Buy-In as a Journey, Not a Meeting
Win the decision before the decision meeting by looping stakeholders in early and staying open on the solution.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
Most people treat buy-in as a single perfect proposal delivered at one meeting where everyone says yes. Cook reframes it as a journey: partner early and repeatedly with everyone affected, come in framing your knowledge as hypotheses-plus-facts rather than certainty, and set up the final meeting so people know exactly what you need from them. The lead-up work is what makes the meeting go well.
Origin
Megan Cook's approach to getting cross-functional and executive buy-in at Atlassian.
Core principles
- 01Buy-in is built over time, not extracted in one meeting
- 02People who shaped the idea become advocates in the room
- 03Framing your view as facts + hypotheses invites help instead of resistance
- 04Openness about what you don't know builds credibility rather than eroding it
- 05Anchor everyone on the problem, not your favorite solution
How to run it
- 1
Identify and partner with everyone affected — early
Map every person or team the idea could positively or negatively impact, or who has a valuable point of view, and bring the rough proposal to them before it's fully fleshed out.
Pro tip Set the meeting up when you have some clarity but it's not finished, so you can genuinely fold in their concerns.
Watch out An executive seeing a big-impact idea for the first time in the decision meeting is a missed chance to turn them into an advocate.
- 2
Return again and again with new information
Come back to those stakeholders as designs, data, and user tests develop, taking their feedback on board each time.
Pro tip Different leaders (CTO, CMO, head of design) see different risks — collect all those angles before the final room.
- 3
Lead with facts and hypotheses, not certainty
Separate what you actually know (facts) from what you believe will happen (hypotheses), and share your plan to prove or disprove each.
Pro tip Say 'here are the top facts I actually know, and here's the hypothesis and my plan to prove or disprove them' — it exposes the idea for others to strengthen.
Watch out Presenting everything as settled truth shuts down the very input that would improve the idea.
- 4
Set up the decision meeting deliberately
Open by stating exactly what you want from the group — a decision, feedback, or pressure-testing a specific hypothesis — then give a tight narrative: current situation, what changed, implications, the problem/opportunity.
Pro tip Bring only the key points executives need, but know your data cold so you can dive deep wherever they probe.
Watch out Launching straight into a big deck without stating what you need leaves the audience unsure how to help.
In the wild
Cook was set on an acquisition to add capability fast and saw no other path. When she brought it to the head of engineering to get buy-in, he revealed he could pull people from other areas and had the knowledge to build it in-house.
→ By staying open and anchoring on the real goal — value to customers — the 'impossible' build became possible; whether they acquired or not stopped mattering.
For a change to Jira's starting experience that would affect the four products built on the platform, Cook went very early to every product that could be impacted, gathered feedback, and kept returning as designs and data matured.
→ Stakeholders became advocates and the change accounted for their broader concerns.
Common mistakes
Chasing the perfect one-shot proposal
Fixing on a date and a flawless pitch that wins unanimous thumbs-up is the wrong starting attitude — it skips the relationship-building that actually secures the yes.
Falling in love with your solution
Being wedded to a specific solution blinds you to a stakeholder's knowledge that reaches the same goal more cheaply; solve for the problem, not the solution.
Is it for you?
Best for
PMs and product leaders who need cross-functional or executive sign-off on high-impact, multi-stakeholder initiatives
Not ideal for
Small reversible decisions fully within your own remit, where the lead-up work is overkill
From the transcript
“they've got a date in mind. They've got a particular meeting and they have this idea where they're going to craft this perfect proposal”
“It's It's more of a journey”
“every product that this could potentially negatively or positively impact, we went to very early with the idea and the proposal and we got their…”
“here's here's the top facts so actually know. And here is the hypothesis, and here's my plan to prove or disprove them”
“you want to be really clear on what are you looking for from that group? You can ask for the decision, you can ask for…”
From the episode
Lessons from Atlassian: Launching new products, getting buy-in, and staying ahead of the competition
Megan Cook (head of product, Jira)