WIIFM (What's In It For Me)

Introduction

At any stage in a change project stakeholders are asking themselves 'what's in it for me?"

This may appear a selfish question as people can see change benefiting other stakeholders and reasonably think why not me.

People impacted by change often ask:
"...What's my pay-off for getting on board the change train?..."
Jake Jacob, 2022

The usual managerial answers revolve around benefits that will arrive once a new vision is realised, ie the upside of the change will far outweigh the downsides, etc. Sometimes this can be hard to understand and result in frustration at all levels: staff are unable to see the virtues of the new ways of doing business and management's frustration is the perceived challenge to their authority and wisdom.

"...The resulting frustration in both groups is not a promising path of building ownership and alignment in all team members..."
Jake Jacob, 2022

Handling WIIFM

You own what you create!!

"... Having more people engaged in front-end planning change work ensures you'll have a large number of committed, aligned people taking care of the implementation. This leads to better ways of doing business......When people are involved, they make sure their own needs are met..."
Jake Jacob, 2022

The result is that WIIFM no longer an issue, ie
"...engage all team members soon after starting the change and this stubborn question becomes obsolete..."
Jake Jacob, 2022

When initiating the change process, it's better to bring questions rather than answers to stakeholders, especially staff. Even though this takes longer, ie
"...it could have been done much faster if the executive had done strategy development work themselves - and left the implementation work to others. But that would have meant committing the cardinal sin...... few designing for many. The payoffs of increased speed and commitment came when it was time to implement..."
Jake Jacob, 2022

Using this process of getting ownership of the change can result in those who are most resistant initially becoming the biggest supporters, ie champions for the change.

Need to ensure there is a shift from WIIFM to WIIFT, ie the 'T' refers to 'them' which can include other stakeholders, like customers.