It can be easy to think that we need to get everyone rowing in the same direction; that someone dissenting is actively working against us. Most of the time, this isn’t true. We don’t need everyone on the same page as us. Usually, you just need a small group.
In any given group, most people are usually there to just do the job in front of them. They aren’t going to take sides or become evangelists for an idea because it’s not what they were hired to do. They will get their directions and move forward regardless of their personal opinion.
A much smaller part of that same group are the people (often known as leaders) that will care. Some will agree, some will disagree, some will think you are focused on the wrong thing. By definition, you cannot win them all over.
The trick is knowing that you don’t have to. As soon as you have a core group of leaders convinced, you can move forward. That core group will make sure the dissenting (or uncaring leaders) at least won’t actively work against the direction and get the majority of the group pushing in the right direction.
Hardest in this process is identifying the group of leaders you need to work through. The group changes depending on the topic – we all have things that are above our pay grade or outside the list of things we are going to worry about. The number you need to convince will also change given the impact of the decision or how many are directly impacted by it.
But never do you need to actually win everyone over.