior is being considered as a problem but

no action or preliminary change planning is being

86 Organization Development Journal l Summer 2016

made, (3) Determination – the decision has been

made to change the problem behavior and plans for

change are being made, (4) Action – the behavior

change is being made by implementing change

plans, and (5) Maintenance – the change is being

maintained over time (Prochaska, 2008). Though

not specifically identified as a primary stage of

change, Relapse is often depicted in contemporary

model configurations. Relapse is defined as “a

breakdown or failure in a person’s attempt to change

or modify any target behavior” (Marlatt & George,

1984). Thus, any individual engaging in behavior

change is subject to relapse or an episode of failure

moving them from more progressive to regressive

stages in the model. Figure 1 illustrates the SOCM

with Relapse included.

Since its development, the SOCM has been

widely used to explain how people make behavior

changes across a variety of contexts, including

substance abuse treatment, criminal justice, and the

health sciences (Prochaska, Prochaska, & Levesque,

2001). For instance, in the criminal justice field the

SOCM is used by practitioners as a tool to gauge

just how much commitment offenders have to begin

changing specific criminogenic characteristics,

such as anti-social thinking, anti-social peers,

and substance abuse. Change is challenging and

conceptualizing the process as occurring in stages

Figure 1. Stage of Change Model adapted from (Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1992)
Figure 1. Stage of Change Model adapted from (Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1992)

87Mathews and Crocker

a measure of definition, specifically as it pertains

to the term buy-in. By using the building blocks

of the TTF to define buy-in, the concept becomes

measurable and less ambiguous.

The Buy-in Continuum is a staged model

that explains what it actually means when buy-in

is used in the context of organizational change.

Rather than a cycle similar to the SOCM, buy-in

is illustrated by unlocking the cyclical diagram

and laying the following six stages along a

continuum: Denial, Consideration, Decision,

Action, Sustainment, and Resolution (see Figure

2). There is no relapse stage on the continuum,

as relapse is a concept largely attached to the

health and psychological sciences. Rather, buy-

in is conceptualized as a decision-making process

whereby individuals can move back and forth across

the continuum according to their level of intrinsic

motivation. Instead of relapse, this movement

helped practitioners more accurately evaluate an

individual’s level of resistance or acceptance.

This is because movement through the change

process requires motivation and enhancing intrinsic

motivation facilitates progressive movement toward

actualizing a change, while the loss of intrinsic

motivation contributes to regression through the

stages of change.

The Buy-in Continuum

Though the TTF originated in the counseling

and psychological disciplines, its application in the

organizational sciences is not novel. Prochaska,

Prochaska, and Levesque (2001) first made the

argument that the TTF could be adopted and used as

a framework to explain and evaluate organizational

change. Phillips (2004) also used the framework

by operationalizing core constructs of the TTF and

testing its use in a planned organizational change

effort. However, the TTF has never been used as

Figure 2. The Buy-in Continuum

88 Organization Development Journal l Summer 2016

points along the continuum. However, exiting the

continuum requires the individual to fully adopt the

change as the new status quo in the Resolution stage.

Once discrepancy no longer exists and internal

reconciliation has been made, the permanent

acceptance of the change leads to an exit from

the continuum. Figure 3 provides an illustration,

manifests itself as continuous progression and

regression along the continuum. The regression-

progression path of the model demonstrates this

tenet. The entrance point of the continuum can vary

according to an individual’s level of motivation at

the time they learn of an impending change effort.

This is depicted by the arrows showing entrance

Figure 3. Buy-in Continuum and Stage of Change Model side-by-side comparison

89Mathews and Crocker

comparing the SOCM and the Buy-in Continuum

side-by-side. As the figure demonstrates, there are

both similarities and differences between the models.

Most notably, the continuum has six stages with a

focus on an individual’s internal level of commitment

to organizational change; whereas the SOCM has

five stages with a focus on general problematic

individual behaviors. Additionally, the continuum

contains a “Resolution” stage whereby individuals

ultimately resolve to adopt the organizational

change as the new status quo. The SOCM has no

such stage due to the lifetime commitment required

to maintain many problem individual behaviors,

such as substance abuse. Specific organizational

changes occur in relative surges and thus don’t

share the long-term maintenance requirement of

the SOCM. The following sections will further

describe the characteristics associated with each

stage of the Buy-in Continuum.

Denial

The first and most difficult stage to move

an individual out of is Denial. When confronted

with an organizational change, an individual in

the denial stage of buy-in does not believe that

the change is necessary or disagrees with the

scope of the change. This could be due to heavy

investment in the status quo, a misunderstanding of

the change, or a lack of clarity or communication

regarding the initiative (Whelan-Berry, Gordon,

& Hinings, 2003). No matter the reason, denial is

the sheer absence of the need or desire to change.

For instance, an employee in denial who has just

been informed of an impending change to the

technology that drives their work may engage in

the following type of dialogue: “there’s nothing

wrong with the technology I currently use, change

will make it harder to do my work” or “I just don’t

understand why this change is happening, what

is driving the need for a new technology.” These

types of statements are indicative of someone who

must be moved beyond denial before a useful level

of buy-in can be established. In order to move an

individual out of the denial stage, discrepancy must

be developed between the current state or status

quo and the desired state. In other words, to build

an individual’s intrinsic motivation to buy-in, they

first must cognitively process that their current state

conflicts with the desired or needed state (Miller,

Zweben, DiClemente, and Rychtarik, 1992).

Consideration

The second stage on the continuum is

Consideration. Consideration is defined as careful

thought or engaging in the act of thinking carefully

about something one might make a decision about

(Consideration, 2015). The consideration stage

involves the conscious consideration of the need

to buy-in to the impending change. Individuals

reaching this stage are no longer denying,

90 Organization Development Journal l Summer 2016

deciding to buy-in. At the decision point, the

discrepancy that has been built within the individual

using targeted interventions and has contributed

to the understanding that their current state is less

desirable than their future state as part of the change

effort. In the decision stage individuals begin

actively planning how they will participate in the

change effort, contribute to the change effort, and

support the change effort. However, it is important

to understand that they have not actually taken any

action, as they have only just decided that buying

into the change brings more benefit than cost. For

example, the same employee facing a change to the

technology that drives their work may engage in the

following type of internal and external dialogue:

“I think this new technology will be useful, I’ll

volunteer to be part of the change team to help with

implementation” or “I’d like to be a change agent and

help others see the benefits in adapting to this new

technology.” In order to further move an individual

along the continuum continued development of

intrinsic motivation to buy-in is required. This

is because when individuals perceive change as a

result of both extrinsic and intrinsic factors, they

will discount the intrinsic and attribute the behavior

change to the extrinsic (Kruglanski, Alon, & Lewis,

1972) making it difficult to sustain buy-in and reach

the point of resolution where the change becomes

the new status quo.

disagreeing with, or avoiding the organizational

change. Rather, they have begun to consciously

think about whether or not they will buy-in. When

considering whether to buy-in, individuals are

driven by several criteria, including benefits to self,

benefits to others, approval from self, approval

from others, costs and benefits, and disapproval

from self and others (Prochaska, 2008). Depending

upon the balance of this cost-benefit analysis an

individual will either regress back to denial or

progress along the continuum to the Decision stage.

Continuing with the example above, an employee

facing a change in the technology that drives their

work may engage in the following type of self-talk,

which emerges as external dialogue: “learning a

new technology could give me marketable skills,”

“this new technology could save the organization

money, which could mean more dollars available

for bonuses and raises” or “a new technology might

actually make it easier for me to do my job in the

long run, making me better off than I am now.” This

type of internal and external dialogue is indicative

of an individual considering whether or not they

will buy-in to the organizational change.

Decision

Once an individual reaches the decision

point of the continuum, they have consciously

moved from only considering the costs and benefits

of buying into the change effort to affirmatively

91Mathews and Crocker

through task completion and positive promotion and

need little to no continued intervention to support

their intrinsic motivation. Rather, in sustainment

an individual has becoming firmly attached to

the success of the change effort and is unlikely to

regress to lower levels of the continuum without

a catastrophic occurrence. The employee facing

the technology change might make a statement

similar to the following indicating they’ve reached

the sustainment stage: “I am invested in this

change effort and helping to sustain the successful

implementation of the new technology into the

organization.”

Resolution

Resolution is an important point on the

continuum, as it signifies the cognitive moment

when the change effort is no longer an effort.

Rather, the change has become so engrained in the

way of working and being within the organization,

it is the new status quo. Thus, cognitively and

behaviorally the individual has resolved that the

old way of doing no longer exists. Resolution is

the end of the buy-in continuum and the individual

understands and accepts the new status quo. The

change has now been installed. For instance,

the employee experiencing the change to the

technology that drives their work would no longer

perceive the technology as “new,” rather it would

be the way work is done now. The employee might

Action

The action stage of the continuum is similar

to that of the TTF. However, the TTF is uniquely

suited to explain actions taken by those involved

in addiction, such as abstaining from the use of

alcohol or cigarettes (Miller & Rollnick, 2013).

The action stage of The Buy-in Continuum involves

the individual engaging in required and requested

change activities. For instance, the employee facing

the technology change that impacts their work

would be actively completing tasks above the level

of expectation or positively promoting the change

effort with other members of the organization facing

the same change. These activities are indicative

of an individual who is in the Action stage of the

continuum. The Action stage is the tipping point of

the continuum, as the intrinsic motivation to buy-in

to the change effort has reached a level that can be

sustained with only minimal ongoing intervention.

Thus, moving an individual to action is important

to change efforts, as resources such as individual

coaching, mentoring, and performance management

can be reallocated to those at lower levels of the

continuum once someone has reached this stage.

Sustainment

Once an individual reaches the sustainment

point of the continuum, they have largely internalized

the change effort as necessary and beneficial. They

continue to overtly act in support of the initiative

92 Organization Development Journal l Summer 2016

the continuum. Though intrinsic motivation is

an important concept to change, it is important to

understand that the tools and techniques available to

move an individual along the continuum are more

useful to leaders, managers, and change agents than

understanding its theoretical underpinnings. This

is because intrinsic motivation theory does not

inform about the practice of actually enhancing it

in real world organizational contexts. However,

one such tool that does provide a substantive and

tangible means to increase an employee’s intrinsic

motivation to buy-in is Motivational Interviewing.

Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing (MI) was

originally developed as a counseling technique.

Its goal is to increase the level of an individual’s

intrinsic motivation to change by creating a

discrepancy between their current state and desired

state and by reducing and resolving ambivalence

(Miller & Rollnick, 2013). MI is uniquely suited

to The Buy-in Continuum, as its premise is to

generate the internal desire necessary to move

from an existing state to a more positive state. MI

is no longer just a counseling technique and is

utilized across a variety of disciplines as a holistic

engagement methodology to enhance intrinsic

motivation to change (Morin, 2014). Miller (1996)

proposes four main components of MI that drive

its ability to facilitate change: expressing empathy,

even express that they don’t remember what it was

like not to use the new technology, signifying the

internalization of the change as the new status quo.

As no further intervention is necessary to build

intrinsic motivation to buy-in, individuals exit the

continuum until the introduction of another change

initiative and a fresh need to evaluate and develop

buy-in.

Discussion

Implications for Practice

There are a variety of reasons change efforts

fail to obtain full buy-in immediately. However,

failure to gain buy-in can be largely connected to

a lack of the development of intrinsic motivation

in target employees. The old paradigm of buy-

in as a dichotomous variable constrained change

interventions to two populations: those who

were bought-in and those who were not. This

made it difficult to target intrinsic motivation

building interventions. With the development of

The Buy-in Continuum, individual interventions

can be tailored according to where one lies on

the continuum allowing the better allocation of

resources. Additionally, the continuum is rooted

in the theoretical underpinnings of the TTF. This

means there are immediately applicable techniques

change practitioners and leaders can deploy that

have been proven to enhance intrinsic motivation

for change and can encourage progression along

93Mathews and Crocker

developing discrepancy, rolling with resistance, and

supporting self-efficacy. These components are

rooted in the core skills of MI delivery: open-ended

questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries.

Through these components and delivery skills MI

is a powerful tool in the development of intrinsic

motivation.

The intricacies of learning MI are beyond

the scope of this article; however basic to advanced

techniques can be learned by anyone with some

training and practice (Fields, 2006; Graham,

2015) and can be deployed in the organizational

environment where the development of buy-in is

a desired result. Leaders and change practitioners

gauging buy-in using the continuum can identify

individuals who are in the Denial or Consideration

stages, indicative of low motivation to buy-in,

and deploy targeted MI interventions to begin

amplifying discrepancy and enhancing motivation.

Similarly, they can avoid expending resources on

individuals identified as already in higher stages of

the continuum (Action, Sustainment, Resolution),

as limited resources of any organization should be

targeted at those presenting with the most need to

be motivated to buy-in.

Implications for Research

With the introduction of new conceptual

models comes the need for validated instruments

to measure the model’s constructs. The Buy-in

Continuum provides a novel framework for change

practitioners and leaders to gauge the magnitude of

an individual’s level of buy-in to specific change

efforts. Research should focus on the development

of psychometric scales that operationalize the

levels on the continuum. As the continuum is

rooted in the TTF, existing instruments focused on

behavior change related to substance use, smoking,

and exercise should be investigated. For instance,

the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment

Scale (McConnaughy, Prochaska, & Velicer, 1983)

was developed to measure an individual’s stage of

personal change according to the SOCM. Though

the instrument’s items are targeted at problem

social behaviors and not the organizational change

environment, they can be easily adapted and shaped

to fit the organizational space and the constructs

found within The Buy-in Continuum.

Conclusion

Buy-in for organizational change will

continue to be an important factor to successful

change efforts. Understanding that buy-in is not

a dichotomous construct, but rather occurs along

a continuum from denial to resolution is important

for two main reasons. First, change practitioners

and leaders can better define amongst themselves

what buy-in entails and what level and mix of buy-

in is necessary in their own organizations to achieve

success. Second, the continuum facilitates the ability

94 Organization Development Journal l Summer 2016

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permission.

Positive leadership in action

:
Applications of POS by Jim Mallozzi, CEO,
Prudential Real Estate and Relocation

Kim Cameron, Emily Plews

Organizational Dynamics (2012) 41, 99—105

Available online at www

sciencedirect.com

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / o r g d y n

In this interview with Jim Mallozzi, CEO of Prudential Real
Estate and Relocation Company, Mallozzi describes the variety
of ways in which he has implemented principles and practices
emerging from positive organizational scholarship. He was
exposed to POS in the mid-2000s as a senior officer in Pruden-
tial Retirement, and after becoming chief executive officer
(CEO) of Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Company in
2009, he actively engaged POS to address the challenges and
difficulties faced by his firm. Among the POS practices Mallozzi
implemented were utilizing positive energy networks to create
a ‘‘change team,’’ developing a reciprocity network among
company employees, articulating Everest goals, fostering posi-
tive leadership in the senior team, celebrating strengths,
successes, and achievements, reflected best-self feedback,
and demonstrating caring and compassion with customers and
potential customers. As a consequence of these initiatives, he
achieved the successful merger of two culturally different
organizations, dramatic improvements in financial perfor-
mance, improved customer satisfaction scores, and markedly
enhanced employee engagement. This interview provides
provocative examples of how a leader can make a major
impact in his organization’s performance by creatively apply-
ing positive organizational scholarship.

COULD TELL US ABOUT WHEN YOU CAME TO
PRUDENTIAL, THE CHALLENGES YOU FACED,
AND HOW POS FIT IN AS TOOL TO HELP YOU
FACE THOSE CHALLENGES?

I was brought into Prudential Retirement in the spring of 2004
as the head of integration. The company had just acquired a
big division from the Cigna Corporation, and we were trying
to merge the two cultures together. In the beginning it was
like trying to merge the Red Sox and the Yankees; we had two

distinct cultures — one from New England and the other one
from the New York/New Jersey area. Both were very strong,
very passionate, and very powerful. As you can imagine,
trying to put these two cultures together was a challenge.
The president at the time happened to be a graduate of the
University of Michigan. He had just come back from a session
there where he had met Bob Quinn and Kim Cameron and
learned about positive organizational scholarship. He
brought them into the company to help us create something
that was really different and outstandingly unique. We
embarked on a journey that fit with a lot of things I had
always wanted to do and was consistent with my own outlook
on life. It helped us very successfully integrate the cultures,
and the company went on to produce some record earnings. I
think that POS helped us create the benchmark for how you
take two distinct companies and put them together.

HOW LONG DID THAT PROCESS TAKE, AND
HOW DID YOU IMPLEMENT IT?

It was a conscious two year effort that involved not only the
senior leadership who led from the front, but virtually every-
body in the entire organization needed to be part of it. It was
fun to see all the different groups put their own little twist on
POS. There were a variety of tools and techniques that we
implemented. One was the reflected best-self feedback
process, which we became really good at. Another was the
use of the competing values framework, which is how we
demonstrated respect for each other in terms of what unique
attributes each person brought to the table. A third was the
development of an Everest goal, or what we aspired to be and
what we stood for. A lot more change tools were also put in
place at the time, which I leveraged in some of my later
responsibilities.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2012.01.003

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00902616

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2012.01.003

100 K. Cameron, E. Plews

WHAT WERE THE OUTCOMES OF THIS
IMPLEMENTATION?

The primary outcome was the assimilation of the two com-
panies. We kept 95 percent of our clients. Our annual
employee satisfaction scores and employee opinion survey
results increased. We had less voluntary turnover, and the
earnings of the company started going up at about 20 percent
per annum on a compound rate. It was a real success story. In
addition, when the president left to take a job in a different
company, the culture and the practices actually stayed in
place. Often times, change efforts do not sustain themselves
when you have a change in leadership. I would argue the real
test of change efforts is whether they are sustained when the
leader leaves. In our case, they were.

YOU WERE THEN APPOINTED AS THE CEO OF
PRUDENTIAL REAL ESTATE AND RELOCATION.
WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES AND
OBSTACLES YOU FOUND?

In the summer of 2009, as the financial markets were coming
out of one of the worst recessions since the great depression,
I was asked to take over Prudential’s Real Estate and Reloca-
tion business (PRERS). The real estate side sells residential
and commercial real estate franchises across North America.
The relocation side helps families move throughout the
world. It serves both U.S. government employees and large
corporations. When I took over in the fall of 2009, we were
facing a $70 million loss per year. The company had lost $140
million the year before. So as I came into the company, I had
the opportunity to travel around and see what the morale was
like for the associates. Before I arrived, they had shown the
beach scene from Saving Private Ryan in an attempt to
motivate our associates. If you remember, there is a scene
on D-Day where people are being killed all over the place.
Body parts are flying and bombs are going off. The trouble is,
our associates interpreted this as: ‘‘Anyplace but here.’’
Some of the folks in my company actually had encouraged
me to play it again to show that I was symbolically in
alignment with the previous CEO in terms of cost-cutting. I
rejected that. I could see that the organization just didn’t
have confidence in itself. Morale in our company and among
our customers was not high.

SO, HOW DID YOU ADDRESS THESE
CHALLENGES OF MAJOR RED INK AND POOR
MORALE THROUGHOUT PRERS?

I harkened back to my Prudential Retirement days and what I
learned about positive organizational scholarship. The mes-
sage was, let’s look at what we have, as opposed to what we
don’t have. Let’s look at what we can do as opposed to what
we don’t do. How do we start to take the limits off our
company, not in terms of just going back to where we were
two years or five years ago, but how do we achieve something
that is truly great and never seen before in our industry? I
called my good friend Kim Cameron and asked him to help me
with the change effort. We started by bringing in Kim to work
with our senior management team — what we call the ‘‘Gang

of 30.’’ Some of them were very reticent; others were
curious. Fortunately, they were all patient.

WHAT SPECIFICALLY DID YOU DO WITH YOUR
SENIOR TEAM? HOW DID YOU START THE
PROCESS TO TURN AROUND THE COMPANY?

We started with a variety of exercises to show them that
when you start with the positive, when you ask people to
genuinely help you achieve what you’re trying to do, fabulous
things can happen. One very simple exercise — and it’s an
exercise I’ve now done, oh goodness, dozens of times — is a
great positive energizer. In the next three minutes, select
three people, one at a time, and tell those people three
things you value about them. In corporate America, and in
most places in life, people usually tell you, ‘‘Here are the
three things that you need to change.’’ Rarely do they tell
you, ‘‘Here are the three things that you’re fabulous at.’’
When you do that, the energy just goes up. So that was the
start. Okay, we’re off the beach. Nobody’s dying any more.
The body parts have been buried. We’re now saying, ‘‘Okay,
let’s start with what we have, because we have some fab-
ulous attributes. So we started with that very simple but
powerful exercise, and it got people’s attention.

POSITIVE FEELINGS ARE ONE THING, BUT
TURNING AROUND THE FIRM IS ANOTHER.
HOW DID YOU TRANSLATE POSITIVE
EMOTIONS INTO POSITIVE ACTIONS?

Well, after talking about positive strengths, we said, ‘‘OK,
let’s translate this into action.’’ We engaged in an activity
that was a variation on Wayne Baker’s reciprocity ring exer-
cise. Each of us had to take a sticky pad and put up a current
problem we were trying to solve. Mine was trying to recruit
some new senior leaders into the company. At the time I
didn’t have a head of HR. I didn’t have a head of marketing. I
needed a new head of business risk and I needed a new head
of sales. We needed all sorts of things in the company. So, I
put up my problem on the board, and we invited 30 people to
do the same thing — ‘‘Here is the current business problem
I’m trying to solve.’’ Then we invited the 29 other folks to
positively contribute. In my case, I got several really helpful
ideas from the group. Our general counsel was a little bit
skeptical at the time, and he approached the exercise,
essentially, by saying, ‘‘OK, I’m going to stump the crowd
here.’’ So he offered this challenge: ‘‘I’m trying to hire
excellent legal advice for our office in France.’’ He was sure
that no one could help him, since most of the folks in the
room were from the U.S. But, sure enough, out of that group
of 30 people, he got four great ideas. Somebody had a
brother-in-law who had gone to law school in France. Some-
body else had a good friend that was part of a big Paris law
firm. He got a lot of different ideas. It really is one of those
POS examples of reciprocity. The point is, when we invite
others to help in a positive way, we can never predict where
fabulous ideas come from. We started to see the energy in the
group increase. They recognized that when they readily
shared their challenge and openly asked others for help,
they couldn’t predict where help would come from. They

Positive leadership in action 101

could see by working together that they could solve their own
problems faster and better.

DID THIS ACTIVITY TRANSLATE INTO THE
REST OF THE ORGANIZATION?

About four months later we held our big annual convention.
We invited 2,500 real estate agents from all over the country,
and you can imagine they were a pretty energetic crowd. We
met in the Austin Convention Center, and this was my first
presentation to this group as the new CEO. I wanted to
engage the crowd and ask for ideas about how we can make
our company better. Well, the professional speechwriters
advised against it and literally deleted this part from my
speech three times. They said, ‘‘No, you shouldn’t stop the
show. It will distract people. It’s the wrong thing to do. You
don’t want to get people engaged in a conversation when
you’re giving a speech to a large audience. They are there to
listen. You are there to talk.’’ Well, I decided to try something
different anyway. In the middle of my keynote address, I
asked for the houselights to come up. I asked everybody to
take out their Blackberries and their iPhones and turn them
on as opposed to turn them off. I asked them all to text or e-
mail one great idea — how to get a new client, how to close a
sale, how to keep a customer for life. I said, ‘‘Take your very
best idea, your absolutely best one, and share it. You will be
sharing it with the person three rows behind you, down the
convention center, across the hall. Let’s do it right now.’’ ‘‘I
had somebody bring my Blackberry on stage, and I partici-
pated as well. We did that for about four or five minutes, and
then I invited them to continue to do it for the next 36 hours
— until the end of the convention. Do you know how many
ideas we came up with? Over 2,200. When we sorted all the
duplicates and a couple of those that, well, were just non-
sensical, we had 900 unique ideas. One person sent 197.
We’ve been using those ideas for the last 15 months. One
office sends out one idea to each of its sales associates every
day, and they said, ‘‘It gave us ideas for three years.’’ In
36 hours, we generated an idea a day for three years. That
wasn’t about me. It was about creating a positive network.

SO, DID YOU SHARE THE 900 IDEAS WITH THE
COMPANY?

We did, but we went further than that. This year our annual
convention was in San Diego. We launched an on-line network
called NextWork — what’s next and what works. Think of it as
kind of Facebook for grownups where we are sharing ideas,
sharing best practices, helping each other on a 24/7 basis.
We’ve set up chat rooms where people can go in and explore
different categories together. It allows people to have a voice
when they normally wouldn’t have one, when they do not
know who to talk to, when they may not know how to get
their ideas heard in a larger community. We’re seeing a lot of
younger people, a lot of people with less experience, now
being coached by people who have more experience. So
we’ve taken that very simple idea of reciprocity — just ask
for help and you never know where help comes from — and we
are building it into the very culture of our company using
technology and social networking to keep it alive 24/7.

WERE THERE OTHER EXAMPLES OF THIS KIND
OF INTERVENTION IN PRERS?

Yes. One of the things we needed to do was to start to reinvent
ourselves and our processes, or to give us the latitude to
experiment on being ‘‘positively deviant,’’ as I like to say.
We turned to another Michigan professor — Jeff DeGraff — for
some help, again building on the principles of POS. Jeff helped
us look at doing a lot of small experiments with positive
deviance rather just the traditional big corporate develop-
ment projects that take sometimes years to measure. Borrow-
ing from the Hockey saying of ‘‘you can’t win if you don’t
shoot,’’ we created the ‘‘Shots on Goal’’ program. We allowed
line managers to try different experiments aimed at delighting
our customers and supply chain. Our client services scores in
our Relocation Company had taken a beating during the down-
sizing of the recession, and, quite honestly, many of our
customers were not very happy with us. So we started with
some experiments and looked at examples of where we did
well with clients. We looked deeply at not only who but also
what and how this was being accomplished. Then we used
these folks as positive examples, trying to clone them in the
eyes of others. They became the unofficial mentors to others in
these departments. We experimented with different staffing
models, getting folks closer to the ultimate customer, and
celebrating when we did things well. It was so fun to watch and
measure! Believe it or not, things started to improve in all sorts
of ways. Our client satisfaction scores stared to increase, and
with every increase, people where encourage to strive for even
more ‘‘positive deviance.’’ It almost became like a game. After
18 months of trial and error, our services scores have never
been higher. Some units actually achieved 100 percent satis-
faction with some of our toughest clients. The best part of the
whole program is that each and every idea implemented came
from our associates. Not one was from me.

WHAT ROLE DID YOU AND YOUR SENIOR TEAM
PLAY?

I believe that to truly implement POS, you must be willing to
be visible and vulnerable at the same time. If your team
thinks you have all the answers to their problems, they will
bring you every problem to get an answer. Well, I know I’m
not smarter than 1,200 associates, so it really was a case of
setting an example in a very public way that it is OK to set
positive goals, to look for inspiration around us, and to be
open to help from anywhere in pursuit of that goal. As I said,
when I took over in 2009, the company wasn’t doing very
well. We had lost a lot of money. After taking a small amount
of time to travel around to listen to our associates, our
clients, our franchisees, and our real estate franchise agents,
I laid out my objectives and invited all of our employees to
help me. Our objective was straightforward: to reconnect to
our core mission to be Welcoming and Welcomed. Simply put,
we needed to be welcoming in our approach and welcomed
for our expertise, as we helped people who are at very
vulnerable times in their lives. They are often disconnected
from the near and known as they try to connect to the far and
often foreign. And yes, these objectives included the mea-
surable targets such as growing revenues, keeping expenses

102 K. Cameron, E. Plews

flat, increasing customer service, and ultimately getting us
back on a profitable basis. For us to accomplish any of this, we
needed to draw on lots of sources of inspiration. The idea I
wanted to communicate was that we could draw inspiration
and ideas not just from the biggest and most obvious places
but from the small or obscure places as well.

CAN YOU PROVIDE AN EXAMPLE OF HOW YOU
DREW ON SMALL SOURCES OF INSPIRATION?

Sure. One good example was the ‘‘Haka Challenge.’’ The
Haka is a traditional Maori dance performed by New Zealand’s
All Blacks rugby team before each match. The idea is to
intimidate and scare the opponent. The Haka represents the
toughness needed to win at rugby. I said, ‘‘If we accomplish
our business objectives and you help me accomplish my
personal objectives, I will stand in front of you and perform
the Haka. This will be a celebration of our achievements and
recognize the fact that we’ve stopped intimidating each
other and started scaring the competition.’’ Well, sure
enough, we went from a $70 million loss to a $20 million
profit, and we actually achieved two times our expected
business plan. We doubled our profits from what we’d
expected. Our employee satisfaction scores went up in nine
out of twelve categories. I had been hoping for eight out of
twelve, but we got nine out of twelve. I got 110 written pages
of comments in our EOS survey; 60 were about the positive
changes in our company and, yes, 50 were about those
changes we still needed to make. This year our scores
continued to improve, and we are now approaching first
quartile status in our survey results, the first time in years.
After our earnings were made public, we had a barbeque for
all of our employees out in the parking lot. Seventeen
members of the senior management team and I all performed
the Haka. It was a fun day to celebrate the hard work of so
many of our associates. My only regret is I wish I were a better
dancer!

WHAT A FUN EXAMPLE OF CELEBRATING
SUCCESS!

Yes, but here is the really interesting in part of the story.
When I had first laid out this challenge to the employees, one
gentleman lingered behind. He said, ‘‘Jim, when you talked
about drawing inspiration from the smallest not the largest
and you used New Zealand as an example, I thought it was
fabulous. I’m from New Zealand. And, when you used rugby
as an example of being the best and being the toughest, you
really peaked my interest because I used to play rugby for the
All New Zealand University Team. And, when you talked
about the Maori people, I was downright tingly because
I’m Maori. And then when you laid out the Haka challenge,
I was astounded because I used to teach the Haka in New
Zealand. Would you like me to be your coach?’’ Now, I never
would have thought that I was going to find a Haka coach that
worked in our company in Scottsdale, Arizona, but there he
was. All I needed to do was ask. I have found that when I ask
others to genuinely help us become outrageously, positively
deviant, you never know where help will come from, but it
always comes.

HOW HAVE YOU TRIED TO MAKE POS BECOME
PART OF THE CULTURE OF YOUR COMPANY?

Like most companies, we do client surveys where 5 is out-
standing and 1 is negative. We have always obsessed over the
scores of 1, 2 and 3 and tried to get rid of those. To change our
culture we tried something different. We decided to look at
the scores of 4 and 5 and figure out why were we outstanding.
We wanted to study outstanding successes — why we were
great as opposed to failing — and extend the lessons to other
areas. We want to know how to be a 5 company — how to
define it, how to measure it, and how to replicate it. I
happened to be in France three or four weeks ago. I was
talking about positive principles with our French employees,
and they were struggling a little bit. I asked, ‘‘So how do we
get to be 5s?’’ They kind of looked at me very quizzically. I
wondered if it was a language translation problem. Should I
have said it in French? They responded: ‘‘No, we don’t even
measure anything north of 3.’’ So I asked: ‘‘How do you know
when you’re outstanding?’’ It was a completely new idea to
them. They said: ‘‘We don’t.’’ Then I asked them to try
something. ‘‘Tell me when you have been outstanding. Tell
me when you’ve seen our organization at its best.’’ One
person stood up and said, ‘‘Well I’ve seen our employees
at our best, and I’ve seen us be a 5, just today. We have had
people at the Charles De Gaulle Airport 24/7 for the last week
greeting relocated employees who are coming back after
being forced to evacuate Japan after the earthquake and
tsunami.’’ We are a relocation company, so we helped these
people move there. She said, ‘‘They had to leave all their
goods behind them. They have no place to live. They are
being forced back into this country. We were there greeting
them at the airport, helping them find a place to live, giving
them bottled water as they get off the plane, helping them
get back into France as quickly as we can. No other company
is doing that. We are the only ones out there doing it on behalf
of our clients.’’ And I said, ‘‘That’s it. You’re a 5. You’re
helping people when they’re the most vulnerable in their
lives. That’s to be celebrated. It’s positively deviant and so
different than everybody else.’’ My job not only in France,
but also throughout the whole firm is just to make sure people
have the vision and the tools, and then I get the heck out of
the way because they’ll do it. It is important to try to create a
culture that not only allows but also encourages positive
deviance. We were fortunate to later win the 2010 JD Power
Award for Service in our Real Estate Franchise business and
three ‘‘Trippel Survey’’ awards for outstanding client service
in our Relocation Company.

HOW DOES THIS POSITIVE APPROACH
TRANSLATE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS AND
CLIENTS?

Well, one example is my ‘‘power of five’’ activity. In a ‘‘Gang
of 30’’ strategy session, I announced that I wanted us to
invoke the ‘‘power of five.’’ They asked, ‘‘What the heck is
the power of five?’’ I said, ‘‘Okay, I want you to find five new
clients that we’re going to put all the resources of our
company to get. So, acquire five new prospects. It’s not
50. It’s not 500. It’s five. Second, I want us to find five clients

Positive leadership in action 103

and wow them. Don’t ask me what it means to wow a client.
Ask the client. Make it positively deviant, way out there on
the curve. We can’t do it for all 500 of our clients yet, so let’s
start with five. Third, I want you to find five clients that, quite
frankly, we’re just not doing well with. It just isn’t working,
and it’s sucking up all the energy in our company. I give you
permission to fire them. We’re going to stop merely counting
clients, and instead, we’re going to have clients who count.’’

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ‘‘WOWING’’ CLIENTS?

Well, we gave the ‘‘Gang of 30’’ the charge to find five clients
and to wow them. We told the clients that they had been
selected as one of our wow clients and that we really want to
work on being positively deviant. We explained what we
meant by our wow client program and why we selected them.
We asked them to join us in this effort. It was amazing. One of
the clients we selected for the wow program was so dissa-
tisfied with us they were ready to leave for one of our
competitors. That client went from being ready to walk
out the door to being our biggest advocate. Why? We engaged
them. We talked about what’s really important to them. We
listened to what they meant as opposed to what they said. It
was not easy to do, but we tried a variety of approaches.
When an idea worked, we did more. When it didn’t work, we
just put it aside and tried something else. We also had to get
rid of the clients who were constant sources of negative
energy. Every company has them. Every firm has clients who
just exude negative energy. We got rid of those clients
allowing us to channel our energy back to those where we
had the chance to be successful. What is fascinating is that
those negative clients are sucking up the energy at one of my
competitors as we speak. Good luck with that.

CAN YOU PROVIDE AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT
YOU DID WITH CLIENTS TO ‘‘WOW’’ THEM?

Basically, it’s how we try to encourage outrageously positive
behavior in a very genuine way. About 18 months ago, I was
visiting our London operations meeting with a variety of
clients. British Petroleum (BP) is one of our clients in Europe,
not a client here in the United States. I met with some of
their HR folks and introduced myself as the new CEO. I talked
about POS and how we were trying to change the culture of
our company. I said that we wanted to engage them and learn
from them. It was a great meeting. Then, about three or four
weeks later, the Deep Water Horizon oil spill occurred with
the unfortunate loss of a dozen or so lives and one of the
largest environmental spills in history. You could read and
see on TV that the folks at BP were being blasted in the U.S.
and throughout the global press regarding their reaction
times, what they were doing, what they were not doing, and
so forth. The folks at BP were feeling pretty bad about all
this.

So I called up the senior HR person whom I knew, and I said,
‘‘Listen, I can see what’s going on in the States. I’m sorry that
this is happening for you. I understand you’re trying to move a
lot of people into the Gulf area to deal with this crisis. I know
you have vendors there probably helping you, but we are a
relocation company. I would like to offer the services of our
company to you, free of charge, for the duration of the

crisis.’’ He said, ‘‘Why would you make such an offer?’’
‘‘The very simple answer is that we all have a responsibility
for what’s going on in the Gulf. We all need to try to help in
ways large and small. This is the best way that I can think of to
help you. It’s a sincere offer. If you’d like to take us up on it,
great, if you don’t, that’s fine. I certainly understand.’’ About
two days later I got a call back from the folks at BP. They said,
‘‘Well, first off, thank you so much for calling. There have
been a number of vendors that we currently do business with
throughout the world. Many have called offering their ser-
vices. You were the only one that offered to do it free of
charge. We probably won’t take you up on the offer, but we
very much appreciate the gesture.’’ I said, ‘‘That’s fine. If you
change your mind, we’re happy to do whatever we can to
help. Again we’re all responsible here, and we just want to be
helpful.’’ Well, sure enough, about six months later they
decided to go out for an RFP (a request for a proposal) for a
new vendor for relocation. We were invited to be one of the
participants. Of course, the end of the story is not yet
written. We don’t know how it will turn out. But, we use
this example with our associates to encourage them to be
positively outrageous. It’s okay to help others and not expect
anything in return. When we do that, fabulous things
can happen.

HOW DID YOU ROLL OUT POS TO THE REST OF
THE ORGANIZATION?

As we started to introduce POS into our organization, we
began with the ‘‘Gang of 30.’’ But we knew we needed to get
the message out to our 1,300 employees in seven countries
representing 30-plus cultures. We knew we needed some
help. So, we identified a set of positively energizing and
positively deviant people. They were not the most senior or
experienced people, but they were people who provided a
real uplift to the organization. We selected 26 of them from
across the world and brought them into Scottsdale. For some
of these folks it was their first trip to the United States. For
some it was their first business trip. We had Kim come in to
give them an introduction to POS. I talked about how we
wanted to change the company, and I told them that I needed
their help. They were very excited by the challenge.
I charged them to introduce POS to 90 percent of our
associates worldwide in 60 days, so that at least 1,100 people
had a working knowledge of POS in 60 days. That meant
members of the change team had to understand what POS is
and have the ability to teach it to others. For some of them,
you would have thought that I was asking them to put a man
on the moon. The first question was, ‘‘What does working
knowledge mean?’’ And I said, ‘‘It’s to be introduced to
the POS perspective, have participated in at least one exer-
cise, and be able to explain what POS is to others.’’
Then I said, ‘‘Tell me what you need to accomplish the
challenge. I’m going to leave the room, and I’ll come back
in a couple of hours. Work with Kim. Tell me what you need to
accomplish this.’’

And so I left the room. I came back a couple of hours later,
and they said, ‘‘Okay, Jim, we’re willing to take on the
challenge, but here are four things we need from you.
One, we need you to help get us support from our managers.’’
I said, ‘‘That’s done.’’ ‘‘Two, would you mind making a video

104 K. Cameron, E. Plews

that would introduce POS so that people know it’s important
to you?’’ I said, ‘‘Perfect.’’ ‘‘Three, we want to form our own
on-line community to share best practices and keep our group
together.’’ I said, ‘‘Done.’’ ‘‘Four, we’d like to get back
together so we can see this as an ongoing effort, not just
a one-time change effort.’’ And I said, ‘‘Fine. I’ll agree to
that.’’ Within 60 days they had accomplished not 90 percent,
but about 93 percent. Our employee opinion scores went up
in 9 out of 10 categories. The team is still working together.
They did another session for everybody that fall. They were
able to introduce more POS concepts — which in this case was
the competing values framework — and it was even more
well-received than the initial introduction to POS. The team
introduced that material even faster into our organization.
They have now created their own self-sustaining effort in
continuing to bring the principles of POS into our organiza-
tion. It’s been fabulous to see.

SO, HOW EXACTLY DO YOU FIND THESE
POSITIVE DEVIANTS IN PRERS?

We asked our senior leaders to select the folks in their areas
that they are happy to be around, that are not always looking
at the downside but look at the positive side, that positively
energize others. Did we get all 26 absolutely right? Nope.
There were a couple, in hindsight, that we might not have
asked. But the group became self-policing. After the first
year they said, ‘‘Jim, we think it’s time for a couple of the
folks to retire from the POS change team, and we want to
bring in some new ones.’’ I said, ‘‘Okay, fine. Why don’t we
put these folks on emeritus status so they’ll continue to feel a
part of the process, but you don’t have to have them actively
engaged. You can get some new, fresh ideas.’’ Indeed, that’s
just what we did. We agreed that we’d have about a third of
the group roll off every year and about a third would come on,
so every three years the whole team would have turned over
in terms of positive change agents. The advantage is that
leaders are seeing these folks, early in their careers, making
a difference in the whole company. They were getting a fair
bit of attention from their managers, which is not a bad thing.

DID EVERYONE GET ON BOARD? DID YOU GET
100 PERCENT AGREEMENT TO ADOPT A POS
PERSPECTIVE?

My own experience is about 50 to 60 percent of the people, if
you’re lucky, will get it pretty much out of the box. About 20
to 30 percent of the folks kind of sit on the sideline and say,
‘‘Is this just Jim’s management thing du jour?’’ About ten
percent of the people will positively reject everything that

I talk about. They will just say, ‘‘It doesn’t make any sense.
Sorry, it’s not working for me.’’ And that’s okay. I don’t argue
with them. They will be out of alignment with where we’re
trying to drive the organization, and they should go to a place
where they will be in alignment. I quickly encourage them to
go there. I’ve done a lot of recruiting of both senior and
middle level executives into our company in the last 18
months, and people want to join a positively oriented com-
pany, even if you’re asking them to accept the same or less
pay. The younger the person is, the more true it is.

SO, HOW HAVE YOU APPLIED POS IN YOUR
FAMILY AND HOME LIFE?

I have two fabulous daughters, and my youngest daughter
came home a couple of years ago with, well, let’s just say her
report card was mixed. She was doing very well in some
subjects but not so well in others. I happened to be on a
business trip when the report card came in. My wife had said,
‘‘Wait until your father comes home. He’s going to talk to you
about this.’’ My youngest daughter’s name is Mary Rose. When
I came home, I said, ‘‘Mary Rose, I got your report card,’’ and
her head kind of sagged. I said, ‘‘I see you got an A in English.’’
Her head picked back up, and she said, ‘‘Yea, I did.’’ I said,
‘‘Well, let’s talk about it.’’ And she said, ‘‘What do you mean,
talk about it?’’ And I said, ‘‘Well, I’d like to talk about your A.
Did you like your teacher?’’ She said, ‘‘Yea, I liked my
teacher.’’ ‘‘Did you do your homework on time?’’ ‘‘Yes, I
did my homework.’’ ‘‘Did you participate in class?’’ ‘‘Yes, I
participated in class.’’ ‘‘If you didn’t understand something,
did you ask a question?’’ ‘‘Yea, I did all those things, dad.’’ I
said, ‘‘Well, Mary Rose, look at the results you got. You got an
A. You know how to be an A student.’’

Then I said, ‘‘I do want to talk about your math score.’’ Her
head goes back down. ‘‘That grade wasn’t very good.’’ And
she said, ‘‘Well, what do you want to talk about?’’ I said, ‘‘Did
you like your teacher?’’ ‘‘No, I thought he was a jerk.’’ ‘‘Did
you pass in your homework?’’ ‘‘Not always.’’ ‘‘Did you parti-
cipate in class?’’ ‘‘No, I really didn’t understand it all.’’ ‘‘Did
you ask questions when you didn’t understand?’’ ‘‘No, I was
too afraid to.’’ I said, ‘‘Well Mary, you know those things you
were doing for English? Let’s just try those four or five basic
things in math.’’ I said, ‘‘Now, you and I are going to sit down
every Friday, and we’re going to review how you’re doing. I’m
not asking you to like your teacher, but I’m asking you to
respect him. You’ve got to do your homework on time. You got
to participate. If you don’t understand the material, you have
to ask the question to get help. All the things you’re doing in
English, I want you to try them in math. Will you try that with
me?’’ She said, ‘‘Yea, okay I’ll give it a try.’’ Six months later
you know where her math score was? A.

Kim Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of Michigan
Ross School of Business and a professor of high education. He is a co-founder of the Center for Positive
Organizational Scholarship and associate dean for executive education at the Ross School of Business. In more
than 120 articles and 14 books, his research has focused on organizational downsizing, organizational effective-
ness, corporate quality culture and organizational virtuousness and the development of leadership excellence. He
received his Ph.D. from Yale University (Ross School of Business, 701 Tappan St., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
MI 48104, USA. Tel.: +1 734 615 5247; email: cameronk@umich.edu).

mailto:cameronk@umich.edu

Positive leadership in action 105

Emily Plews is pursuing her Ph.D. in sustainable enterprise management at the University of Oregon. Her research
interests in organization change sparked while pursuing a dual M.B.A. and Master’s of environmental science at the
University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise and while working with the Center for
Positive Organizational Scholarship (Lundquist School of Business, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA. Tel.: +1
614 563 4205; email: eplews@uoregon.edu).

mailto:eplews@uoregon.edu

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