Good leaders listen to employee pushback for better innovation.

2 days ago7 min read

Two decades ago, as the lead digital executive for Citi’s credit card division, I spearheaded what seemed like a flawless partnership. We’d identified a startup with a groundbreaking payments platform, a precursor to a system now used by millions.The deal was simple: a strategic investment for access to their codebase, allowing us to bypass legacy system queues and prototype rapidly with top developers. We built the entire proposal in a silo of supporters, deliberately keeping skeptics at bay until the final approval stage.That’s when the senior executives from risk, compliance, legal, and finance weighed in with pointed questions about regulations, ROI, and precedent. The deal was torpedoed.Within a few years, that startup was acquired for nearly $1 billion. The loss wasn’t just financial; it was a failure to recognize that resistance holds critical intelligence about realities that echo-chamber planning misses.Colleagues felt blindsided, asked to bless a finished deal rather than help shape the strategy. The core lesson I’ve spent twenty years teaching is that leaders default to a flawed playbook: they build innovation in protected silos, treating pushback as an obstacle to manage.But that resistance from risk or P&L managers isn’t mere obstruction—it’s a signal highlighting unaddressed regulatory concerns or resource conflicts that enthusiasts overlook. When 70% of change initiatives fail, the problem isn’t that people don’t understand the plan; it’s that the plan ignores what people understand about on-the-ground reality.The shift begins with listening diagnostically. When someone says, “We tried this before,” don’t dismiss it; ask, “What specifically failed, and how does this approach learn from that?” This tactical empathy, as negotiators call it, builds the trust necessary for scale.This is especially crucial in the age of AI, where teams often build tools without involving the end-users, like customer service reps, leading to stalled adoption when real-world complexities emerge. The move from traditional stakeholder management to true coalition building means engaging critics from the start, aligning experiments with their core priorities to demonstrate shared success.Start by asking, “What do you see that we might be missing?” or “What would need to be true for this to work in your world?” The fundamental question changes from “How do I overcome resistance?” to “What intelligence am I missing if I don’t engage this perspective early?” Companies are still repeating the same expensive mistake, building partnerships and AI pilots in silos. Treating resistance as friction to overcome, rather than data to integrate, continues to pile up billion-dollar missed opportunities. What changes when you listen? You build coalitions, gain implementable insights, and finally stop learning lessons the hard way.

#leadership

#innovation

#change management

#stakeholder engagement

#AI adoption

#enterprise strategy

#lead focus news