Making the Case: A Framework for Persuasive Business Cases
Are you ready to drive significant changes in your organization but feel overwhelmed by the process, or aren't sure where to start? This guide provides a comprehensive framework for middle managers to build a compelling case that gets your ideas approved by senior leaders.
Buy-in Takes Time
Navigating resource allocation in corporate environments can be a challenging endeavor. Middle managers often face obstacles like budget constraints, priority shifts, or lack of internal support. Re-frame these obstacles from walls that you keep hitting to hurdles that you're learning to jump over.
Think back to when you were early in your career, and you went into a first performance review expecting a raise or promotion, despite having never discussed it with your manager. When you didn't get it you may have tried to negotiate in that meeting. But it didn't change anything. As a seasoned manager you now know that it's because raises and promotions aren't decided in the performance review meeting; the decision is a slow build-up over many months, often with multiple people's opinions taken into account.
In the same way, getting buy-in for changes you want to drive in your organization take time and require multiple discussions, and sometimes work along the way.
Creating a business case is more than just drafting a formal document. It's about engaging with stakeholders, understanding their concerns, and framing your proposal to align with their priorities. Gaining buy-in requires more than a well-prepared document—it needs behind-the-scenes consensus-building and tailored communication strategies.
Crafting Your Business Case
Your organization may have a formal or informal process for reviewing business cases. It likely involves putting together a document or presentation that will be presented to senior leaders and contains information describing the problem, recommended solution, benefits, risks and implementation plan.
1
Problem Statement
Clearly articulate the challenge your proposal addresses. Use data to illustrate the impact.
2
Proposed Solution
Detail your innovative approach. Explain how it solves the problem better than alternatives.
3
Benefits and ROI
Quantify the expected returns. Use both financial and non-financial metrics to paint a complete picture.
4
Implementation Plan
Outline a clear roadmap. Show you've thought through the execution and potential risks.
If you've researched frameworks for business cases or executive presentations you may have seen recommendations for how to organize this information. Executives are busy people - they want the tl;dr so starting with an executive summary and what you need from them solid advice and has worked for me in formal and informal discussions. From there have a detailed appendix ready to show how you got to the solution and be prepared to get into the weeds. A meeting with executives is more of a "Choose your own adventure" as they dig into specific areas where they have concerns or may perceive risk.
The presentation of the business and the document you create is NOT the most important part of the process. In fact, it's often a formality, if it's drafted at all.
What Really Gets Your Business Case Approved
The process of getting buy-in is where the work is and where you get approval. Your ability to plan, build relationships with your colleagues and communicate effectively with them over a series of discussions will add-up, gradually creating momentum that becomes buy-in.
Stakeholder Alignment
Engaging key stakeholders early and often is crucial. Understand their priorities, address their concerns, and build consensus around your proposed solution.
Executive Sponsorship
Securing an executive sponsor who champions your business case can make all the difference. Their influence and advocacy can help navigate organizational barriers and secure final approval.
Storytelling
Crafting a compelling narrative that articulates the problem, your solution, and the expected benefits is key. Use data to support your case, but don't underestimate the power of a well-told story when meeting with stakeholders and executives.
With that in mind, you should now realize that stakeholder alignment is obtained through several meetings where you build up the business case together, where you leverage storytelling and data to help those less close to problem understand it more deeply. And perhaps more importantly, understand why it's the most important problem to solve right now.
Behind the scenes
In my experiences there are six keys to the behind the scenes work to build up momentum around your business case.
1. Understand Timing
2. Identify stakeholders
3. Early Engagement with Influencers
4. Tailor Communication
5. Align with Corporate Priorities
6. Pilot Project
1. Understand Timing
There are several catalysts that you can leverage to move your project forward
Annual planning cycles
Building in budget and resources for a project to be funded proactively. In fact, while it is often slow, this may be the path of least resistance, because it may be easier to "find" the money when it's built in and doesn't have to be taken from another project.
Changes in leadership
When a new executive joins they will audit the organization and are looking to identify the quick wins and big bets that will have the most impact towards the long-term goals (financial and otherwise) of the CEO and board.
Changes in strategy
When your organization is in the process of launching, or has just launched, a new strategy it creates a window. Executives want that strategy to be executed successfully — and if your ideas align to the strategy you may be able to get your ideas fast-tracked.
The Real World: I wasn't getting support for investment in an internal tool until the company launched a new strategy. This tool would directly support that strategy. Once I was able to tell that story to stakeholders, they were supported and advocated for it as well.
2. Identify stakeholders
Work with your manager and executive sponsor to identify the people in the organization whose support will be critical.
- Stakeholders impacted by the change directly, or in-directly
- Senior leaders who have a lot of influence and can become advocates or detractors for your idea
The Real World: when I was looking to restructure my technical support team, although it was an internal change, I worked with Customer Success to get buy-in. When I wanted secure engineering resources for an internal tool however I obtained buy-in from a much broader group — focusing on alignment with other leaders in my Revenue organization as well as our CTO, a product manager and a director of engineering.
3. Early engagement with influencers
Meeting with your stakeholders one time a week before a formal business review meeting will come off as inconsiderate and brash. Instead, engage early — so early in fact that you don't need something. Build relationships and get to know your colleagues not as influencers who want something from, but as people who you work with and want to enjoy time with, share trust and collaborate.
Trust is gained over time when your actions match your words - so invest in your relationships, help your colleagues, and they'll be there for you when you need them. Or at a minimum, you will have a strong relationship where they can be candid and provide negative feedback and concerns that help you strengthen and refine your business case (because you do have blind spots and you don't know it all!).
The Real World: I had worked with one of my influential peers on multiple projects, escalations and processes. I also tried to show her my support in non-work projects like ERGs or interest in her personal life. She isn't a friend outside of work and I wasn't trying to make one, nor do we have the same values - but I do care about her as a human and we both know that when our teams work well together it benefits the business. She was one of people I would first pitch my ideas, to see if she also saw the problems I saw, and the importance of finding solutions. In fact, we ended up collaborating on a proposal to executives which would improve response and resolution time for customer issues.
4. Tailor communications
While you might be building a single presentation that will be told in the same to a room of senior leaders, your should not be using the same community strategy when you meet with stakeholders and influencers individually or in small groups.
Adjust your communication style so that you can be heard and so that you can get the feedback you need to strengthen your business case and get buy-in.
- Function - Use the language and reference the priorities relevant to the person you're talking to. Engineering and Sales leaders do not use the same terms nor do they have the same objectives within an organization. Speak their language. If you don't know their priorities, or what keeps them up at night, ask.
- Individual Style - Observe people to see how they like to communicate and what they respond well to. This isn't just personal, it's also dependent on how they function within the organizational system they're operating within. This can look like knowing who will want to brainstorm solutions with you and who will want you to focus on what you need from them and how it impacts them. It's figuring out when to go on a walk with some to talk through the problem, and when to show up with your laptop and data. But it's not just them - your relationship to them can also change how you approach the first, second or third conversation.
The Real World: in order to effectively communicate with the CTO as a someone who reported into the CRO I was aware of the dynamics between them and my discussions with the CTO were received as a representative of the Revenue organization. Rather than show up with solutions and ask for feedback, I sat side-by-side with the CTO on a coach and we informally discussed the problems and solutions, and I shared specific stories to highlight the importance of the problem and its impact, and how it would trickle down to engineering as escalations.
5. Align with company priorities
Identify how your ideas support The Most Important Problem ™️ that the company is focused on solving. If they can't be directly tied to at least one of the goals or metric your company is tracking you will likely struggle to tell a story about why your idea should be prioritized here and now. Executives have to make hard decisions around which of many projects worth funding will be most impactful and take them closer to where they want the company to go.
If you can't tie your ideas to a company goal you may need to prepare yourself to keep it on the back-burner, returning when there's a change in strategy, goals or leadership.
The Real World: For years I had tried to influence the product roadmap to focus on issues impacting customers and support. It wasn't until there was a company priority focused on reducing churn that I was able to rally support. I tied my asks to the company priority and each stakeholder knew supporting my asks was a way for them to ensure the company met its goals.
6. Pilot projects
Executives don't like risk, and if you're advocating for a change that is big or uncomfortable, the "what ifs" can pile up fast. Pilot projects turn abstract ideas into tangible results and reduce risk for executives. They allow you identify and address issues early on, which then enables you to create a better solution and have a stronger business case.
You may find more success in support for a pilot, or be able to do a pilot on your own, before you try to garner support for a larger idea.
The Real World: Instead of building a new ticketing system that everyone would move to at once, it was easier to talk about what the new systems capabilities, limitations and differences from the current system, after we had completed a pilot. An MVP (minimum viable product) was setup on the new ticketing system for two teams to use, each with different needs. The results of pilot allowed our executive sponsor to advocate for the change with peers who were concerned about what could go wrong. In our case, the pilot was the initial implementation, so it reduced the perceived cost of switching.
It's a lot, right?
It's a lot of time and a lot of work - but when you're asking for the business to take on risk, it makes sense. And over time you realize, the heart of the work is ongoing communication with your peers and their leaders.
Spend time talking to people. Listen to them. Share what you know.
And in time (months and sometimes years) you'll find that your ideas move forward. And when you begin to accumulate successes, and show that you're right more than you're wrong, you'll find that your influence will grow, and it may even become easier to get your colleagues to support your ideas.