Buy In ... Sell Out

Do you have any phrases that when you hear them make your flesh creep or start to ring warning bells?

Just about any sentence that contains the words “get buy-in” will do that for me. “Getting Buy-In” is a concept that I hate – I hate hearing it, I hate talking like that and I hate thinking like that.

I hate hearing it because it automatically smacks of insincerity and manipulation to me. Like what we’re wanting to do isn’t quite palatable on its own so we have to spice up the dish somehow, like using curry to disguise meat that’s off.

I hate talking like that because it feels like I’ve gone over to the other side, the dark side where I’m not relating to others as whole people but more as commodities that can actually be bought and sold. Hmmm, let’s see; exactly how much buy-in can I get?; as if I can measure how many grams of co-operation I can buy (extract) from another’s heart, mind and soul.

I hate thinking like that because, frankly, it’s a cop-out. It’s too easy to assume that I can buy compliance at some level, rather than take my proposal to the people who will have to execute it anyway and genuinely, respectfully ask them what they think. It’s easier in the short term to go for compliance rather than develop co-operation or even collaboration.

Do you think that the people you are trying to get buy-in from don’t know? At some level they do – at some level they know that a very calculated exchange is taking place. And they are weighing that up constantly – not just at the moment when they have given you ‘buy-in’, which most people wrongly assume is forever and unchanging.

That’s the essence of my objection to ‘buy-in’ thinking – it’s transactional rather than relational and don’t be surprised if at some point the people you thought you had eternal ‘buy-in’ from suddenly decide: “Right, well, I’ve bought enough of that! It’s time to sell out.”

And I think they have every right.