1. Understand his objectives and motivations.

Selling an idea is like selling any other product.  You have to understand the needs, motives and priorities of the customer.  What are your boss’s ‘hot buttons’?  What are the issues that really worry him?  Is he motivated by pride, ego, money, career advancement, power, recognition or does he want an easy life?  If you can discover his goals and his motivations then you can try to present your idea in a way that plays to them.  Stress the outcomes of the idea that will help him in one or more of these fields.  (Of course your boss can be male or female but for simplicity the boss is referred to as ‘he’ rather than ‘he or she’).

2. Understand his decision making style.

How does your boss make decisions?  Does he prefer numbers, reference from trusted sources, evidence of proof elsewhere, avoidance of risk, logic or emotion?   Does he make quick decisions or does he like to chew things over for a while?  A recent article in Harvard Business Review by Williams and Miller identified five different styles of decision maker.  If you know which style fits your boss then you can tailor your message to give it the best chance of success.

3. Align your idea with corporate objectives.

It will help if you can show that your idea fits with current corporate objectives.  Show clearly that the suggestion will benefit the larger organization.

4. Choose the right time.

Don’t barge into your boss’s office at the end of a hectic day and buttonhole him with your great idea.  Chances are he will simply say no.  Instead ask him for some time to discuss an important issue and mention the benefit.  ‘Can you spare 20 minutes first thing tomorrow morning to review an idea to significantly improve departmental productivity?’  Don’t give the idea away now – you need his full attention to cover it properly.

5. If he is risk averse sell risk avoidance.

Sell the benefits of the idea and try to match them to his needs and priorities.  Show that you have thought about the risks, costs and downsides.  If your boss if risk averse then stress the risks of not implementing the idea.  ‘If we don’t seize this opportunity now, other departments could step in ahead of us and gain an advantage.’

6. Don’t ask for approval, ask for suggestions.

With some bosses it is better not to present a fully formed plan but simply to introduce the concept and ask for his input and advice.  Do this if he prefers to discuss things and shape them rather than review and approve.  This way you can let him form his version of the idea and claim the credit.  You will have the quiet satisfaction of knowing that it came from you.

7. Build a coalition of supporters.

With some ideas it is better to gain some initial support before asking for approval.  Who do you need on your side to help push the idea through?  Have a chat with them first.  ‘I checked with Betty in IT and with Bob in HR and they agreed that we can resource this if it is approved.’

8. Try the company suggestions scheme.

If your boss shows no interest (and probably never will) then you can always try the official suggestions scheme.  The evaluator may see the merit of the idea.  In any event it is registered and that means it can be discussed in the open.

9. Build it anyway.

This is the ultimate act of confidence and bravado.  Do it in your own time as a ‘skunk works’ project and then you can demonstrate the prototype to garner support.  Present it as a fait accompli and boldly shrug off any notions that it needed prior approval.

There is considerable evidence that middle managers block innovations.  So if you want your idea to succeed you will need a clever way of gaining approval.  Don’t give up; your organization needs innovators!

Paul Sloane

Despite the frivolity there was a hard edge to the event – its purpose was to generate ideas for new business ventures that would generate at least $100m.  We used a number of different brainstorming methods to come up with hundreds of ideas.  We whittled these down to 85 and then to 15 using criteria described in more detail in this article on Businessweek.

Tal Givoly, Amdocs Chief Scientist & organiser of the event

The customers then reviewed the 15 best proposals and using their feedback we selected three for development into business plans.  Three teams of 25 people worked for a full day on each of the three ideas and created detailed demos and presentations which were shown to a group of senior executives.  This was the climax of the camp.  Two ideas were approved and funds released for further prototyping work.  One was sent back for further work.  The remaining ideas were not lost; they will be examined in more detail.

Overall it was an exciting and enjoyable event.  The early wacky activities helped break down barriers and release people’s inhibitions.  This assisted us to be much more radical in approaching the real business issues. 

One of the customers was David Amazallag, Chief Scientist of BT 21CN who said ‘I was inspired by the innovation camp.  The first two days were highly valuable, full of creative sessions and enabled the participants to be “distilled” from their every-day work and to focus on creating new ideas. This concept was very fruitful and full of business potential.’

The participants certainly went away energised and motivated.  Time will tell whether the ideas deliver on their promise. 

Paul Sloane

Paul Sloane

Paul Sloane

Author: Franek, Wikimedia Commons

The next meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will consist of an Ideas Jam to be held in central London on the morning of Tuesday July 13.

This is a highly interactive workshop style meeting in which people generate creative ideas for challenges which have been brought to the meeting.

It works like this:

1. The meeting starts with an intensive speed dating session where every delegate meets every other delegate and discusses business opportunities and challenges. They are encouraged to find collaboration opportunities.
2. We divide into small teams and use various advanced brainstorming methods to quickly generate creative ideas for different challenges submitted by the participants.
3. Delegates select the best ideas and commit to feedback on progress against them.

You can bring your challenges with you but you are also encouraged to participate before the event via this blog and to submit your own business challenges as ‘How can we ….?’ questions.  You can also email them directly to me. 

There is a small charge to cover lunch.  To book please contact Pat Myles on 020 7654 5013 or E: pat.myles@bqf.org.uk. 

More details and booking.

It will be an exciting morning where you will meet great people and learn powerful creativity methods.

Paul Sloane

• Give yourself a time limit. Write for ten minutes say, and then stop.
• Keep your hand moving until the time is up.  Do not pause to stare into space or to read what you’ve written. Write quickly but not in a hurry.
• Pay no attention to grammar, spelling, punctuation, neatness, or style. Nobody else needs to read what you produce here. The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.
• If you get off the topic or run out of ideas, keep writing anyway. If necessary, write nonsense or whatever comes into your head, or simply scribble anything to keep the hand moving.
• If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you’re writing, ask yourself what’s bothering you and write about that.
• When the time is up, look over what you’ve written, and mark passages that contain ideas or phrases that might be worth keeping or elaborating on in a subsequent free-writing session.  

The idea is that the process overcomes apathy, fear, hesitation and other blocks to creation and action.  Once you have reached your time limit, read over what you have written and circle any points of interest.  You can use these as starting points for action, for brainstorming or for further freewriting.  Although this is designed as an individual activity it can be done in groups with people sharing the key points after an agreed time.  Once again the most important thing is that everyone keeps writing.

Paul Sloane

The argument is that the extroverts, who like to speak first and think second, will drown out the introverts, who like to think carefully before contributing.  Today I was running a creative thinking session for a major pharmaceutical company and I decided to try this.

First I read out the definitions of extrovert and introvert as given on Wikipedia.  I then asked people to self-select into which group they fitted.  It is important to stress at this stage that there is no judgement that one group is any way better than the other – they are just different in their approaches.  Happily about half of the people fell into each group.

We then did some advanced brainstorming using SCAMPER and ‘What if….?’ methods.  It worked well.  The extrovert group were lively and active with plenty of strong personalities and good ideas.  The introvert group was a little quieter but came up with ideas that were at least as good and possibly more radical than the extroverts.  In the analysis and feedback session the introverts said that they preferred the arrangement because they were not dominated by noisy extroverts.  So it was an interesting experiment that seemed to work.

Paul Sloane

Most managers ask these kinds of questions:

o Why are sales down?
o What is holding up production?
o What can we do about customer complaints?
o What can I do about difficult staff?
o What is wrong with the current process?
o Where can we speed things up?
o How can we stop all these problems?

These are good questions and the problems have to be addressed. However, by focussing our attention on the negative we miss the innovation opportunities presented by the positive. We should also spend some time asking questions like these:

o What are our key strengths?
o What do customers like about us?
o What is going well?
o What unexpectedly good things have happened here recently?
o What new customers have we won?
o In what ways have we delighted customers?
o What is it that only we can do?

By focussing on our strengths and capabilities we can see positive opportunities. If we concentrate on fixing the current model then we can easily miss new possibilities. All our energies are going into alleviating problems and weaknesses – this denies us the chance to create new initiatives.

It is the same with people. When we are toddlers everyone praises us and tells us how wonderful all the things we do are. Then as we go through the school process things change and the emphasis switches, the errors in our work are pointed out and teachers tell us all the things we could better. This is well meant but the impact on fragile egos can be severe.

When we get to work we are at first acutely aware of our lack of experience and authority. At our annual appraisal we are told the things we need to focus on to improve. We plan training and coaching to improve our weak areas. Our strengths are taken for granted and development focuses on our weaknesses in order to make us ‘more rounded’.

In business we have to figure out what the true assets of the business are – what are our core strengths and abilities? What can we excel at? If we are great at marketing but lousy at administration then we should probably stop spending time and energy trying to get our administrative systems fixed. Outsource it to someone who is good at that and let’s concentrate on playing the game we are good at – marketing.

In addition to fixing what is wrong we should spend time examining what is right. Look for success stories, talk to delighted customers, ask them what makes us better than the others and then build on that. Find the right partners to compensate the areas where we are ordinary or weak and free up time to find creative new ways to exploit our strengths. We need to find unexpected and unusual things that we do really well because they can give us the competitive advantage we need. Let’s focus on what our organisation is really good at and build our success on that.

Paul Sloane