Tamsen Webster explains why ideas get ignored rather than rejected. Most fail because they're irrelevant, incomprehensible, or indefensible. Make your idea coherent by aligning it with what your audience already believes and cares about.
You may think your idea is amazing and world-changing, and frankly, I believe you. But unless and until it survives first contact with a skeptical or even resistant mind, probably not going to change the world the way you want it to. So how do we get there? I've talked before about how your credibility as a source is important, but how the credibility of the idea itself is Even more so, if somebody doesn't understand the idea, if they don't appreciate it, if they don't understand its power, if they don't see how it's different from something else that they're doing now, it will not go any further, even if it really deserves to. We call that idea credibility standing, and there's a lot that gets in the way of it. You probably already know from your own experience that objections are the enemy of new ideas. And yet some of the most powerful objections are ones that arise immediately and unconsciously in the minds of your audience. In fact, there are 3 entirely avoidable errors that are sure to kill your idea before it has a chance to even get started. Let's think of them as the 3 I's. Number 1, it's perceived by somebody else as irrelevant, as having nothing to do with who they are, what they care about, or what they're trying to achieve. This is super common and super easy to fix. Don't anchor your idea in a problem somebody doesn't know they have. Your job is to tie it to something that they are already actively and knowingly pursuing or caring about. Number 2 is they don't really perceive your idea at all, and that comes from your idea being incomprehensible, meaning absolutely unintelligible to them. That can happen because you are using words or concepts that somebody has never heard before. And contrary to popular belief, This does not create curiosity. It repels it. And that gets in the way of the attention your idea needs to be understood, agreed with, and acted upon. And the last one is a little bit more subtle. It's indefensibility, meaning I hear you. I understand what you're saying. I care about some part of it, but something about what you're saying, what you're claiming about that idea, either as what it will get me or what the activity is in the first place. Just does not track in my mind. It does not seem like a likely or probable solution based on what I know right now. All three of these entirely avoidable errors— irrelevance, incomprehensibility, indefensibility— can be identified very early on in your idea. The problem is when they're identified first by your audience rather than by you. So how do we fix this? One way is to understand that all 3 of those individual I's really fit into one big one, what I like to call coherence. Now, coherence here has a couple of different meanings. Number 1, it needs to be coherent to someone. In order to be coherent to someone, they understand it. They understand what's important about it. It has to be comprehensible. It has to be intelligible. It has to use words, concepts. Beliefs, principles that they already understand and already agree are true. But there's another kind of coherence that is just as important and is embedded in all three of those I's. And that's coherence with. Coherent with what they believe is likely. Coherent with what they believe is true. Coherent with what they care about. And this is where all of those parts really start to have an important relationship with one another. Put it all together and it really comes down to this. The key to standing is coherence. So how do you check for coherence in your idea? Well, let's go back to those 3 I's and check for those first. Number 1 is irrelevance. So you need to make sure that why something is relevant to someone is established quickly, clearly, right up front. If you want this particular outcome, then here's the idea. Remember, the second one is incomprehensibility. Now, this one has two parts to it, really. The first one is that it's incomprehensible in, "I don't understand what you're saying," meaning you've given me some kind of cute phrase or you're using terms and concepts that are not familiar to me. And so I literally don't understand enough to be able to put the pieces of the idea together. The other part of incomprehensible is that it's just absolutely incompatible with what I believe to be true right now. And I can tell you this, going right after somebody's belief, not a good way to get the idea heard. We need to work with what people already believe in order for them to keep listening. An idea has to track with what somebody wants and with what they know to be true in order for them to consider for themselves that your idea has that credibility it needs. The last one, of course, is indefensibility. So this is where you need to look and make sure first that you're not overclaiming with your idea, that there is a strong likelihood from a skeptic's point you that your idea would work and could work to deliver on the outcome you say it will. Best way to defend it quickly in the moment is to support it with simple concepts, simple principles that the people you're talking to already agree are true based on their own experience. Checking for coherence means checking to make sure that your idea is intuitively understandable enough agreeable enough, and urgent enough for someone to pay attention, align, and ultimately act. Your job is to convey that coherence so it has the credibility that gets your idea the path to impact that it deserves.
