An opponent of a program is handed a real, well-staffed, deliverable piece of it to own and is credited publicly when it succeeds, which gives them a reason and a dignified way to change position.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
An insurer's chief information officer was moving the policy systems to a new cloud platform, and the chief underwriting officer had been the loudest skeptic, citing migration risk in two executive committee meetings. The chief information officer offered her the first product on the new platform: a small-business policy in two states, with a full team, three months of testing already done, and authority to set the underwriting rules herself. She took it and rewrote two of the rules, which improved the pilot's loss ratio. The launch went out under her name at the agents' conference, and she presented the results to the executive committee. When the next phase came up, her questions were about sequencing and staffing, and it was approved on her recommendation.
Why it works
Owning the result gives the skeptic a visible, career-marking win. The win also supplies a face-saving story for changing position, "I can see it delivering," which makes switching cheap. Continued opposition then contradicts their own success story, and reversing later would mean disclaiming a public win. Most of the pull comes from the public attribution, whatever the size of the project. For it to hold, the project must be truly deliverable, the skeptic must care about their public record, the staffing must make failure very unlikely, and the audience must read the shift as conviction.
The thinking behind it
Robert B. Cialdini Cialdini's Influence (1984) describes commitment and consistency: once people have taken a position, especially a public one, they feel pressure to act in line with it. A skeptic whose name is on a successful launch, in a conference announcement and a board update, has taken a public position for the program. Opposing the next phase would contradict their own record, which is why the public attribution carries most of the effect.
Leon Festinger Festinger's A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957) holds that people reduce the discomfort of an action that contradicts a belief by bringing the belief into line. A skeptic who has led part of a program to success holds two cognitions that do not fit, their doubts and their win. The easiest resolution is to revise the doubts, so their later questions turn to sequencing and staffing.
Erving Goffman Goffman's On Cooling the Mark Out (1952) describes how people who lose a position are helped to accept the loss by a substitute status that lets them save face. A skeptic who changes position after owning a real win does not have to concede that they lost the argument. They can say they saw it deliver. The face-saving story is what makes the shift possible without humiliation.
When it fits
Try it when a respected skeptic's objections are about risk or execution, when part of your program can be delivered at low risk inside their domain, and when you control the resources to staff that part fully. The sponsor should be someone whose broader program will benefit more from the skeptic's support than from keeping the first win.
How to use it well
Choose the piece carefully: it must be deliverable, visible, and inside the skeptic's area.
- Staff and fund it fully, and take the execution risk off them.
- Give real ownership: let them set scope and rules, and build their objections into the design.
- Attribute the result publicly and specifically, in the launch note, the conference, the board update.
- After it lands, ask them to apply the same scrutiny to the next phase.
Make the offer openly and say why: you value their judgment and want it tested on something real. Their later support carries weight because it was earned on work they did.
What it costs and where it backfires
You give away a win that would otherwise be yours, and you tie up resources in a sure thing. Peers may read it as favoritism. If the skeptic later says they never really owned the result, the credit unravels. The win has to be earned. Credit for work they did not do, or a reward offered in exchange for dropping objections, is a purchase, and once people see it that way it discredits you both.
When it is used on you
Expect this offer if you have been the loudest critic of a program and are suddenly handed a fully staffed, nearly certain win inside it. Take it if the work is real, and keep your view of the rest of the program on record. As an observer, ask whether a critic's change of view arrived together with the win, and judge the next phase on its merits.