“We need to get everyone to buy in.”
It’s a familiar phrase in organisations introducing a new strategy, innovation programme or initiative.
And it sounds perfectly reasonable. After all, if people don’t support the change, how will it ever happen or deliver results?
But this thinking has a problem.
We often mistake agreement with a decision for commitment to making it happen.
And the consequences for results can be significant.
The illusion of progress
Consider a familiar scenario.
A leadership team develops a strategy, agrees on the priorities and communicates the direction.
Stakeholders are consulted. Questions are answered. People express their support.
Everyone appears to be on board.
Yet weeks later, little has changed. Competing priorities take over, familiar behaviours return, momentum fades, and the intended results don’t materialise.
The conventional response is to conclude that we need more buy-in. More communication, more engagement or a more compelling case for change.
But what if the problem isn’t the amount of buy-in or the results it creates?
What if the problem is what we think buy-in actually means for getting results?
People can understand a decision without agreeing with it. They can agree with it without feeling committed. And they can be committed without having the authority, capability, or resources to act.
These distinctions matter.
Agreement is a judgement about an idea. Commitment is willingness to act on it. Ownership means taking responsibility for making it work.
Treating these as interchangeable can create a dangerous illusion of progress and results.
Why influence matters more than agreement
Research offers an important clue.
In their Harvard Business Review article, The Network Secrets of Great Change Agents, Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro examined 68 change initiatives in the UK’s National Health Service.
They found that successful change agents depended not simply on formal authority, but on their relationships and positions within organisational networks.
This makes sense.
Organisations aren’t machines in which decisions automatically translate into action. They’re social systems, shaped by relationships, established behaviours, competing interests and informal influence.
A decision made at the top may establish direction, but it doesn’t necessarily create the conditions for results.
I was reminded of this in a story we included in Innovation in Action.
At Brackenridge, a New Zealand social support organisation, introducing design thinking meant challenging an established approach: identify problems and quickly implement solutions.
Not everyone was convinced.
Some leaders were curious. Others were sceptical.
As Nick Scott, General Manager of Service Delivery, explained, involving a respected operational leader helped the approach gain credibility.
“That sense of partnership gave others permission to join in.”
But the deeper insight came when leaders recognised they couldn’t develop person-directed services while still leading through command and control.
They needed to change how they worked, not simply what they were trying to achieve.
That’s an important distinction.
The way we implement change can either reinforce or undermine the very change we’re trying to create.
From securing buy-in to creating ownership
I recently heard Helen Bevan on Michael Bungay Stanier’s podcast discussing health transformation suggest that belonging sits at the heart of successful change.
It’s a compelling proposition.
People want to feel connected, valued and part of something meaningful.
But belonging alone isn’t enough. A team can feel a strong sense of belonging and still remain committed to the status quo rather than change.
People also need agency: the ability to influence what happens, exercise judgement and make a meaningful contribution.
This creates a genuine dilemma for leaders.
They need to provide direction, make decisions and maintain accountability. Yet successful implementation often depends on the knowledge, initiative and commitment needed to deliver the change.
The answer isn’t to involve everyone in everything. That can create confusion, slow progress and delay results.
Instead, leaders need to be deliberate about what they decide, what they leave open to influence, and what people need to make the change work.
For example, introducing a new system may be non-negotiable. But how it fits into everyday work, how people transition to it and what support they need may be best shaped by those who will use it.
The distinction is between asking people to accept a solution and giving them meaningful influence over how it delivers results.
Implementation is part of innovation because it’s where value is created.
This is why I’ve become increasingly interested in the human and organisational realities of implementation.
We spend considerable time learning how to discover problems, generate ideas and test solutions.
Yet some of the hardest work comes afterwards.
Aligning priorities. Securing resources. Navigating competing interests. Changing behaviours. Helping people adopt new ways of working.
These aren’t simply execution details.
They’re part of the innovation challenge itself because they determine whether ideas become results.
That’s why DUCTRI includes Resourcing and Implementing explicitly alongside Discovering, Understanding, Creating, and Testing.
Because a promising idea isn’t yet an innovation, and it delivers no value until it is implemented.
Innovation happens when a solution is implemented and creates value in practice.
And that requires more than agreement to deliver results.
A better question for leaders
The next time you’re leading an innovation or change initiative, don’t just ask whether you’ve secured buy-in.
Ask something more useful:
Who needs to make this change happen, what can they meaningfully influence, and what’s preventing them from delivering results?
The answers may show that the problem isn’t resistance or a lack of enthusiasm.
It might be competing priorities, insufficient resources, limited influence, poorly designed processes or a solution that needs further work.
These are problems leaders can address to improve the outcome.
Because the real test of change isn’t what people agree to in the meeting, but whether it leads to results afterwards.
It’s what they’re willing and able to do afterwards.
P.S. If you’re working to turn good ideas into meaningful change, that’s why Christian Walsh and I wrote Innovation in Action. It provides practical tools, real-world examples and supporting video resources to help you navigate the innovation journey, from understanding problems to implementing solutions.