Why Do Teams Agree in Meetings and Then Not Follow Through?
The reasons why teams agree and don't follow through fall into two groups. Some people agree while keeping doubts to themselves, because disagreeing in front of others feels risky or pointless. Others mean it and still don't act, because an intention doesn't reliably turn into action, especially when nobody owns the first step and no date is set.
You asked for objections in the meeting and heard none. Everyone agreed to the change and the dates. Two weeks later the first step hasn't happened, and when you ask about it, you get a friendly reason and a new date.
Why Do People Agree in Meetings When They Have Doubts?
Agreeing in a meeting takes a few seconds, and the work it leads to comes later, in a week that's already full. Raising a doubt happens right then, in front of colleagues, and it can delay a decision other people want made.
Jerry Harvey described groups that take actions their own members don't want (Harvey, 1974, Organizational Dynamics). In his account, members privately agree on what the problem is and what should be done about it. They keep those views to themselves, so each person misjudges what the others think. The group then decides on something its members don't want.
Harvey called this a failure to manage agreement. He traced it to fear. People imagined that acting on their own beliefs would lead to embarrassment, the loss of their position, or the loss of their place on the team. He put the fear of being separated from the group at the center of it.
What Does It Cost Someone to Disagree in a Meeting?
Frances Milliken, Elizabeth Morrison and Patricia Hewlin interviewed employees about times they hadn't raised a concern with people above them at work (Milliken, Morrison and Hewlin, 2003, Journal of Management Studies). The reason they gave most often was fear of being seen as a troublemaker or a complainer, and of damaging relationships with people they needed to get their work done. Others said speaking up wouldn't change anything. Some feared punishment, such as losing a promotion. Some felt they didn't have the standing to raise it, because they were new or junior.
Morrison and Milliken had argued earlier that in many organizations, employees widely hold back information about potential problems, and that people can come to share the belief that speaking up is unwise (Morrison and Milliken, 2000, Academy of Management Review). They argued that this silence makes it harder for an organization to change.
Amy Edmondson's term for a team where speaking up feels safe is psychological safety. She described it as a shared belief among team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking (Edmondson, 1999, Administrative Science Quarterly). She wrote that a person who admits an error or asks for help may appear incompetent. In her study of work teams at a furniture manufacturer, teams with more psychological safety did more asking for help, seeking feedback and talking about errors, and those behaviors went with better team performance.
The person who raises a doubt takes the risk in the meeting. If they keep the doubt to themselves, you may not hear about it until a step is missed.
Why Do Stakeholders Who Meant It Still Not Act?
Some people agree, mean it, and still don't do the work. Paschal Sheeran and Thomas Webb reviewed the research on this and described the gap between what people intend and what they do as large (Sheeran and Webb, 2016, Social and Personality Psychology Compass). The review also covered experiments that changed people's intentions, and behavior changed less than the intentions did. Persuading someone further doesn't reliably change what they do.
Sheeran and Webb sorted the problems by stage. At the start, people forget to act, miss a good opportunity to act, or put it off. Once people have started, other goals compete for the same time, and old habits take over.
After a meeting, the person who agreed goes back to a week that already has deadlines and a manager asking about other work. If the step they agreed to has no date and nobody will ask about it, it's competing with work that has both.
What's the Difference between Agreement and Commitment?
Agreement means a person thinks the change makes sense. Commitment means a named person has said what they'll do and when, and has the time to do it.
Peter Gollwitzer separated two kinds of intention (Gollwitzer, 1999, American Psychologist). A goal intention names what a person wants to achieve. An implementation intention adds when, where and how they'll act, in the form "when situation x arises, I will perform response y." In the studies he reviewed, people who made these plans reached their goals more often than people who held only the goal. He noted that the plans depended on people holding the goal strongly and committing to the plan.
In a meeting, "sounds good" and "we're supportive" tell you someone agrees with the goal. "I'll move my team's intake requests to the new form on Tuesday after standup" tells you when and where they'll act. A plan from someone who has doubts they haven't raised is less likely to be followed, because plans depend on the person holding the goal strongly.
Why Isn't Buy-In Enough to Get a Change Adopted?
When a change is approved, the decision is made. The change itself happens when each person whose work it affects does something different and keeps doing it.
Katherine Klein and Andrew Knight separate the decision to start using something new from implementation, the period when the people expected to use it become skilled, consistent and committed users (Klein and Knight, 2005, Current Directions in Psychological Science). They wrote that teams and organizations often decide on a new tool or practice and then don't get people using it well and consistently. The reasons they give include new skills people have to learn, the time it takes, a drop in performance at first, doubts about whether the change is worth it, and too little visible support from management. Their review also names conditions that make implementation more likely to work, including management support and a climate in which people see using the new tool or practice as a priority in their job.
An approval is one event, with a date and a record, so it's easy to report as done. Implementation happens in many people's weeks, and nobody reports on it unless someone sets up a check. Nothing in an approval names the people whose work changes or the first thing each of them does differently.
Who Has to Do Something Different on the First Day?
Before you treat an approved change as done, list every person or team whose work changes. Next to each one, write the first thing they'll do differently, the date they start, and who will tell them.
Then check with each of them. Do they know the change affects them? Do they know what their first step is? Does something else in their week have to move to make time for it, and has anyone agreed to move it?
Where an answer is no, fix it before the start date. Tell a team directly if they don't know the change affects them. If a team has no time for it, take that to the person who sets the team's priorities and ask them to decide what moves. If the first step needs a skill the team doesn't have yet, arrange training or someone to help them before the start date. Klein and Knight list training and technical help among the policies that support implementation.
How Can You Tell Agreement from Commitment in the Meeting?
Notice who is agreeing. Agreement from people whose work won't change tells you little about whether the change will happen. The people to listen to are the ones whose work changes, and whether they named a first step and a date.
Silence from the people whose work changes can mean they agree. It can also mean they have a concern they've decided not to raise, for the reasons Milliken and her colleagues heard in their interviews. Before you count their silence as agreement, ask one of them a direct question about their part, such as "What would make the 14th hard for your team?"
How Do You Get Honest Agreement in a Decision Meeting?
Ask for doubts before you ask for agreement. Put the question to the people whose work changes, and make it specific to their part, such as "What would get in the way of your team starting on the 14th?"
State your own doubts about the plan early. Harvey's remedy was for one person to tell the whole group what they think of the plan and to stay open to what others say back. When you've named a risk yourself, the next person who raises one isn't the first to disagree.
Thank the first person who raises a doubt, and answer it in the meeting. Set a date by which people can bring you a concern one on one, for anyone who won't raise it in front of the group.
Before the meeting ends, go through the people whose work changes one at a time. Ask each of them to confirm their first step and the date. Send that list to everyone who was there the same day.
What Should You Check in the First Week after People Agree?
Check whether each first step happened on its date. Sheeran and Webb's review found that keeping track of progress toward a goal makes people more likely to reach it. A short check-in with each person whose work changes gives both of you a record of progress.
Harvey listed signs that a group has agreed to something its members didn't want. After the decision, people are frustrated, form smaller groups, and blame each other or the people in charge. If you hear the decision discussed in side conversations in the first week, ask the people involved what they'd change about it.
If the step happened, ask what the next one is and when it's due. If it slipped, ask what got in the way, because the answer tells you which cause you're dealing with.
If they ran out of time, work out with them, or with the person who sets their priorities, what moves.
If they have a doubt they didn't raise in the meeting, answer it.
If they don't know how to do the new step, show them or find someone who can.
If their manager hasn't said the change is a priority, ask the manager to say so to the team.
Before your next decision meeting, write down each person whose work the decision will change, and next to each name, the first step and date you'll ask them to commit to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it lying to agree in a meeting and then not follow through?
It doesn't have to be. Harvey described people who went along with a decision because they feared what disagreeing would cost them. Sheeran and Webb's review covers people who intended to act and didn't. Neither involves setting out to deceive anyone. Ask what got in the way of the first step before you decide what the agreement meant.
What if my sponsor thinks the change is done because it was approved?
Show them the list of people whose work changes, with the first step and start date for each one. Klein and Knight name visible management support as one of the conditions that help implementation work. Ask your sponsor for one specific thing, such as telling the affected teams in their next staff meeting that the change is a priority.
Should I get the decision in writing?
Yes. Send a written summary the same day with the decision, each person's first step, and the dates. Everyone then works from the same record, and you have something to point to if someone tries to reopen the decision later. A written approval with no names or dates records the decision and leaves every step unassigned.
Does anonymous input help people raise doubts?
It helps with concerns people won't attach their name to. The reason given most often for staying quiet in Milliken and her colleagues' interviews was fear of being seen as a troublemaker or a complainer, and anonymity removes that risk. It also hides which team a concern comes from, so follow it with one-on-one questions to the people whose work changes.
What if the person who agreed and hasn't acted is a senior leader?
Ask about the specific step and the date, the same way you would with anyone else. A senior leader's first step may be something only they can do, such as telling their team the change is a priority or moving a competing deadline. Name that step, agree on a date, and ask what would make it hard.
How soon can I tell whether people are adopting the change?
Within the first week, if each person whose work changes has a first step with a date. Whether those steps happen on time is the earliest sign. Full use takes longer. Klein and Knight describe implementation as a period in which people become skilled and consistent users, so keep checking at set dates through that period.
If people are pushing back on a change you're leading, The DANCE System gives you 29 tools for finding where the change is breaking down and what to communicate next.
Related Blog Posts:
What Are the Types of Resistance to Change at Work?
How to Get Stakeholder Buy-In without Authority
Why Does the Team Keep Reopening a Decided Change?
Why does Chasing Buy-In Stall a Rollout?
How to Lead a Project without Authority
References
Harvey, J. B. (1974). The Abilene paradox: The management of agreement. Organizational Dynamics, 3(1), 63-80. https://doi.org/10.1016/0090-2616(74)90005-9
Milliken, F. J., Morrison, E. W., & Hewlin, P. F. (2003). An exploratory study of employee silence: Issues that employees don't communicate upward and why. Journal of Management Studies, 40(6), 1453-1476. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6486.00387
Morrison, E. W., & Milliken, F. J. (2000). Organizational silence: A barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world. Academy of Management Review, 25(4), 706-725. https://doi.org/10.2307/259200
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Sheeran, P., & Webb, T. L. (2016). The intention-behavior gap. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10(9), 503-518. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12265
Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493-503. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.493
Klein, K. J., & Knight, A. P. (2005). Innovation implementation: Overcoming the challenge. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(5), 243-246. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00373.x
