Choosing Courage by Jim Detert

Author:Jim Detert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Managing the Message

Melinda, a senior product manager at a major consumer goods company, was in a tough spot. Based on new science, the R&D team had recently reclassified a key ingredient in a major product to its lowest rating, which essentially meant “don’t use.” Following this, R&D had spent millions of dollars over the past six months searching—to no avail—for an alternative ingredient that would be safer but equally as effective. Melinda was pressed for time. Since the company’s annual product safety report was due in a month and would be shared with the public, she had to recommend a plan to the senior team.

As Melinda saw it, she had three options: (1) recommend sticking with the existing product for now, even though it still contained an undesirable (but legal) chemical, (2) recommend switching to the new product, knowing that it was inferior but unquestionably safer, or (3) recommend removing the old product from the market until R&D came up with a safer alternative that also worked well.

None of these options was ideal. Sticking with the old product seemed to violate the company’s commitment to safe products. Using the new but inferior product could anger customers and lead some to stop using the company’s products. Taking the product completely off the market until a better alternative was found meant forgoing about 5 percent of total company revenue during that period.

After days of agonizing about the choice, Melinda and her team settled on recommending the second option—replacing the existing product with the safer but less effective alternative. She knew that it was risky: evidence from prior moves to safer alternatives was mixed. In some cases, sales had stayed the same or gone up; in others, sales had definitely gone down initially. Given this history, Melinda had to figure out how to frame her recommendation to the CEO and top management team. How could she convince the array of people on that team that this was the best (or least bad) way to live the company’s values and also minimize financial downside?

___________

Melinda has decided what to recommend, but she’s still got a lot of choices about how to make her recommendation. Whom, if anyone, should she invite to join her in making the recommendation? What data will she use, and in what kind of presentation format? What kind of message framing will make her recommendation most compelling to the executives assembled? Should she lead with the cultural values that support her recommendations or focus on the short- and long-term financial implications? Should she describe her recommendation as an opportunity to be pursued or a threat to be dealt with? Can she help the executives see this as somehow advancing their agenda rather than just being a major problem?

Like Melinda, you have a host of options when you need to persuade others. You can consider inviting others to help you make your case, use the right data the right way, and utilize various framing strategies that my colleagues who study “issue selling,” “voice,” and “persuasion” have found to increase effectiveness.

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