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I am part of a new team and have been working on an innovative project which brings great benefits to customers and has a big revenue pipeline behind it. The project we worked on aligns requirements from customers of all teams and delivers a solution which is efficient, long-term and in demand.

We have executive sponsorship, but execs want me to align with other teams in the organisation, from other regions.

With some teams things are working fine.

Some teams are lukewarm - they are happy to discuss, but not too happy.

Some of these teams are deliberately ignoring my project, even when their customers would like to hear more.

Another team has been recreating our work "in their own words" and putting their name on it.

These teams will not push projects which are not theirs, and don't seem to be happy that there is a solution out there to help their customers. I know that some key stakeholders would be happy to see our big project shut down, so that their own local initiatives can advance.

I was asked to create a "WIN-WIN" situation: indeed, our project will help their customers and help their revenue numbers. Even then, they want our project dead and buried.

How do I get buy-in for a project which goes beyond what my colleagues were working on?

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    Do you have any incentive in convincing other teams to adopt your solution? What's your role? You were asked by whom to create the win-win situation? It seems to me that the issue should be dealt at a much higher level.
    – nicola
    Commented Aug 28, 2020 at 10:45
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    Does this solution carry the potential to make members of the other teams obsolete?
    – Daniel
    Commented Aug 28, 2020 at 11:20
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    What is your role in the team? If you a not a manager, then you can do pretty much nothing - except discussing with your close managers (administrative and project).
    – virolino
    Commented Aug 28, 2020 at 12:22

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There's a difference in knowledge between you and those team leaders.

If the other managers shared your view that the project is a Win-Win, they'd get behind it. Any reasonable team leader would sign up to something that makes their life better.

So, one of two things are happening:

  • They don't understand the benefits. Or they don't think they'll see the benefits. They haven't read your internal documentation, or they did and didn't buy it.
  • They've got a negative experience from a previous project, maybe even before your time, or something like this. They're expecting it to fail, and are keeping their distance to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

Both of these require either internal marketing (does your company have an internal magazine or something? Ask to put an article about what you're trying to build and how great your product will be in the magazine), or you can directly talk to the relevant team leads: Ask to get their feedback on the project cause you value their opinion. If they're not onboard, they will have a reason. If that reason is anything other than "We're too swamped with work to think about it", its useful feedback for your project.

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    Unfortunately there are other possibilities too. It may be more work, and they're lazy. It may be NIH. It may be politics. It may be self interest. I'd try to test the two you mentioned first because those are the good faith reasons. But there's a lot of other possibilities out there.
    – Gabe Sechan
    Commented Sep 6, 2020 at 6:23
  • I agree with Gabe. You should add those too or somebody else should write a more thorough answer.
    – Chris
    Commented Sep 6, 2020 at 18:51

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