Every month on our site, Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching Inc., will answer your career and leadership questions. Please send your question to advice@anitaborg.org and it may be answered in an upcoming column.
Question: I have a great technical idea. How should I go about influencing it, and selling it to senior leaders?
Jo Miller answers:
I had the opportunity to speak with Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox’s Chief Technology Officer, at the Grace Hopper Celebration. As we discussed the skills that technical women need to be successful, Sophie seized on the importance of influencing, and explained her philosophy of what it really takes to influence a technical idea and gain buy-in from management.
Her philosophy: if you have a great technical idea that you want to bring to your leaders, don’t just try to explain it to them! You first need to do your homework.
In Sophie’s experience, “it is not good enough to have a bright technical idea”. As a researcher or a technical person, you alone won’t have the necessary credibility to influence all aspects of the business plan that you must produce for management that would ultimately get your technology into the hands of a satisfied customer
Step 1. Prove your technology will work
“Number one, you have to prove that the idea will work, by building a little prototype or building your code and showing what you can do”, she explained.
Step 2. Partner with people who have credibility
The next critical step is to use your network to accomplish what you can’t do alone.
Sophie said “I have seen too many projects led by great, passionate people fail because they tried to be a lone influencer. You have to get all the right people in the boat with you.
There are many technical researchers and engineers who will write their own business plan. But when it comes to areas like financials, marketing, and understanding what the customer really wants, the plan will lack credibility.
“You might be right, but the most important thing is to get those people who have credibility around the business plan and the market, from all the divisions, to say that your idea is really great and set it to your management.”
“You need to bring together the entire human fabric”.
Sophie Vandebroek was interviewed on this topic by Ed Donahue & Ashley Myers at the Grace Hopper Celebration.
Jo Miller is CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching Inc. which offers women’s leadership seminars and coaching programs. To learn more ways of recession-proofing your career, join Jo for a special session at the Grace Hopper Celebration in Keystone, CO on October 1, 2008.
To read more of her career advice, visit the Ask Jo archives.