Your Idea Doesn't Have a Positioning Problem

If you want to make change in the world with your idea, then people have to act on it. In order to act on it, they have to think about it, which leads a lot of us to think that all we need to do is own the position of how they think about our idea in their head and everything will be all hunky-dory. But in order to do that, they have to know about your idea. They have to think about your idea, and they have to think about your idea in a particular way in order to begin to act on it. And so at one level, it makes sense that one of the things that thinking leaders tend to spend a lot of time and sometimes money on is positioning. The position that your idea or even you holds in your potential or ideal audience's mind. But there's something that I see over and over again in my work studying how people think about new ideas and studying the thinking leaders who have those ideas, and that is that in order to have strong positioning, your idea actually has to have standing first. Another way to think about this, a lot of times we think about, do I have credibility as a thinking leader? When in fact what we need is to have the idea have credibility separate and distinct from you first. Now, I know you're probably thinking, how is that supposed to happen? But here's the thing. Positioning is like owning real estate, right? But typically with something like real estate, you have to have permits. Permits, you have to have permission in order to build the building there in the first place. And ideas work in people's minds the same way. And that is something called standing, the right for the idea to be heard at all. When we talk about rights, things can start to get a little bit dicey. So I want you to think about idea standing as credibility, where the idea has credibility separate and distinct from you. Which is bananas, I know, because everything we've been told for years by people who personally benefit from you following this advice about marketing and positioning is you must be as credible or more credible than the things that you talk about. But that isn't the way people think about ideas. What happens first is somebody processes the idea itself. They determine whether or not that idea makes sense. Is viable, can actually withstand the probability testing that their brain is going to put it through. And if and only if it passes those tests, then we go on to question the source of the information as well. See, we're trying really hard as humans to discount and get rid of new information that we don't have to process because our brains, not us, some of us, our brains are pretty lazy. Even if we, or at least some of us, are not. Standing, this idea of idea credibility, is what makes an idea valid to other people, not just you. And let me be clear, this isn't about whether or not the idea is good. That comes later. It's about whether or not someone's brain decides, should I spend a few of my precious cells even listening to this in the first place? Who's speaking will have an effect on that, as will somebody's emotional state, all those other things. It still ultimately comes down to whether or not the idea can survive on its own. Standing in this kind of credibility, acceptability, right to be heard kind of way is a term we already know and use other places. We talk about somebody being in good standing. In the legal profession, it's whether or not your case has merits enough to be heard. That seems similar. In social situations, we talk about people being in good standing. In academia, there's whether or not your idea has standing? Does it come from a lineage of ideas where you can show that it is legitimately adding to the creation of new knowledge? To me, the fact that this exists in so many other places, this idea that before something else can happen, there has to be a positive assessment of whether or not that thing, that person, that idea, that case can or should go forward. Is not an accident. It's part of how we make decisions about what is and is not worthy of our attention, of our passion, of our action, of our effort, of our money, etc. Ultimately, standing in all of those cases is the idea of an irrefutable right to be there. And rights, if you think about it, are requirements. And this idea of irrefutable, unignorable, plays this role of proof displacing persuasion. So when someone or something has standing, an irrefutable, undeniable, unignorable right to be there, then we must deal with it. We must process it. It earns its right to go forward. It earns its right to be considered for a position. Say, for instance, you've got an idea that something like Connected Leadership, You can see how you could build some really good positioning around that, right? I mean, there's a lot of people talking about leadership. It's a perpetually interesting topic to some folks. The connection piece builds on a real strong interest and need for human connection right now. So again, it sounds good, but if someone were to push back on you right this moment and say, okay, fine, sounds interesting, but how is it fundamentally different than, let's say, adaptive leadership or transformative leadership or servant leadership, all of which which could probably claim to be some form of connected leadership as well. And by the way, all of which are legitimate academically founded leadership theories. Could you answer that? And importantly, could you answer that with anything outside of your own framework, your own experience, your own client testimonials, et cetera? And could you answer it with something other than data from elsewhere? Can someone immediately understand that it's different and why it's different, not just how? In a way that they intuitively see that it is different. See, the minute you start talking about your own data or even somebody else's, you're persuading. You're not operating from proof that person already has. Proof, and the kind of proof that already exists in someone else's head, that is what displaces the need for persuasion and, by the way, the need for positioning. So let's revisit. First, we need to solve the problem of connected leadership and approach existing without a desired outcome. Let's say our Connected Leadership thinker is really interested in helping organizations drive burnout-free results. So already listen to the difference. Not just, "What's your idea, Connected Leadership?" It's, "What's your idea? My idea is that Connected Leadership drives burnout-free results." "Oh, that's interesting. How is that different from Servant Adaptive Transformative Leadership?" And then our Connected Leadership person could say, Those theories, all really good, tell leaders how to behave. Connected leadership is about the conditions a leader needs to create. You need connection because people sustain the most effort to what they're most connected to. And the leadership part comes in because focus is what makes effort efficient, and that's what a leader can provide. Do you see how by putting that proof in place, the persuasion kind of takes care of itself? You're not convincing them of anything. You're just explaining. What it is and how it would work using things that they already know to be true. Again, proof displaces persuasion, and legitimacy is the precondition for influence. By connecting an idea, by talking about an idea in phrases and contrasts and in concepts that people already understand, by connecting it to an outcome that they already are interested and want, and by explaining how it would work using principles they already know to be true, Your idea earns the right, it earns the standing to be heard. Now, I hope you start to see why this idea of standing, this establishing an undeniable right to be heard, is critically important as a step that precedes owning a position. We've got to get the permission of the people that you're talking to, and more specifically, their brain, about whether or not that idea is credible at all. This kind of legitimacy to an idea, the fact that it makes sense to people on its own merits, that it's self-evidently valid, that legitimacy is the precondition of any kind of influence. But the best news is that when there is this undeniable right, this true standing with an idea, oftentimes the positioning takes care of itself because that self-evident right to be there is stronger than any claimed position. It's an earned one. How do you get that standing? That's where understanding how people think about ideas comes in so critically, because we need to make sure that it has those basic components of understanding that lead to potential alignment. What are those things that I talk about all the time? First and foremost, that if-then statement, that matched set of outcome and approach, of cause and effect, of stimulus and response, without both pieces being articulated in a way that people understand and acknowledge as being viable, nothing else matters. If you're in the middle of thinking to yourself, I just need better positioning, or if we fix our positioning, then everything will be different about this idea, and that if-then statement is literally the position that you take on the best approach for achieving that particular outcome in that if-then statement. It is a claim that you're making, and it's that claim to a piece of mental real estate that has to be there before you ever can actually have that piece of real estate. I know the distinction is subtle, but it's really important, and I would suggest it's part of the reason why so many ideas fail before they ever get out of the gate. Even the best positioning can't save an idea, a product, a service, an approach that does not have a defensible claim, thus standing, to be there in the first place. Take an idea, again, product, service, approach, et cetera, that you most wanna gain traction for, and then ask yourself, if someone pushed back, could you establish its standing on skeptic-proof criteria? Can you connect that idea to an outcome they already and undeniably want? Can you explain it using words and concepts that they undeniably already understand and undeniably agree are true? In other words, can you establish your idea's undeniable, irrefutable right to be heard? Do that and the positioning and the persuasion usually takes care of itself.