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Managing Yourself: How to Save Good Ideas

From the October 2010 Issue
Managing Yourself: How to Save Good Ideas

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HBR: Why do so many good ideas generated by well-intentioned, talented people fail?

Kotter: We’ve been taught that once you’ve got a good idea, and you’re convinced it’s a good idea, then it’s just a matter of presenting it in a clear and logical way, and a reasonable group of people will see it. That takes care of that. The reality is that we’re presenting it to human beings, who have anxieties, contrary opinions, and a constant fear of what any interaction might do to their standing in the group. And then stack on top of that a basic skepticism about new ideas.

In the work that led to our new book, Lorne Whitehead and I found that there is a set—more than two or three, but not 100—of generic, recognizable ways that people express those feelings, and the basic effect is that it comes out as an attack. Even if your idea’s great and the logic is clear in your head, these attacks are tricky, and so the whole project goes off track and the idea doesn’t get the support it needs. It dies off. This happens all the time.

How big a deal is this? Is it a real threat to new ideas in organizations?

Yes, but the issue goes far beyond large-scale change, far beyond executives. That’s where I started looking, and I’ve done three or four research projects over the years that have shown a common pattern of how large-scale change works in organizations. One of the pieces has to do with helping people to communicate, bringing them around to support your vision, your strategy, your plan—and, in a smaller sense, just your idea. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that this is a big deal and that we’re not very good at it.

As we dug deeper and deeper, what became obvious is that getting buy-in for good ideas is a basic human issue; it’s a life skill. It’s just as useful to my 19-year-old daughter presenting a solution for a group project at NYU as it is for a 50-year-old executive in a business setting. Dealing with attacks on new ideas is a human challenge that doesn’t seem to be sector specific or age specific. I find that fascinating.

Why aren’t we better at pushing forward our good ideas?

Because all our systems and our attention are focused on the front end: Find the idea, find the new strategy. I first encountered this issue many years ago with Bruce Henderson, when he created the Boston Consulting Group. Bruce was a very clever, very interesting guy, and he called me when I was a relatively young professor. We had a series of lunches, and he explained that he and BCG had the strategy formulation concept really far along, and he was happy with that. But he wasn’t happy with the implementation piece. They’d give clients the great report, and then a few years later they’d learn that the idea hadn’t been embraced or put into practice. He was smart enough to see that this had something to do with human dynamics, and that’s why he was calling me, because I’m the behavior guy.

Henderson was one of the first people raising the question, and it continues to be a huge issue. Why? Well, it’s one thing to be able to generate ideas by digging up data, analyzing it, and putting it together in some kind of logical way. But gaining the support you need is an entirely different story. Whether it’s a little deal with half a dozen players or a big decision at a company with hundreds or thousands of people, you’re in the murky land of human nature and group dynamics. And look at the curriculum in business schools—compare the amount of time that’s spent coming up with the idea that solves the problem with the amount of time spent thinking about how we can take this idea and communicate it, get enough people to understand it, support it, and then go on and make it happen. I think the ratio in most MBA programs is easily 80/20.

You and your coauthor, Lorne Whitehead, in your new book, Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down, suggest a counterintuitive approach to gaining support: “inviting in the lions” to critique the idea. That’s challenging, and it seems dangerous. Why should we do it?

I noticed that some of the people who were able to mobilize support most effectively didn’t do what would be the natural instinct—use clever strategies for marginalizing people who you think, for whatever reason, aren’t going to like the idea and could be troublesome. These successful people went in the opposite direction. Not only didn’t they marginalize the naysayers, they practically embraced them. And I wondered, why in the world does this seem to work?

Another big issue I’ve focused on is the attention problem. Information overload has just become worse and worse. So the question is, how do you get people’s attention so that they understand and then embrace a really good solution to a problem? By letting the lions in, these people inevitably create some fire, some conflict, some drama that draws people’s attention. It’s like a little explosion. Of course, it’s not going to work if you don’t know what to do after everybody’s looking at you.

Or shooting at you. Then what do you do?

Again, the basic pattern is really simple and counterintuitive. We’ve been taught to pound people down with data and logic, to pull out our IQ hammer and just whack the guy who’s shooting at us so that he’s not a threat. But we found that the most effective people, instead of just spraying verbal bullets, respond in a way that is not only respectful but very short, simple, clear, and filled with common sense. It’s not easy for most of us to be respectful if we feel like somebody’s being unfair.

What if it really seems like people have it in for you? Does it matter what their motives are?

No. It’s impossible to really know. It could be that they’re jealous because you got the last promotion or because you get more attention even though they think their ideas are better. It could be that it’s an innocent skeptic, and one of the ways this skeptic has learned to test ideas is to punch at you and see how well you’ve done your homework. It could be a person who just likes to draw attention in meetings. The point is, it’s a long list of motives, and in some cases, people really aren’t trying to be nasty. And so you don’t guess. It doesn’t matter.

So, you invite the enemy in, let him shoot at you, and don’t shoot back?

Absolutely. The opposite of respect is shooting back. People may look at you, see that you’re shooting, and become sympathetic to the other guy, even if his attack wasn’t fair. As mother said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” So you take the higher ground. You’re the one who comes off as the statesman. It puts you in a better position for people to be sympathetic to your idea, to listen to you, to move toward you emotionally as opposed to away.

You and Lorne describe four ways people try to kill ideas: fear-mongering, delay, confusion, and ridicule. And you list 24 specific questions, arguments, and comments they’re likely to use, along with 24 responses. Should we memorize this list?

No. One of the things we did in writing this book was to go out and test the method ourselves—in meetings, working on projects, in daily activities. And Lorne did nearly all of the real testing; he was an amazing collaborator. He is a physicist who has helped run the University of British Columbia and has been a successful entrepreneur, and it was through connecting with him that this project actually got started.

We saw the pattern of attacks and created a list and distilled it and added to it, and eventually it grew to about 24. You could argue for more or less—and we did—but these seemed to be the most common. We also tried to memorize the 24. We couldn’t—but we found that it didn’t matter. What did matter in making this work was the right kind of simple, commonsense preparation.

Such as?

Well, don’t wing it. Smart people wing it all the time. They say, “I understand this. It’s a great idea. Let me loose.” Don’t do it. Depending on the issue, just a few minutes of preparation might be all it takes. Flip through the 24 attacks, asking yourself which ones you can imagine coming at you in this case, with these people. How can you take the generic responses and fine-tune them a bit to fit the context? On the other hand, if the stakes are high, a few hours of brainstorming with supporters on potential attacks and responses is more than worth the time.

Are there any other broad rules of thumb for responding to attacks?

There are five in total: Don’t push out the troublemakers; let them in and treat them with respect. Don’t respond in half-hour speeches that try to drill people into the ground with information, but communicate in ways that are simple, clear. Don’t let it get personal, no matter how much you want to lash out. Watch the whole group and don’t get hung up on the one guy who’s attacking you, which is very easy to do. And the last one is about preparation; don’t wing it.

This book and your last one, A Sense of Urgency, are quite short. And in Buy-In and another recent book of yours, Our Iceberg Is Melting, you use fictional stories to illustrate ideas. Is there a long-term strategy here?

Well, I’m trying to put into practice what I’m learning. One of my projects, which I haven’t published yet, is looking at some of the great leaders of the 20th century. One characteristic all these people have is an astonishing talent for communicating in simple and clear ways. And it’s not dumbing down. They’re just able to find the best way for people to grasp an issue. Another thing I’ve learned from observing great leaders is how often they tell stories. I don’t mean half-hour stories, but short ones about something that’s happened, either within the group or historically. They integrate stories into everything. It’s not 93 PowerPoint slides, each with 19 points, so that people start doodling, checking their BlackBerries, going to the rest room.

It relates back to the question of how to engage people. These stories aren’t just intellectual stuff. It’s not just data. It’s hitting at an emotional level. I’m seeing more and more that this emotional piece is huge.

You’ve been studying, writing on, and talking about leadership and change for a long time now. Do you ever get tired of it?

Not a bit. These ideas are only becoming more important given the way the world is moving, especially with technology and globalization. There are so many facets to this—I could be around 90 years trying to go deeper and deeper. When you get it right, it really makes a difference—to companies, to communities, to individuals’ lives. And that keeps me going and excited, always.


Jeff Kehoe is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review.