Do you feel your ideas get rejected more than your peers? Are you struggling to “sell” your ideas to your leaders? Or, worse, do you notice your rejected ideas when presented by someone else get traction? I won’t dismiss interpersonal dysfunctions in your organization as the cause, but there are things that are under your control that will help you improve how others embrace your ideas. If you heard “you need to be more strategic” or the responses to your proposals are tepid (”maybe later,” “we should investigate,” “get more data”), I’m going to help you get your head around what they are saying and how to address it.

First, you need to look inwards. See if any of these apply to you (be honest!).

  1. You have blinders on: You come up with an idea for something. You fall in love with it, and you elaborate on it to a point you are excited to share. When you share it, people ask a question or two. You are unprepared to answer, and fumble it.
  2. You have a manipulative mindset: You read negotiation and persuasion books and you put your best hat on to sell your idea. You push it down people’s throats. They don’t want to be forced and reject it.
  3. You want all the credit: The number of times you say “I” in your presentation is greater than the number of times you say “customer,” “user,” or “problem.” You want all the glory for when this initiative becomes wildly successful. You will get the credit, the job promotion, and win an Oscar!
  4. You are all “story” or all “data”: You are on either side of the data-story spectrum. You have a stunning presentation, a hyper-rehearsed pitch, and you tell an emotional story of how this product will help little Samantha. Or, you come prepared to your meeting with an Excel model that projects five years of data (broken down by month), forty-two rows of input data, and an unbelievably “obvious” reason on the last row showing a positive outcome.

If you have done none of the above and are confident people are out to get you, you can stop reading now. If you want to improve what you can control, let’s do this.

ACT

Your first task is to get out of a “push mindset” and adopt a “pull mindset.” Instead of convincing people of something, you are engaging them in a truth discovery journey. You are pulling their knowledge and energy in helping figure out a problem and a solution. Do this early, often, and engage a wide range of perspectives. If you only ask people that like you, from a single job function, or who are clearly going to benefit from this initiative, you are not going the full distance to get a 360 understanding what the initiative.

The second task is to be coherent. Any type of presentation or spreadsheet won’t help you be coherent. That means, to have a narrative that clearly articulates the problem (and its impact), the current solutions (and their shortcomings), and what’s the new solution being proposed (Why? Why now? Why us?). Go back to task number one. You don’t do this alone. You engage people to understand all the angles. What you’ll get are bits and pieces of a disconnected story. Creating the coherent narrative is your job. The absolutely best way to create this is writing.

Your third task is to elevate your thinking above the execution details. Spend your time and energy thinking about the value for the customer and for your organization/team. Why does this matter? What happens if the team doesn’t do it? Figure out how to explain this in simple terms, without explaining the intricacies of the implementation. It’s also important to consider what’s not important or not important enough to be included. A good vision and strategy require you to say no and focus the team energy towards a unified direction.

Conclusion

There are too many things we can’t control. You control your attitude, behaviors, and what you bring to work. Drop the blind love for your own idea, the belief you must “sell” them, the self-centered approach to creation, and the extreme of all story, no data, or all data, no story. Switch to a pull-mindset to engage people in problem and solution discovery. Present coherent narratives that include data and a story. Think about the why, before the what, before the how. The PRFAQ Framework encapsulates all those elements and more.