You Don’t Argue People Into Change. You Win Them Into It.

When the status quo is the norm, change is perceived as a crime.

Not openly. Nobody stands up and accuses anyone. It sits deeper than that, hidden in people’s minds. What you hear instead are lines that sound like reasons:

We don’t do this here.

We are different.

The MD will reject it.

This is too risky.

We tried this, and it didn’t work.

Each one, on its own, sounds sensible. Together, they describe an organisation where the existing way of doing things has stopped being one option among many. It has become the definition of normal. Anything that departs from it is not judged on its merits. It is judged as a breach.

In such organisations, change becomes difficult.

Why argument rarely works

The instinct is to answer the objections. Build a stronger business case. Bring the evidence. Show what other councils have done. Explain, patiently, why this time is different.

Sometimes that helps. More often it does not, because the objections were never really about the evidence. They are about belonging. Where the status quo is the norm, agreeing with change means stepping outside the group. Very few people will do that on the strength of a slide.

So the argument is won in the meeting and lost in the corridor.

Change champions

As leaders and change managers, we need change champions. People who positively support change initiatives, and who constructively work to move things forward.

Not cheerleaders. Not people who agree with everything. Champions are people who have decided the change is worth doing, and who are willing to be seen supporting it, in front of the same colleagues who are saying “we don’t do this here.”

Few organisations have many of them at the start. The real question is how to make more.

Converting by winning

One of the ways to convert more people within such organisations is by winning.

Take on small wins. Demonstrate that you are winning with the small group.

People like to associate with winning. So, over time, they convert. They become change champions themselves, and join you to be part of the winning team.

This is not a trick. It is how people have always decided whom to follow. A plan asks people to imagine a future. A win shows them one. An argument can be dismissed as theory. A result, sitting in front of people they work with every day, is much harder to dismiss.

A familiar example

Consider a council moving from paper-based invoice approvals to approvals inside its finance system.

The objections arrive on cue. Our managers won’t approve on a screen. Our directorates all work differently. We tried electronic approvals years ago and gave up. The CEO won’t want the disruption before the end of the financial year.

Instead of arguing the case across the whole organisation, the project starts with one team of five in one directorate. Eight weeks. A narrow scope.

Within those eight weeks, invoices that used to take three weeks to approve are approved in days. Suppliers stop chasing. The team’s coordinator no longer spends Friday afternoons walking paper between offices.

Nobody announces this at a steering committee. It travels the way news actually travels in an organisation. A coordinator in the next directorate asks why her invoices are slower. Her manager asks to join. Then another directorate asks.

By the time the full rollout is proposed, “we are different” has gone quiet. Not because anyone won the debate, but because people they know and trust are already doing it.

The business case did not change. What changed was that the change had stopped being a proposal and become something people could see working, and wanted to be part of.

Why small, and why first

The win has to be small, and it has to come first.

Small, because a small win is achievable, quick and survivable. If it stumbles, the organisation loses little, and the lessons are cheap.

First, because a large opening move invites every objection on the list at once. It is “too risky” before it starts. And if it falters, it hands the status quo its favourite line: we tried this, and it didn’t work.

A small early win does the opposite. It gives the first champions something to point to, in language their colleagues already understand.

Leverage and momentum

Winning gives you the leverage, and the ability to develop the momentum you need, to make a difference.

Leverage, because every win shifts the burden of proof. Before the win, the change had to justify itself. After it, the old way has to explain why it is slower.

Momentum, because every person who converts brings others with them. The champions start doing the persuading that no business case could do, and they do it from inside the group rather than from outside it.

The questions that remain

Here are some questions to ponder.

Which of those five lines did you last hear in your organisation, and did anyone ask what it was really protecting?

Where is the smallest group in your organisation that could win something visible in the next eight weeks?

And are you trying to convince people to join the change, or giving them something worth joining?