How To Get Your Ideas Acted On At Work | Jason Campbell

Hey everybody, this is Jason Campbell and today I want to talk about getting your ideas approved at work. How does somebody seem to have all their ideas get approved and everything they think about that gets acted on immediately? Yet you might find yourself being someone that's always sending some new ideas and nobody's listening to you or nobody's taking action on them. So what's going on? I've had a chance to interview a lot of people on the topics of bringing innovation, bringing ideas forward, how to be an internal entrepreneur, and really that's something that I want to get out of the way right now. You have an idea, good for you. A lot of people have a lot of ideas and unfortunately I need to bring the reality to you that an idea is not worth much. If all you have is an idea, then you know, anytime you have a thought, if you communicate it, it's very normal that most of those ideas will go to the trash. If you are working for a company that has a lot of different employees and your manager just doesn't seem to have the bandwidth or the attention to even hear your ideas, you have to recognize that they get to hear ideas all the time. Everybody comes up to them with ideas that are just verbalized, not too thought out, maybe not too many details were presented. And then they have to filter everything out because they have so many things that demand their time on a daily basis that they just don't have the patience to listen to one more idea. And so if you found yourself trying to share an idea and you feel like yours aren't being approved, I'm going to give you a few pointers on how you can actually structure your idea so that it actually becomes more than just an idea. It actually gets to look a little bit more like a project proposal. And when you bring that forward, you'll see that people are going to pay a little bit more attention. And so my first question to you actually is, why do you want to bring this idea forward in your workplace? See if you're coming up with some ideas. I actually want to congratulate you because first thing is that you're looking to improve the productivity within your workplace or you have a new product that you think that the market will need, there's a problem you want to solve, and so the first thing you really want to do a check in with is what is the reason why you want these ideas to be implemented forward? Is it because you want to be more recognized in the workplace? Well, if that's the case, I might suggest that this is coming From a more self centered perspective as opposed to wanting to serve the ultimate growth of the company, the end customer that's buying and really the impact of what the organization is doing and how your idea is going to contribute to making more of that impact. And so I had a chance to sit down with Kaihan Krippendorf. He wrote the book about how internal innovators can actually, actually bring those innovations from within a company. Because most people find themselves maybe you coming up with some great ideas and if the company is not listening to you, you might just leave that company and then become an entrepreneur and try to get that idea out yourself. Well, there is some advantages to doing that. If you think your idea is that big, just be ready to become an entrepreneur in the process. But most of the time your ideas are things that are going to fit within the exact context of the company. I know for myself I often look for white spaces where I work and just go like, hey, we've been doing things a certain way. Can it be done better? Can it be done more productive? And for me this is just the way that I think. I mean, I can remember even from my childhood, I would be that kid that would put on his rubber boots and get a pick shovel and while the snow was melting out in Canada, I would actually go into the field at the back where all the water was flowing down towards the culveres and I would actually start making the path a little bit more efficient so that the water would flow even faster. So I'm always obsessed with like process optimization. So I naturally come up with a lot of ideas on how I want to make every process more simple. And so when I come with an intent that when I'm in the company I just want to make things more efficient, then you're already coming with a good energy because you ultimately are looking to serve the company. So you want to do that. First check what is the intent and is it for the positivity of everything else within the company. The second is to really look at the need and the priority of that need. See, sometimes we come up with an idea and oh my God, I come up with a lot of them that are actually quite not needed. For example, I wanted to set up a house in Bali that we could run these amazing retreats and everybody could get together and connect. And I thought that'd be awesome. And if you do think that'd be awesome, then leave me a comment saying that we should set up a mindvalley house in Bali and definitely I'll come interact with you and see if we can make that happen. The reality is it wasn't really a need for the company right now. It wasn't even a priority. And so do you know what the priorities of the company is right now? And your idea, is it serving that need? This is where again, you're applying some of the concepts from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. First, seek to understand before you want to be understood. When you pitch your idea and you're not getting that reception, have you taken the time to actually listen to the needs of the company and make sure that you're idea actually aligns to those priorities? If that is check, then you want to move forward and see what are the types of value blockers that are in place that actually would stop your idea from going forward. A value blocker is realizing that your idea might actually affect another department. See, let's say you find a way to completely automate a process that there was a team that was actually responsible for that process before. Are their jobs threatened? Are they going to resist your idea? Are they going to object and against it? I remember when I worked for the government before, I came up with an idea that actually simplified the process so much that a lot of jobs are going to be affected. And now the government said, well, we don't really want to do that. And so they actually blocked the idea. I'm hoping the organization you're working for is actually looking to bring innovations and more efficiency. So that should not be a value blocker. But what if your idea actually takes away a revenue stream? Let's say you've come up with an idea to get people to connect. Yet one of the services that your company offers is a paid way for people to connect. That could be a value blocker. But that doesn't mean you stop your idea. That really means how do you transform your idea and build it out to take into consideration anything that could be a value blocker? So you actually structure your idea to be a lot more powerful than just an idea. Again, every step of the way you are adding more reason as to why your idea could be a good idea and you're tweaking it to fit whatever the needs of the company is and and taking care of those value blockers right now. Next thing is you want to act on your idea. So sometimes it's a question of does the chicken come first or the egg comes first. And a lot of time a company will be looking for data to validate your idea, but there's no data. The only way your data will come is if your idea is going to be implemented, but it won't be implemented unless the data comes. So what do you do? Look for minimum viable products MVPs. If you're a fan of lean startup. They speak a lot about that. But you can do that within the workplace as well. I mean, I'm doing this video series on YouTube because I actually think that I can give you guys a lot of value. I can make sure that you can learn these insights. And I'm doing it with minimal effort, making sure that you get the message. And I'm not disturbing many people within the office, although they're just working below me. I hope I'm not disturbing them too much. But still, I'm keeping things very simple so I can gather the data and make sure that it is a good idea. Your vision of your greatest idea might just start with something small that you can gather data right away. But it's important to take action because you're the one who wants to push the idea forward. Take some necessary action. And if you see you can do something that minimizes the risk, this is what's most important. Maybe if it's something that affects customers, you can actually call customers and get conversations going with them to understand if your idea is something that will be well received. So you can bring that forward in your conversation as you present that idea. And so then you want to look at the team. What kind of team exists around you, the team? Are they supportive of new ideas? Are you able to build a team together? And this is actually something that's really important to get. Opt in for your ideas. See, at the beginning I mentioned how some ideas really get to move forward quickly. Usually it's become the team has performed before, they brought ideas that were successes before and they have a track record. And so what you're going to want to do is bring the team on board with your idea and get their support. I've made the mistakes many times where I had an idea and I was so gung ho about it, I was maybe a little too strong on the act that I didn't involve the team. And when I steamrolled that idea forward and the team wasn't involved, they actually resisted it with all of their efforts. And I realized that, wow, if people don't feel that they have any kind of ownership of the idea, they're not going to support an idea. So involve the team, build a team, gather feedback, get some wins, gather the people. And, and this might even come across as office politics. Like, are you really going around Trying to get buy in from people. And yes, actually everyone within your company is like a client because you're working within an organization and so you want to get to understand your client. I mean, I'm writing a book about selling from love and one of the things to do to love is to actually understand. So if you want to sell an idea, and yes, the idea needs to be sold, if you have any kind of resistance for selling, just realize that the idea that you're pushing forward is about making the workplace better, improving the lives of the people around you. You go back to that intent and if it comes from a place of love, you know that you can push forward with the tools and the techniques to learn how to sell better, communicate effectively, communicate concisely, speak the language that they're expecting to hear, speak to the numbers that are relevant to them. If you're bringing the idea to a finance person, then give them the numbers. If you're talking to a CEO who's hyper creative, then paint the big vision and how you're going to get started now, but really build up that team which also leads into the final element, which is the environment. Your workplace environment needs to be a place that actually is going to support you having a lot of different ideas move forward. Innovation needs to be part of the culture and so make sure that you're in that right environment and if it's not there, see ways that you can cultivate it, maybe bring that as an idea to make your workplace be a place with a lot more innovation by accepting ideas and giving them this kind of framework on how to push them forward. And one more thing, options. If you're the kind of person that gets one idea and you put all your efforts behind that one idea and it doesn't get approved, you might be someone that gets really disappointed with that. I suggest that you continuously always come up with ideas and always work them through this process because you don't want to get too attached to one idea and get disappointed. Just know that that's one idea that is not for now and you can move on to the next one. This is a framework by Kaihan Krippendorf. Do have a look at his book about innovating from within. We'll put the link in the description below. And if you like this framework, you're actually going to end up with a big proposal. When you present this idea that has considered all of the aspects within a company to make sure that it's pushed forward and when you present it to people, they'll be like wow, you really prepared yourself. You must be really passionate about this idea. Make maybe we should give it a chance. I'd be curious to know if you've had a chance to test this and if it worked. Do you like this framework? Had you used something similar before? Leave me a comment and let me know how it's working with you. I'm gonna go and check these out, make sure I can actually give you some more feedback if you need to, to help those ideas move forward. And of course, if you like this video, give me a big thumbs up and definitely subscribe to the channel so I can keep bringing these more ideas forward to you. And coming up soon, we're gonna talk about your leadership skills and how you can nurture that within the workplace. I'll see you next time.