Because we all need a win sometime.

A really interesting read for class today.  We read an article called “Ideaicide”, that talked about the death of ideas, and how this trend of negative thoughts can be avoided.

Some of this is review from our organizational behavior and strategy classes, where it’s incredibly important to find the right people to support your idea, and address their concerns.  A lot of what happens in ideaicide speaks to something that is less accepted by designers, but constant in most MBA students’ curriculum: you need to make people like your idea before they will help you.

By attacking people’s real concerns and combining that with a personal connection, it becomes a lot easier to get an idea approved.  I’ve had this experience many times, ending in both failure and success.  In all my failures, I wasn’t able to connect with the client in a way that alleviated their concerns and fears for the new project.  However, all my success stories are ones where I or my team was able to convince the lead members and influential workers of the project’s merit.

This summer at IBM, I was able to get my project approved by doing a very long ‘road show’, where I presented my proposal to over 25 different groups during my internship.  Something I found extremely useful that was also recommended in the reading was to speak with people before going on the call or into the presentation, so that I could coordinate my audience’s priorities with the project’s.

In terms of the group, I think we’ve gone too far into idea-killing that it’s quite unrecoverable.  There are certain elements to the group that are causing a lot of strife – if we don’t accept everything this person says as gospel, we’re creating a personal offense to him.  I think it’s difficult and frustrating to work with, but perhaps I can use some of the thoughts here to get more points across.