Tag Archives: economic benefits

Incremental Benefits Delivery: The Key to Sustaining Commitment to Strategy

Greg Githens offers four guiding ideas for managing benefits in strategic initiatives: 1) Different stakeholders have different ideas of and expectations for program benefits, 2) there are two types of benefits:economic and emotive, 3) people prefer their benefits early, and 4) partition benefits into compact, incremental releases. A skillful strategic initiative leader will develop an operating rhythm that delivers incremental benefits and sustains commitment for the strategic initiative. Continue reading

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Contrast the Pain and the Gain: How to Use Benefits to Sell and Motivate

You can improve your benefits propositions and get more stakeholder commitment by contrasting the pain and the gain. Three example benefits propositions are provided. Also, the value of asking, “Who has the pain?” and “Besides yourself, who has the pain?” Continue reading

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Three Templates: Strategic Initiative Benefit Propositions (Part 2)

How to write benefits propositions by stating “Because of ___” and “you will___.” Greg Githens calls the three templates direct mail, brag, and experiences. He provides an interesting graphic that displays the tradeoffs of benefits where the claims (brag) style is more objective and economic and the experience style develops more profound commitment to the strategic initiative. Continue reading

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Strategic Initiative Benefit Propositions (Part 1): Identifying the Duties of Internal Stakeholders

Strategic initiatives deliver benefits to important stakeholders. This article explains how to identify benefits sought by internal stakeholders (CFO, CIO, and Treasury Managers as examples). Greg Githens explains that you should look at the individual’s job duties with respect to organizational performance and success. Understanding their duties can help the strategic initiative leader craft messages that increase acceptance for the vision and for the strategy. Continue reading

Posted in Incremental Benefits Delivery, Program & Portfolio Management, Strategy Coaching and Facilitation, Useful Practices & Management Tools | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

How to Secure Buy In for Your Strategic Initiative

Greg Githens explains that commitment – or “buy in” – means people accept and support a specific concept or course of action. He explains how to advocate benefits to stakeholders. Benefits are of two types: emotive (soft) and economic. The secret sauce is to establish the emotive benefits first, which serves to motivate stakeholders and buys time for acquiring economic benefits. Continue reading

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