#12: So you have an idea
Why your creative genius gets ignored...and how to make it stick instead
Here’s a tale of two ideas.
Both started the same: I had a lightbulb moment of a way that my company could differentiate through content and gain competitive advantage.
Idea #1 happened earlier in my career. I proposed it, and it disappeared into the ether as soon as it was presented. Idea #2 was more recent, and not only was it approved but it ended up kicking off an entirely new, company-wide differentiation strategy.
Both ideas were good. The difference was in how I brought them into the world — and I learned that that actually makes all the difference. We’re going to start today with what not to do.
🚫 Antipattern: Stealth mode
Oh younger Lauren, you sweet summer child.
I had an idea, and I built a beautiful deck around it (which, as you’ll see, wasn’t actually the fatal error in itself). I worked on it all by myself, painstakingly laying out the theorems and postulates that would make it ironclad.
And then I shared it with my boss over Slack, who said “that’s nice, we can think about it later.”
💡 → 💀 → 👻
The fatal errors I made here were plentiful, but a few stand out:
I worked on it alone. What I know now that I didn’t know then is that ideas are more powerful (and better) when more people are excited about them because they’ve been included in their creation. (See: the IKEA effect.) I hoarded the idea because I loved it and wanted to own it, but really I created a system with one single point of failure — and fail it did. Good ideas can spread like wildfire, but you need the right conditions and the right kindling. This one suffocated and died, and it was my fault. I was greedy with it.
I sent it to where ideas go to die. Slack is the most interruptive, scattered, and ephemeral medium of business communication ever. Asynchronous is great, but it’s also a bit like sending a message into deep space. I would have had more success chucking a message in a bottle into the middle of a typhoon. Just based on my own observations, 50% of urgent questions go unanswered in Slack channels, let alone the important but not urgent stuff. Bad move.
I didn’t make it actionable. It turns out that theorems and postulates are actually for geometry proofs (who knew!?) more than business proposals. I didn’t spend enough time outlining how we would action these ideas or what business impact they could have, so my proposal fell flat. Like a parallelogram.
What I failed to do (and what I see junior colleagues fail to do) is stack the deck in my favor. There’s a better way to propose an idea. It requires a bit of teamwork and planning, but it’s worth it in the end.
💪 Actionable Tip: Cheat at board games
Proposing an idea is like a game of Reversi/Othello, the game with the little discs where you have to turn all the opposing players to your color and then you win.
The good news? You have an advantage. You can make a lot of moves before the big boss (the one who not only approves your idea but can make or break it with buy-in) even sees you’re coming. Bottom-up support is powerful, and if you can get buy-in from colleagues early on, that starts to flip the board in your favor.
Here’s the process I follow today:
1. Brain dump
Good thinking involves writing, so open up a doc and start explaining the context for your idea, the problems it solves, who would need to be involved, the outcomes you think it could achieve, etc. This is your private workspace, so get as much out here as you can. It doesn't have to be pretty; that comes next.
2. Add structure
Start moving things around until there is some structure to it. Let it follow a narrative that begins with the problem and ends with your solution. Make comments where there are questions or gaps — you don't have to have all the answers up front, but you should know where the potential questions are going to come in and be willing to invite others to contribute potential options.
Make sure you show your work: include a proposed action plan, investment required for that action plan in money and time, and the anticipated business impact/result from the action to justify the investment.
3. Share it with people you trust
"People you trust" does not mean "people who will agree with you." I typically choose some peers whose opinions I deeply respect because I knew they would have some constructive feedback. I want to know where the weak spots are, and half the time their feedback is something like "Oh, I don't agree here BUT what if we said or did this instead?" and it's a way better solution than mine.
Note: there is extreme vulnerability in this step. At this point you risk objections to the idea, including a very good chance that you have overlooked something that would make the idea not viable. This is okay! Better to have it die now than keep it stealth and risk looking unprepared when you propose it to your manager or higher.
4. Present it live
Rather than taking my boss through the 4-page (albeit now well structured) document full of comments from my colleagues, I put the proposal for the idea into a deck… but I actually share it live.
If an idea is good and impactful, it’s worth getting some time on the calendar so you can hash it out (and have at least some semblance of undivided attention). It’s also good to do this so you can explain the research you’ve done and feedback you’ve already gotten, especially if one of the first questions you’re going to get is “what does [colleague X] think about this?” “Oh, they actually proposed this part of the idea.” Instant legitimacy.
This also gives you the opportunity to ask questions back. What does your boss think of the proposal? Would would need to be true for them to adopt it? Here are some proposed next steps: can we run an experiment or put a follow-up discussion on the calendar with other stakeholders?
By socializing a good idea strategically, you can a) earn more support for it, b) have a better idea to propose when it matters, and c) have a stronger plan for execution.
Bending the Spoon teaches content marketers to think like content leaders by proving the value of their work. I’ll show you how to use data to prove content’s influence on pipeline, how to communicate successfully with executives, and how to build cross-functional relationships that make you an MVP in your organization.
💡 Big idea: Make your idea the obvious one
If you don’t already follow Benyamin Elias’ Substack Diamond Pencils, you should. This post from a couple years back is one of my favorites, and in it his main thesis is that a good proposal makes the solution totally obvious before you even get to the ask.
His take is a little different as it’s more about the actual substance of a great proposal, so I highly recommend reading if you want to dive deeper on the topic.
After all, I’m not the only one with a great idea. 😉
Yours in contention,
Lauren