Vision and Values 63Selling
Selling is telling plus benefits. Selling is persuasion, you want
people to ‘buy into’ the vision. You sell them the benefits
and try to link them with what they value.
As a general management style selling works quite well,
but what do you do if people do not buy? Trouble appears
when people suspect that the suggested changes will happen
whether they buy into them or not, so the whole exercise
may look like a sham. Agreement will be more compliant
than communal, based on the presupposition that the job of
management is to tell people what to do because manage-
ment knows best. Questionable assumptions.
Selling never carries everyone, but it usually convinces
more than telling.
Consulting
Consulting shapes the vision by asking people what they
think. It is a flexible means with less control and more trust.
It usually involves a cascade approach, using small discussion
teams of up to a dozen people. Starting at the top, each of
the team members takes the process a step downwards until
everyone has had a say. Then all the views are taken back to
the top.
How far the vision has been set in concrete before the
process starts rolling is important and whether the process
actually expands or builds on the vision depends on how re-
ceptive the top management will be. The ‘Chinese whispers’
effect can distort the message – each person changes the
message just as little, but by the time it reaches the top again,
it can be drastically different from the original version. Also,
no one wants to be the bearer of bad news, so the news that
reaches the top may be biased in favour of what the board
wants to hear.
Consulting still assumes that the vision is created from the
top down, but here it trickles down, as opposed to being
pushed down in the telling approach and sold down in the
selling method.