How to Get Buy-In for Your Next Big Idea

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• The case for a four-day workweek is getting stronger– but are business leaders buying in?
• A new ranking reveals which companies are actually using AI
• The new Trump accounts could help children build wealth– but only if families can access them.

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So, you have a great idea for your organization. Maybe it has the potential to grow your company’s revenue or accelerate employee productivity. The only problem is that nobody else knows about it. In most organizations, a great idea without support is just another email nobody replies to. A great idea without a champion is a tree falling in an empty forest: it may be brilliant, but it won’t make much noise if no one is listening.

But in an ever-uncertain business environment where companies are constantly being asked to respond to new technologies and are expected to do more with fewer resources, organizations need a steady flow of new ideas to stay competitive. That’s a point we’ve previously explored in Why Your Organization’s Culture May Be Stifling Creativity.

So, how do you get people on board for your next big idea– whether that’s senior management or potential investors you’re hoping to woo?

For that, we draw on a recent HBR On Leadership podcast featuring Sue Ashford, professor at Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and Ellen Bailey, former VP of Business and Culture Transformation at Harvard Business Publishing.

Their main argument is simple: even the best ideas can’t sell themselves. You need to actually sell them. Merit gets you a hearing. It does not get you a yes.

Build Your Pitch with the Problem First

Start by defining the problem you’re trying to solve– not your proposed solution.

Most people build their deck the other way around, leading with the idea and assuming everyone already agrees on the problem. But if your audience isn’t convinced that there’s a problem worth solving, they’re not going to seriously consider your solution.

This is the most important step in getting buy-in, and it can seem really obvious, but it’s often made difficult when your audience doesn’t recognize that a problem needs to be addressed with the urgency or emphasis you believe it does. Build a strong case for addressing the problem. Have data on hand that you can quote. Is there a financial cost here, or conversely, a financial opportunity that you’re missing out on? You should also rely on other employees with influence in your organization who can back up your case– more on that later.

The key point here is don’t assume everyone is on the same page about the central problem your idea aims to solve. Be prepared to argue and defend it.

Consider the Arguments of People Who May Disagree with You

Every idea will have its detractors. You can’t ignore them.

Kurt Lewin, the psychologist who developed force-field analysis as a change management tool, explains that two forces exist in an organization:

• Forces that push for change (or what Lewin calls driving forces); and
• Forces that resist change and push for the status quo (aka restraining forces).

Push harder on one side, and the resistance often pushes back just as hard.

To loosen up resistance, you need to understand where your skeptics are coming from. Finance has costs to consider, operations may worry about implementation, and HR will worry about compliance. These are all restraining forces.

Rather than simply cranking up the pressure on your side of the rope, consider the arguments that address the concerns of each group. Lewin’s counterintuitive lesson– and it is a good one– is that you usually get further by loosening the other side’s grip than by yanking harder on your own.

Amazon makes its workers do a variation of this in its Working Backwards process for pitching and assessing new product ideas. Employees pitch their ideas by writing a press release that highlights the key benefits of their proposal from the customer’s perspective, and an FAQ that addresses any concerns customers may have. Both the press release and FAQ are brought to the initial meeting, where stakeholders read it then decide whether to strike down the idea or fine-tune it.

Know Who Really Influences the Room

Before the meeting, Ashford suggests mapping the people who will be assessing your proposal into three broad groups: allies, blockers, and fence-sitters.

It’s not an easy task to go directly after the blockers. Rather than confronting them head-on, you’re better off mobilizing the people around them to help you fight your battles. Your allies can help persuade the fence-sitters, who in turn make it much easier for the blockers to come on board.

Consider who each group listens to, who they trust, and who they view as the experts and specialists. Those are the people whom you first need to get on board as your key allies.

Every organization has ‘informal influencers’ whose opinions carry far more weight. Winning over one respected colleague can often be more impactful than trying to persuade half a dozen people individually.

How do you leverage the informal influencers in your organization?

Long before you present your idea to senior leadership, start having conversations with key people across your organization. Ask them for feedback, test your assumptions, and set up conversations to help you ‘socialize’ the idea before it appears on the meeting agenda.

Often, the most valuable people you can speak to have far more sway than their job titles would suggest. Gorick Ng, a Harvard career advisor, names five types of informal influencers who can each assist you in a different way:

• The Gatekeepers: Executive assistants or people who control your access to senior leaders.
• The Veterans: People who have been around the longest and can help you identify what’s worked and what hasn’t based on the organization’s history.
• The Experts: Subject-matter experts who can give your idea more credibility with their expertise.
• The Socialites: Well-connected employees who can introduce you to key people and shape your perception in the organization.
• The Advisors: People trusted by senior leaders who can vouch for you and support you as a mentor.

Identifying these individuals often requires you to observe the people who meetings or decisions tend to go through, who get invited to specific meetings, and whose opinion senior leaders often reference.

On top of leveraging them to improve your idea and uncover any weaknesses before the executive committee does, including them gives these informal influencers a sense of ownership. That’s crucial, because people are naturally more inclined to support an idea when they’ve had the opportunity to shape it.

Finally, Enthusiasm and Nodding Heads Aren’t Buy-In

A common scenario you may have encountered before is leadership loving your idea, but nothing happens after the meeting. Don’t assume that enthusiasm during the meeting is an actual outcome.

Approval can sometimes be a difficult decision for even the best leaders to make without careful consideration. Sometimes, small actionable steps can be far more effective in driving forward momentum.

This means asking for permission to move forward with considering the idea rather than approval to proceed. Push to schedule a follow-up meeting in the calendar, and use that meeting to address the pain points that may be holding things up.

Our take? The best ideas don’t win simply because they’re the best ideas. They win because someone did the unglamorous work of building out a case for addressing the problem, finding out who’d resist, and recruiting a coalition of trusted people in your organization– all before you’ve even pitched your idea.

So, if you’re sitting on a big idea and wondering why it hasn’t gotten the traction you think it deserves, start by working on your campaign. The idea was never the hard part. The campaign is.