Rolling out a new process often meets resistance, yet early support can turn skeptics into champions. This article compiles expert strategies for winning buy-in before, during, and after implementation. Learn eighteen practical techniques to build momentum and overcome pushback when introducing organizational change.
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- Cut Unused Forms to Earn Trust
- Solve One Skeptic’s Bottleneck First
- Teach Workflows Before You Publish Guides
- Let Doubters Hunt Flaws
- Let Naysayers Shape Revisions
- Map Existing Work With Users
- Recruit Respected Department Champions
- Put Opponents on the Test Line
- Phase In Tiny Changes
- Listen Before You Offer Solutions
- Enlist Cynics as Architects
- Fix the Loudest Critic’s Pain Point
- Showcase Quick Wins From Open Peers
- Co-Create the New System With Resistors
- Give Trial Owners Raw Data
- Invite Input Through a Trial
- Lead With Firm Commitment
- Match Details to Each Personality
Cut Unused Forms to Earn Trust
Ask them what happened last time. Most resistance to a new process isn’t resistance to change per se; it’s memory. Somebody rolled out a system three years ago, it created work, nobody maintained it, and it quietly died. The person pushing back is telling you they’ve seen this movie.
I do certification work, so I’m frequently the second or third consultant a company has hired for this. When I meet skepticism, I ask directly what the previous attempt looked like and why it stopped. The answers are consistent: things like forms nobody could fill out at the pace of the actual work, or a system that only made sense to whoever built it. That’s useful information, and it’s free. It also changes the conversation because I’m now asking them to diagnose a failure rather than asking them to trust me.
The action that truly shifted sentiment on one manufacturing floor was cutting something. Before adding anything, I removed two forms that were being completed and never read by anyone. It took an afternoon to confirm nobody used the data. That bought more goodwill than any explanation of the standard would have because it demonstrated I was there to make the process work rather than to add layers to it.
It boosted adoption because the people who’d been burned before had evidence this round was different. You don’t argue someone out of skepticism that was earned. You give them a reason to update.
Puneet Gupta, Founder, MG Environmental Consulting
Solve One Skeptic’s Bottleneck First
I pick the person least convinced that a new process will work and use their specific workflow bottleneck as the first test case. When we integrated NikaAI as the interface layer for the app, one engineer was skeptical it would produce anything users actually wanted. His workflow involved writing bridge logic manually every time we added a new chain. I made that the first surface NikaAI automated. He saw the change ship in three days. The logic worked. His objection dissolved.
Skeptics do not convert through roadmap decks. They convert through working code that solves their problem first. If you make the skeptic’s pain point the proving ground, two things happen: the person most resistant becomes the validator, and the rest of the team watches someone who argued against the change use it without being asked. That is adoption.
The mistake most teams make is rolling out a process to everyone at once and hoping momentum builds. That produces surface-level compliance and silent resistance. Choose one workflow bottleneck owned by one skeptic. Ship the solution to that bottleneck fast. Let the result speak. The sentiment shift happens when the person who said it would not work starts using it because it made their day easier.
With a three-person team, every process change has to tie to a user-facing outcome or it does not survive contact with reality. That constraint forces clarity. If the skeptic cannot see the output improvement in days, the process was probably invented to make someone feel organized rather than to ship faster.
Daniel Brinzan, Founder, Nika Finance
Teach Workflows Before You Publish Guides
At a digital agency, many recurring workflows — from client reporting to handoffs and approvals — need to be standardized so that the quality of work does not depend on who happens to perform the task. I quickly learned, however, that writing a good procedure is not the same as getting people to adopt it: if you simply publish a document and ask employees to read it, they often continue working the old way, leaving the new process on paper rather than in everyday practice.
I built a four-step rollout for new procedures: testing the procedure with employees, a hands-on session, feedback, and only then independent use of the documentation. The hands-on session made the biggest difference, but we did not use it to present the document — we taught the actual workflow behind it. For example, when a procedure covered a master file used for client reporting, we walked employees through how to maintain that file in real work, discussed edge cases, and answered questions; only at the end did we point them to the written procedure for the full details.
That meant employees did not have to learn a new way of working by decoding a document on their own: by the time they used the procedure independently, it described a workflow they already understood and had practiced. My takeaway was that you cannot drive process adoption by publishing documentation alone — people need to understand and experience the new way of working first, while the document should reinforce it afterward.
Elizaveta Smolenkova, Founder, Knowledge Management Consultant, Opis
Let Doubters Hunt Flaws
Skeptics don’t resist the process; they resist doing extra work for a benefit they can’t see yet. So instead of announcing a new process company-wide, we run it with the one team most likely to feel the pain of the old way first, then let their result be the pitch, not a memo from me.
The action that actually shifted sentiment: I stopped presenting the new process as decided and started asking the skeptical team to break it before we rolled it out further. Handing someone the job of finding flaws does more for buy-in than convincing them it’s flawless, because now it’s partly theirs.
By the time it reaches the rest of the team, it’s not “leadership’s new process,” it’s “the thing that worked for the team next to you.” That’s a much easier sell than a top-down announcement.
Raj Jagani, CEO, Tibicle LLP
Let Naysayers Shape Revisions
When rolling out a new process, I’ve found that the best way to win over skeptics is to involve them early rather than trying to convince them after the decision has been made. People are much more likely to support a change when they feel their experience has shaped it.
One action that made a noticeable difference was running a small pilot with a few team members who were initially skeptical. I asked them to test the process, identify what wasn’t working, and suggest improvements. We then made visible changes based on their feedback before rolling it out more broadly.
That shifted the conversation from, “Management is forcing a new process on us,” to “We helped build this process.” The key lesson for me was that early ownership creates stronger adoption than top-down instructions. Once skeptics saw their feedback being implemented and the process making their work easier, they naturally became some of its strongest advocates.
James Allsopp, CEO, James Allsopp
Map Existing Work With Users
The action that made the biggest difference was sitting down with the people who would use the new process and mapping out how they were already doing the work.
The sceptics often knew exactly where the problems were. Once we gave them a chance to show us what worked, what slowed them down and what they did differently from the written procedure, the conversation changed. They could see that we were not there to replace everything with a process designed in isolation.
We used their input to shape the new approach and then showed them where their feedback had been included. That was when it stopped feeling like something being imposed on the team. People were much more willing to use the process because they had helped make it practical.
Heather Bienefelt, Director, ICS Consulting
Recruit Respected Department Champions
One technique I use in large rollouts is asking each executive sponsor to nominate a respected champion from their department to join the project team. These champions are involved early in planning, design, testing, and key decisions, giving them a real voice in shaping the change rather than simply asking them to support it after the fact. This helps surface pain points early, but it also creates trusted advocates within each department. People with influence will shape how their teams perceive a change, so I’ve found it is much more effective to involve that influence early and give it a constructive role. When employees see their concerns reflected in the final solution and hear about the change from someone they trust, skepticism starts to turn into ownership, and adoption is much more likely to stick.
Nikita Patil Brennan, Senior Project Manager
Put Opponents on the Test Line
In our factory, when we introduced a new quality control system, half of those involved thought it was just a waste of time. I decided not to train everyone but asked the two biggest opponents to work on the pilot line. For me, it was the right thing to do. After the results were registered in their names, their performance was excellent. So there was no more problem with getting others to use the new system; nobody regarded it as a burden, and everybody started to use it instead of fighting against it. This example shows that company announcements do not work all the time. What you need to do is ask those who oppose your ideas to run the process or to do it yourself.
Delbert Baron Lee, President, Manufacturing Leader, Soap & Cleaning Product Expert, Business Growth Strategist, Wynbert Soapmasters Inc
Phase In Tiny Changes
What became a game changer for us was treating change as a series of non-intimidating small switches that collectively created big change faster before anyone had time to feel triggered, rather than the standard first-big-roll-out or the usual change champions exercises. When we launched a new outreach process that would eventually revolutionize how the whole company-wide team triggers new outreach campaigns, I personally averted the instinct to immediately introduce a new operation playbook for everyone to work from. Now, everyone is guided through transitioning into the change via a week-long sequence of micro-changes, so small that nobody had any excuse to say it threw them off their flow.
Along with being sure that we don’t swap out the whole dashboard and the way tasks are designed, our first change made to our outreach operation was only replacing one old reporting module. The only ask for everyone each week is to check out one newly created reporting snapshot. After the first two weeks, we’ve received nothing but positive feedback surrounding this specific change because now people realized they can more easily keep track of their own outreach performance thanks to this small change, and it actually trimmed down the time they spend on delivering weekly team performance updates.
Because we now have positive feedback to use as social proof rather than having to mandate a new change for everyone to follow, the next thing we added was a newly created outreach campaign quality checklist. We only use it for one team, however, and don’t require others to follow it as well. Our rationale for carefully introducing this new checklist is to observe how it positively impacts the sample team that we implemented it on, to become an advocacy catalyst for other teams currently skeptical about adopting the change. Doing so allowed us to show the change skeptics still on the fence that others are not just improving, but actually recording seven fewer errors per month on average in campaign QA than before, triggering a change in attitude from “another nuisance change” to, “How can our team get their own quality checklists too?”
The smaller and smaller we go, the shorter we make the mental latency required of the teams on each step of our transition journey, the quicker we dismantle what’s triggered the initial negative response.
Scott Davis, Founder & CEO, Outreacher.io
Listen Before You Offer Solutions
Most times, it really just comes down to sitting with them and letting them vent about their apprehensions about the rollout. And through that, I always learn that they’re not so resistant to the new process or tool, but they’re fearing that it won’t work for them or fit into their current workflow easily. Or that it’s going to create more work and redundancy, which is a fair concern.
And you can go into the conversation with case studies and walkthroughs, but that doesn’t do much to abate their concerns because they won’t feel heard. They’ll feel like you’re enforcing something upon them as opposed to taking their thoughts into consideration.
So let them bring up every point, and then you can chime in about how you’re addressing it or how you’ve already got a solution in place. They need to know that your process actually accounts for their challenges and that you want to make things easier for them.
Mario Hupfeld, CTO and Co-Founder, NEMIS Technologies
Enlist Cynics as Architects
Hardly anybody is skeptical. They are typically the most helpful persons in the group. They’ll identify the problem in a process before your customers do. I’ve tried that with engineering teams so many times at JHMG that already had “the next big fix” hovering over their heads. Send a new policy to an already weary staff and you’ll have individuals who simply do the job, but not really care.
There is one move that really does alter the perception of people about it. Involve the most cynical, the most trusted person on the team as early as possible as a real player. Don’t wait until it’s complete to give it to them. Involve them from the beginning in building it. No one opposes a plan that they have helped to shape.
There is no “on board” and “resistant” category in my sorting of people; nothing more. I recruit and manage from where someone can go, rather than where they’re coming from. Today the strongest pushers are tomorrow’s trailblazers.
It is always tested with our own staff before being implemented on a company-wide basis. I present it to the one person who will likely oppose it first. So if they can find a fault, that’s an issue that was bound to come up eventually. A single player would be better at catching it once it’s off the ground and running live than the entire team.
Jason Long, Founder & CEO, SupportMy.Website
Fix the Loudest Critic’s Pain Point
I stopped trying to win the room and started with the person most likely to kill the rollout. At the edtech company I co-founded, the one who complained loudest about a new reporting process turned out to be right about a specific thing it broke for their workflow. So I fixed that part before we launched it to anyone else.
That person became the one who explained it to the team.
They didn’t present it as management’s idea. They presented it as something they’d pushed back on and improved, which is a completely different pitch to a skeptical team. Nobody was waiting for a reason to resist it because the most credible voice in the room had already said it worked.
The process ran untouched for over a year. In my experience, that’s the test. Adoption that needs constant defending isn’t adoption; it’s compliance on a countdown.
Will Yang, Head of Growth, Chronicle Technologies
Showcase Quick Wins From Open Peers
The mistake most people make is trying to convert the most resistant people first. That’s where you spend the most energy and get the least return. The better move is to find the people who are already curious or open, get them a quick win, and let that do the work for you.
When we rolled out changes internally, the action that made the biggest difference was making early adopters visible. When someone on the team was getting genuine value from a new process and could talk about it in their own words, that shifted sentiment faster than any top-down communication could. People trust their peers more than they trust a rollout plan, and once a few credible voices inside the team were saying it was working, the skeptics came around on their own without needing to be convinced.
Jordan Vickery, Co-Founder, Vinyl
Co-Create the New System With Resistors
The skeptics are the preview, they’re not the problem.
In our company, when we adopt a new process, I identify which employee is most likely to resist changes. I ask them to join us in the early development of the new process. My goal is not to persuade them, but rather to understand their reason for their resistance. I found that 90% of the time, their resistance points me to something that is factually valid. The lesson I’ve had to learn while expanding my practice from a one-person operation to over 70 staff members is that it takes a group of people who believe in and trust the system for a new process to be accepted.
An excellent example of this is when I implemented a new communication system to track updates to clients for our firm. Attorneys, intake coordinators and case managers all had to change the way they routinely tracked updates to their clients. Instead of implementing the new process based on my directive from a superior level, I involved the team in the process of building the new communication structure. I had everyone tell me where the old communication structure failed and what their actual needs were to make it work better. The information I received from the team members was incorporated into the final communication process. Each of them had ownership over the new process because they were involved in its development. They were not simply using the process created by someone else. They were building and running their own process. The only successful adoption of a new process is one where the adopters created the process themselves.
Stacy Kemp Ferrari, Florida Personal Injury Attorney, Kemp Law Group
Give Trial Owners Raw Data
The trick to getting off on the right foot is identifying the person who is the last one to speak when the team is being reviewed. There is always one such person in any team — although it is usually not the supervisor or boss. Once identified, it is enough to communicate with that person on a one-to-one basis, where they can point out as many flaws in the new system as possible before the meeting. Once objections have been raised and dealt with, it is unlikely that there will be any new objections during the meeting. The constraints imposed by such a person are not objections to the new method per se, but rather an impediment to the person being told what to do without being asked what they know about this topic.
One of the most important actions in that regard is giving the group responsible for the pilot ownership of the process during its implementation stage. Giving them access to the raw data, instead of simply informing them about the results, transforms them from passive actors to active participants in the process. Being involved in the process being implemented, their attitude toward its implementation is going to change dramatically.
Dave Wright, Founder and CEO, Mind Lab Pro
Invite Input Through a Trial
No process is ever perfect, and you have to address that right in the beginning so people don’t feel like this is the be-all and end-all. If you sound like you’re enforcing something without first inviting your team to test it out and form their own opinions, obviously that’s not going to play out well.
So I acknowledge that this is a new step for all of us, and we’re gathering as much feedback about the process as we can in order to decide if this is going to be something long-term or not. But for that feedback, I’m going to need everyone’s support in working with the process. And then simultaneously, I create a running document where everyone on the team can share their feedback or any hiccups they’ve encountered.
Knowing that they have a say and that their feedback is going to shape the next steps is what breaks the barrier down. And then we can all work together and decide if this process is even a good fit or not.
Paul Carlson, CPA & Managing Partner, Law Firm Velocity
Lead With Firm Commitment
We gained early support from critics by realizing that for any change to happen, leaders must first believe in the process.
This meant analyzing the market to see what changes would make our product stand out and be different enough for customers to notice and, more importantly, be willing to pay for. For instance, we needed to make our product more appealing to women. So we stopped using scary-looking boxes and opted for something more cheerful and brighter.
We had to take a stand as leaders, confident in the upcoming changes and making it clear to everyone that there was no turning back. We were so certain that the changes we wanted to make — introducing a new packaging process — would make our product more desirable to our target audience that we convinced others of that as well.
The key lesson we learned is that skeptics will only buy into a change when they see that leadership is already 100% committed to making it work.
Hien Nguyen, Co-Founder, Happy Way
Match Details to Each Personality
Winning over skeptics starts with understanding people instead of just pushing decisions on them. “Surrounded By Idiots” by Thomas Erikson gave me a rulebook I’ve stuck by since 2021: Resistance is almost always an information gap. It’s all about breaking people down into personality colors — Red, Yellow, Blue, or Green — and once you know someone’s color, you know exactly how to bring them on board!
Skeptics are almost always your “blues!” They’re analytical, detail-driven, and they don’t move until they understand the full picture. They want to know why the change is happening, what the process looks like, and what the timeline is before they’ll trust it.
What actually changed things for us was involving people before we called it a decision. With my admin team, instead of rolling out an order, we get on a call with 2–3 proposed changes and ask for their honest reaction. Half the time we walk away with a better version of the plan than the one we started with!
The other half is speaking to people in their own language. For instance, with the more emotional, relationship-driven folks (aka, Yellows), I lead with how the change affects the team and the dynamic. With the Blues, I lead with the ten steps, the SOP, and exactly what happens Week 0–Week 4, and that combination is what actually makes adoption stick.
Astha Verma, CEO & Founder, WrittenlyHub
