Garrison Growth works with CEOs, executive teams, and organizational leaders across industries to improve leadership, organizational performance, and employee buy-in. Co-Founder Dave Garrison is also the author of The Buy-In Advantage, which explores practical strategies leaders can use to improve productivity, retention, collaboration, and organizational results. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Garrison Growth Co-Founder Dave Garrison to learn more.
Dave Garrison’s Background
When asked about his professional background and the experiences that shaped his approach to leadership, Garrison shared:
Before starting my consulting firm, I spent two decades as a CEO of multinational public and private companies in communications and technology. I’ve also served on a number of boards, including Ameritrade.
As part of that experience, along with talking to hundreds of executives within the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), I realized that most leaders haven’t been given the framework or tools they need to generate better production and buy-in from employees.
Writing The Buy-In Advantage
When asked what inspired him to write The Buy-In Advantage and what core problem he is seeking to solve for leaders, Garrison explained:
As a result of the pandemic, there’s been a perfect storm building that’s fundamentally shifted what employees are wanting from their work. As a result of these abrupt shifts, the playbook leaders have used for years to incentivize performance and loyalty no longer works.
In my work with executives, I often hear this feedback: “We’ve got good people and a good strategy, but we are not hitting our targets. We’re also struggling with turnover and wasted resources, despite everything we’re doing.”
This led me and my team to research and identify those organizations that were able to increase productivity and results by tapping into what employees most need to give their very best.
The book is full of practical, low-cost tips and tools leaders can use immediately to reverse these trends and get the best from their people.
The biggest challenge is tapping into the passion and experience of everyone in the organization, not just the C-suite. This is what the book is about.
Defining Employee Buy-In
When asked how he defines “buy-in” in the context of leadership and why it is critical to organizational success, Garrison said:
Buy-in isn’t a perk. It’s the profit engine your competitors are ignoring. Buy-in improves when leaders can create the environment where people bring their full potential to work every day.
Yes, productivity and ROI increase, but it’s more than that. When employees are enthusiastic, committed, and collaborative, they identify the non-obvious solutions required to solve the unique challenges most companies are facing in this AI-driven world.
The biggest predictor of an employee who has buy-in is whether they are “bought in” to their direct manager.
The challenge is that most managers are so overwhelmed fighting fires, attending meetings, and answering emails that they have no time to engage their people. One-on-one meetings get postponed, and reviews become mechanical discussions no one looks forward to completing. It’s like the manager is stuck on a hamster wheel. It’s hard to break out.
We know that when leaders are able to harness the potential of their people, innovation increases, retention increases, and results improve.
Four Buy-In Blockers Sabotaging Your Strategy
When asked about the most common mistakes leaders make when trying to gain buy-in from their teams, Garrison identified four recurring problems:
In working with companies across industries, we’ve found that there are four common buy-in blockers that talented leaders unknowingly create. These include:
- Purpose Drift: Telling people how to do things without sharing why it’s important to do.
- Blind Tasks: Doing tasks themselves instead of incorporating the team’s Collective Genius.
- Lone Wolf Leadership: Failing to set context for important tasks when delegating.
- One-Way Communications: Assuming people understand what was said versus asking them what they heard.
Buy-In And Business Performance
When asked for a real-world example where stronger employee buy-in significantly affected a company’s performance, Garrison recalled:
One retail business was struggling with turnover of 50%. While “long timers” stayed, the younger workforce would hang around for six months and then move on.
This meant managers were spending all their time hiring and training. Managers told themselves these younger employees were leaving for more money.
However, interviews showed those who left couldn’t see a purpose in what they were doing. They felt like they were cogs in the machine and that their work and voice didn’t matter.
The general manager trained his leaders to make people a priority and, using the buy-in techniques, went from below budget to exceeding profit goals.
Building Trust During Uncertainty
When asked how leaders can effectively create alignment and trust during periods of change and uncertainty, Garrison explained:
The leader plays an important role in providing certainty in these periods of change, especially with the widespread disruption that AI is creating across industries right now.
Leaders can build trust by acknowledging the uncertainty and employee fears, such as, “Is AI going to take my job?”
Leaders who acknowledge and openly communicate about what is within the team’s control will create a culture of listening and two-way communication.
This is where it becomes crucial that leaders remain guided by the company’s compelling purpose, values, and objectives to maintain employee trust and engagement.
Practical Leadership Strategies
When asked which strategies or frameworks from The Buy-In Advantage leaders can immediately apply within their organizations, Garrison said:
The first step is for leaders to identify the biggest buy-in blocker that’s sabotaging results.
Chapter 3 walks leaders through the eight most common signs of a lack of buy-in.
In addition to reading that chapter, leaders can complete a free assessment of their current situation and prioritize what needs addressing first to make the biggest impact.
Although the common challenges are clear, each organization has a unique culture and set of challenges that influence where they should start.
Once leaders take the individual and team assessment, both free, they can identify which of the seven solutions to implement first.
Lessons From Garrison Growth
When asked how his experience as Co-Founder of Garrison Growth influenced the insights and advice presented in the book, Garrison noted:
Since co-founding Garrison Growth, I’ve had the pleasure of working with CEOs and executive teams across a number of industries, including hospitality, manufacturing, automotive, construction, retail, technology, healthcare, and more.
Despite the industry-specific challenges, all leaders are facing the same universal challenges.
The book is the result of learning from great leaders how they create extraordinary results.
We are grateful to work with successful leaders from dozens of industries in countries from around the world. Each has an experience that informs the ideas in the book.
Changing Employee Expectations
When asked about the leadership trends he is seeing and how executives should evolve their approach to gaining buy-in in modern workplaces, Garrison explained:
The challenge for leaders today is to address the three expectations of employees: opportunities to learn and grow, having their voice heard, and aligning with work that matters.
The leaders who evolve to meet these expectations are rewarded with more time to work on the really important stuff because each person on their team steps up and takes on more work themselves.
In addition, the rush to implement AI sometimes leaves the people on the team feeling like they are less valuable than the technology.
However, great leaders are finding that the introduction of AI into workflows is actually an opportunity to create buy-in by teaching people how to use it and then seeking and integrating their ideas for how it can be applied to make their work easier or better.
When team members implement simple ideas using AI, recognizing those efforts in meetings or with a note goes a long way toward creating buy-in.
Harnessing Collective Genius
When invited to discuss another leadership principle that organizations should consider, Garrison concluded:
One of the most powerful beliefs leaders can use to navigate the constant disruption is this: All of us are smarter than any of us.
The leaders who are most successful in improving results are those who recognize that the team collectively is much better equipped to address issues and identify solutions than the leader doing it themselves.
This approach takes the pressure off leaders in figuring out the solutions to the complex problems that, quite honestly, most of us have never faced in our careers.
By harnessing Collective Genius, we can access the unique experiences and thinking required to identify the best solutions for our current market and beyond.
We recommend beginning with a free team assessment that all team members take on their own before comparing results. Then the team has the opportunity to identify just one or two things to address and align on how to address them.
