Implementation
‘The man with a new idea is a crank – until the idea succeeds.’
MARK TWAIN
I’m sure successful business implementation could do with a (probably fairly dull) book of its own. I’ve worked at huge multinationals and at small independent companies and I’ve often been involved in trying to push great ideas through. And it’s rarely, barely ever been easy.
I’d go as far as saying that often, getting an idea implemented is a bigger achievement than coming up with the idea in the first place. The world is full of brilliant scripts and songs and inventions that never made it out of someone’s desk drawer. And the same is true of business solutions and innovations. There are many more in existence than get executed. Which is a terrible shame and a fantastic loss in income, productivity and competitiveness.
So the gazillion-dollar question is: how do you get your ideas off the flipchart, into the boardroom … and then into the business?
If I had a definitive answer, I’d be a gazillionaire. Very often it can be very difficult. Look back at some of the examples in this book and you’ll see that many of the solutions and innovations came from the top. Steve Jobs. Michael O’Leary. James Dyson. Not always, but it helps. Therefore I’d suggest that if you’re the CEO of your business then you’re going to find implementation a doddle, assuming you can garner the necessary resources.
For everyone else, the biggest barrier is usually other people: persuading those who need to sign off on the idea, and galvanising those who need to be involved in its execution. Here are five tips that may help you win over both groups.
i. Collaborate as you innovate
I mentioned this in the preparation section. Get the decision makers involved in the process – make them feel part of the ideation – and they’re much more likely to sign-off on it. Get the people who will be affected by the change involved in shaping it and they’re much more likely to embrace it too. Don’t present your idea as a fait accompli to either group. Invite their feedback; it may improve the idea and it should improve their affection for it.
ii. Develop a proof of concept
‘Proof of concept’ means showing in miniature – like a prototype or a small-scale ‘live’ test or a working model – that your idea is a goer. Before the movie Sin City was made, they developed a proof of concept; a short piece of film demonstrating that the green screen technique they wanted to use would work. (In fact, the short they produced ended up becoming the prologue in the finished movie.) How would you do a proof of concept for your idea? Or what’s the closest you can get to one, to demonstrate and ‘prove’ that your idea has a great chance of success and de-risk things for the decision makers?
PROBLEM-SOLVING TIP
‘It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.’ You could just go ahead with your proof of concept as a small-scale live test and film it (if appropriate) or invite the decision maker to come see it in action. Rather than try to get someone to give the go-ahead after seeing a conventional presentation of the theory, get them to agree to just scale up the live demo that you’ve already shown is working.
iii. Stress test
It’s not great for anyone involved to be in a conversation where one person says, ‘I’ve got a great idea here’, the other person says, ‘What about issues X, Y and Z?’ and the first person says, ‘Err … Oh.’
You must run your devil’s advocate session in advance, to identify any challenges to your idea and establish whether or not they’re real, if not why not, and if they’re genuine how you’d overcome them.
It’s important to show you’ve done your research and it’s important to have an informed, considered answer ready for whatever criticism may come your idea’s way. Don’t wing it.
iv. Prepare your pitch
I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said something along the lines of, ‘When I am preparing to speak to someone, I spend twice as long thinking about what they want to hear as I do on what I want to say.’ Five quick tips for making a strong pitch:
(a) What’s the headline?
You need a hook – a single-minded, memorable headline story for your solution/innovation. Online it’s called ‘link baiting’ – devising a headline that draws people in. ‘Why the world will end on October the 14th.’ ‘Eight reasons you need to starting eating kidney beans NOW.’ ‘What this little girl said to made the president cry.’ ‘Lose ten pounds in a week with this one weird tip.’ Look at the way some blog links compose their headlines to see how to come up with a powerful hook to summarise your idea.
Even a catchy name can help. Like ‘WiFi’. We all use the term and we all know what it means. Yet no one I’ve met knows what it actually stands for. It just rhymes. If ‘Wi’ is wireless, what’s ‘Fi’?
(b) Facts and figures
Go back to the list of benefits you did in the ‘angel’s advocate’ exercise in development. That list is going to be really useful here. And people find figures very compelling: can you monetise any of the benefits? Assign them a percentage increase in customer satisfaction? Show it will save an annual pile of paperwork as high as the Gherkin? Increase your market share by eight points?
(c) Face to face
Don’t just email your idea; arrange a meeting to discuss it face to face. Rehearse your presentation, make it memorable and be sure to arrange a follow-up meeting. Don’t just leave the idea with them, hoping they’ll action it; at the end of the first meeting, agree when you’ll meet up again to discuss your proposal further. The next step should always be either implementation or another meeting. Never just, ‘I’ll get back to you’.
(d) Find something analogous
Is there anyone else, in any other market, who’s used a similar approach to the one you’re suggesting, with great success? It may be worth presenting it, again to help de-risk the implementation in the eyes of the decision makers.
A word of disclosure here: in psychology this is known as ‘confirmation bias’ – finding a case study that fits your hypothesis and discounting examples that would seem to undermine it. Just because someone else seemed to have success with solution A, doesn’t mean you will. In truth there are probably thousands of variables involved in their success which you just can’t calculate. The timeliness for one thing – perhaps there was something unique about the time when they implemented their strategy that you can’t replicate because the world’s moved on since then.
But this isn’t about saying, ‘If we copy such-and-such a company we’ll definitely get the same result they did’. It’s about showing that what you’re proposing maybe isn’t as ‘out there’ and untried as it might first appear – and so maybe isn’t as risky as it might first appear.
(e) Make it easy
Sometimes people can have the attitude of, ‘I came up with the idea, now it’s your job to implement it’. Those are people whose ideas live in the neglected, forgotten bottom drawer of a middle manager’s desk in a grey office block on an industrial estate.
Because if what you’re doing is having a meeting basically saying, ‘I’ve come up with a great idea … that’s going to mean a lot of work for you to implement and it’ll hoover up your budget and there’s no guarantee of success but if it does work then I’m taking all the glory’ … well, you wouldn’t be surprised if they just smiled thinly and showed you the door.
Think about it from their point of view. If you were them, what would persuade you? First of all, because it was easy to say yes to: because the person who’d had the idea was willing to take on the task and responsibility of making it happen. In fact, they’d already done a lot of the leg work and got the fundamentals in place.
v. Persistence beats resistance, part 2
Here’s a quote from a LinkedIn piece (‘How to Create Success By Being Ruthlessly Focused’, November 2013) by multi-millionaire businessman James Caan of Dragons’ Den: ‘I was once giving a talk at a university when I was approached by somebody who wanted to work for me. Although he didn’t necessarily have the experience, he was very persistent and driven. One day he turned up at my office unannounced, and it was clear he was determined to work for me. I ended up creating a role within the business for him, and then a couple of years later he pitched me a brilliant business idea. Now he runs an entire portfolio of investments.’
We all know history is littered with examples of people who refused to take no for an answer, who just kept going (like J. K. Rowling, who was not only rejected by the first 12 publishers to see her manuscript, but apparently the publisher who took it on told her to get a day job as she’d never make a living writing children’s books).
Just as you’ve got to keep going in development, so in implementation. Persevere. If your idea – whether it solves a problem, capitalises on an opportunity or inspires innovation – really is good, then eventually someone will see in it what you did in your generation and development sessions.
Like I said before, the story of how James Dyson was turned down by every vacuum cleaner manufacturer he approached is now famous. But why is it famous? Only because he kept going and proved them wrong. If, after they’d all turned him down, he’d given up then we’d never have heard of him. And I’d still have a vacuum cleaner (with a bag) that loses suction.
Or here’s Lincoln again, this time with a quote that’s the antithesis of the famous Guinness slogan. ‘Things may come to those who wait. But only the things left by those who hustle.’
It also reminds me of a poster I once saw doing the email rounds. It was just typographic and said (using somewhat fruitier language), ‘Some days I feel like giving up. But then I remember just how many people I have to prove wrong’.