What is “Buy-In?”

Early in November at our presentation to the Salem PRSA, we met a number of cool people, including Ed Kramer. Ed met us for coffee at Salem’s Governor’s Cup a few weeks later. An independent marketing consultant, Ed came to Salem from Silicon Valley, where he was in the high-tech PR game, heading the public relations for both Oracle and XSoft, the software-marketing division of Xerox. A good deal of his focus was on internal communications, and he told this story about what employee buy-in can mean to an organization.

Years ago when the U.S. was preparing for its first Apollo mission, a group of organizational researchers were finishing a day of interviews at the NASA Space Center on Merritt Island, Fla. It was after hours. They were tired and wanted to get back to their hotel. As they were leaving they spotted a man putting a mop away in a closet on the lower floor of the building. They were interested if this person worked directly for NASA or for an outside cleaning company. One of the researchers approached him and said, “Excuse me. Can you tell me what you do here?” He looked up proudly and said, “I’m helping put the first man on the moon.”

Imagine if every person who worked for you felt they were as critical a member of your team as that gentleman did. What a powerful force that would be in helping your organization meet its goals!

Thanks Ed…we appreciate you sharing!