Push or pull your internal customers in the direction of change and they’ll probably resist. Embrace them instead and you’ll increase your opportunity for their acceptance of your ideas and recommendations for changes in their methods and practices. The concept is to build internal customers’ respect and confidence in you. This sets the stage for effective value analysis. We recommend an approach we call the circle of confluence which incorporates the four Cs: Contact, champions, communications, and cooperation.

Contact: It’s crucial to establish regular contact with your internal customers through focus groups and surveys to understand their needs and ideas, but it takes a little more effort to build lasting relationships. Identify and be active in committees that are central to your internal customers’ deepest interests, such as quality, productivity, and operations. To prove you are committed to their interests, sponsor in-house seminars on new methods, procedures, and trends.

Champions: Internal customers respect their peers, so cultivate relationships with ones who will champion your causes and lead value analysis teams toward common goals.

Communications: Regular communication is fundamental. It gives customers the opportunity to share and digest diverse ideas. It can also generate new ideas by putting old ones into context. Publish newsletters to keep internal customers fully informed about your philosophies and actions and aware of your sensitivity to their needs. Ask for the opportunity to present new programs and initiatives at staff meetings and luncheons. Most of all, truly listen when internal customers tell you about their concerns and problems. Then act to resolve them.

Cooperation: By serving and working with internal customers without expecting anything in return, you’ll build lasting alliances. For instance, lead the way to facilitate capital equipment requests and resolve product and quality problems. Combined with contact, champion development, and communications, this will bring confluence full circle and enable cooperation on common goals and challenges.

The circle of confluence is a continuous process, not a onetime event. Keep the loop closed by continuing to build on the four Cs and you will reduce your customers’ fear of change and gain allies in your fight to manage and control costs and quality.