What’s your reason to believe?
Back in my CPG days in disposable diapers, one of my marketing colleagues schooled me on the concept of “a reason to believe” when it came to moms making a purchase decision. Whether a new feature or material made the diaper fit better, absorb more quickly, or prevent leaks was almost irrelevant without a reason to believe in the shopper’s mind that the claim would be true.
One September morning in Dallas, I was sitting behind a two-way mirror watching and listening to a focus group of moms comment on a number of diapers they were given. At the time, we at Kimberly-Clark were very proud of our shaped chassis on Huggies diapers, confident it provided a superior fit to our competitors. This shape was infinitely harder to manufacture for us in Operations and was the subject of great debate on the cost of the more difficult design. Our competitors from Pampers and private label all had rectangular chassis and in truth, the extra material did tend to create a measure of bunching in use. But when the moms in this group were asked to identify the chassis that was shaped and would produce a superior fit (“like underwear”), to a person each chose Pampers! Our incredulity notwithstanding, the brilliant move Pampers had made was to print a silhouette of purple along the edge of the diaper that made the rectangle look like it was shaped for the baby’s legs. Our diaper was predominately white and gave no clue it was actually shaped. The competition had given these moms a reason to believe (even something that wasn’t actually true).
In my book, Seasons in Leadership, the leadership logic sequence ends in BELIEF - that whatever the season, effective leaders will address the question: “What do we need our people to believe?” Belief has massive influence on our assumptions, judgment, and degree of engagement.
Let me give you some examples on how this works in every day life:
A major construction project has had a series of successive delays that will not have it ready on time. This would appear to be an incredible exercise in project (mis)management. So each time the contractor projects a new ready date, the client really doesn’t have a reason to believe that will come about. In fact, they’ve given plenty of reasons NOT to believe in the new projection.
A company with a recent history of underperformance and toxicity in its culture recently made a leadership change, with the CEO and a division leader. When a strategic meeting was held with new leadership present and they emerged with a set of commitments they’re following through on, they gave their people an early reason to believe that things could be different and for the better in time.
A supervisor misses her self-imposed deadline to complete a performance review for a team member, then fails to solicit input from others resulting in an inaccurate and superficial review, the team member has a reason to believe that her boss really doesn’t care that much about her or her career.
A leader cuts off a team member during a debate in a meeting, the team member has a reason to believe that her input isn’t valued.
A leader goes the extra-mile to support a team member going through a personal crisis away from work, the other team members aware of the situation have a reason to believe that their leader will do that for them as well should the need ever arise.
The reality is that we as leaders are constantly dropping reasons to believe - by what we say and left unsaid, by what we do and leave undone, by how we react, by what we prioritize, etc. The question is really about how intentional and aware we are of the reasons we’re giving our people to believe. In the end, we cannot control what people believe but we can control the reasons we give and that deserves our attention in every season.