Sell your ideas!

Sometimes the best ideas stay shy and are even killed before they even put an eye outside. 

Why? Mostly because the speaker and supporter of the idea failed to market and articulate the idea. What can you do to get what you want - every time? 

I use a story board most of the time to convey my messages supported by organised touch points with my stakeholders where I explain repeat my vision and the benefit they will absolutely get from it. It works every time, I do get what I want because of the following. also, I follow the tips below.




1) Believe in your idea/ don't give up! My rule is simple, if I do not believe in an idea, I do not invest one minute of my time even trying to understand why it would make sense. If I do however, that is a totally different story, I jump on the idea like a dog would jump on a bone! If I can see the value in an idea and see how it could impact positively my life, my company or client and that the idea excites me, I will do anything to turn this idea in reality. 

2) Build a crisp vision to support your idea: By nature, an idea is a thought standing in the head of an individual. It does not exist in the material word. Therefore, it is very difficult for people to relate as people tend to understand what they can touch and see. It is my role and your role as an 'idea seller' to develop a clear vision around the idea. People need to understand how your idea will impact them. The answer to the question 'WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?' is what people really want to hear. So be prepared. People like drawings and visuals, this helps them to relate and accelerates decision making. Make sure that you have a visual to present so that people understand how life will be when your idea will be implemented.

3) Know your buyers and stakeholders: Who will buy your idea or project idea? Who's the buyer? Your CEO? President? CIO? CFO? Who's influencing decisions? Who how politics work in your organization. Make sure that you involve key stakeholders. Think of your idea as a project... Find a sponsor that can influence your stakeholders. Know the answer to the question What's in it for me, for all types of audiences.

4) Build a story board: A story board is used in consulting to convince or compel to action. I often develop my story board in a power point presentation. I learned this when I was at Deloitte Consulting. The all deck is developed is a way to bring your readers to buy a specific idea or action. Before you prepare your story board think about the best story line - your readers and stakeholders need to follow your story (from the introduction to the conclusion). Your story board needs to be short and sweet, people tend to overkill presentations. Best story boards start with critical facts describing the context and follow with THEREFORE... (with the introduction of your idea). Then you sell your vision (NOT YOUR IDEA DIRECTLY), your sell the benefits that come to the vision (THE WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME) and then you bring your recommendations (idea) and actions/ decision points required.

5) Retro action: Did I ever get a NO when presenting an idea? Of course I did! Never take no for an answer if you truly believe in your idea!  Understand why you got a no at this point of time and guess what, if there are really a business case and benefits to your vision, go back to the drawing board and improve the way you articulate your vision! Adjust yourself and try differently again, and again and again if required. Do not expect different results if you keep on doing the same things you are doing... Change until you get it right!



Good luck :)

Motivate your team!

I disagree with the saying that it is all about MONEY. 

Yes, of course, stakeholders are looking forward to maximize business value but as a manager or executive we have to understand that there will never be any value created without human beings...

Having worked in consulting for most of my career, I crossed over many waves of thinking where for example, the resource would be seen like an asset, then like an enabler and finally like a HUMAN BEING and true contributor.

People are the common denominator for success, you could have the best technology out there for you to meet a market requirement and reduce your costs, you could have lean inventory to improve your cash flow, you could have the best warehouse system that enables you to optimize your distribution flow.. but hey... you need people to make the right decisions at the right time. The right people is all what it takes to bring you where you want. And those people are human beings, they have families, desires, passions, ups and downs like you. The human aspect has to be taken into account. It is over the days that employees were considered as "lower" and "less important" than you. They are surely not a number or a punch card. True, it still happens today that employees are not valued accordingly and I truly hope that ALL managers, directors, execs in the next years to come with completely shift that thinking.

Some thoughts:

1) Hire more knowledgeable resources than you: as an executive, your job is to hire the best team on the market. Hire that guys that knows ten times more than you do or that guys that learns like a sponge and set the bar higher for everyone. Think in terms of value added. Do not hire an individual if that individuals does not bring additional value to the team.

2) Remember that diversity is the essence of a team: Make your resources understand that there is no place for a one man show. I believe that the success of the best companies relies on the complementary skill set of individuals. Hire that guys or girl that just came out of school and his brilliant and creative, hire that individual whom travelled all over the world and brings in your company open perspectives, hire that individual that is more rigid and needs a structure to be successful, hire that resource that is ultra focused and result oriented.

3) Your people are the "cream of cream" of your company: Your employees are truly the richness of your company. Be the BEST employer you can be. Encourage high performance and make sure that they understand how important they are to you, your customers and your company.

4) Offer them what they need: Remember that there are different generation needs. 20-30 years old require to be challenged, need significant recognition, they are fast and want responsibility - offer them to travel the world. 30-45 years old need work-life balance, they have often small kids and are sometimes more reluctant to travel, give them nice work-life balance programs like an envelop of X$ a year that they can use for gym, travel, housekeeping... anything they need it for, offer them a management position. 45+ may start a new career, they started their family and are often more seen in a consultant role or executive role, if you want to keep them long term, offer them a retention program with stock units if you are a public company.

5) Really care about them: Be sensitive to their personal and business goals, support them in the achievement of their goals. After all, life is beautiful journey when we learn to work with each other. Celebrate their milestones. Remember that if an individual decides to leave your company to continue his/her own path, you need to support them. Departures from a company should be celebrated as if the resource was coming on board (in most cases).

Your program is public and sensitive to media?

If your program or project is highly exposed to media and press, you need to be extremely cautious on how you communicate information within your project team and to the clients and need to understand that there is near to NO margin for error, misunderstandings, schedule delays, costs overruns.

Manage media and press as a RISK throughout the duration of the program especially if your project has political components or affects the general public.

Having said that, what can you do that will satisfy your stakeholders and will reduce the media pressure on your project? I will give you my two cents on how you could save your program/project from this horrible stress and destruction iceberg you can face.

- At all time ensure that you have a clear program strategy: Have a crisp definition of your strategy and be ready to communicate it all time. People need to have a direction and to understand how the strategy will be executed. Build a momentum, ensure that your vision, the strategy and plans are communicated clearly. REPEAT, do not assume that people understood just because they were exposed once or twice to the vision, strategy and Plan!!! 

- Be on top of issue resolution: Show that you are in control, be proactive, don't wait that issues are escalated! Focus on critical issues and their resolution, work with your stakeholders and team members to prioritize well issues and so that everyone understands the impacts of the issues.

- Work closely with the stakeholders: Ensure that governance is well established, establish clarity in communications, work to get their buy in, involve them in issue resolution and in decision making process. Your relationship with all stakeholders will either help you or kill you, you need to create an environment of trust and a constructive environment where stakeholders will all walk in the same direction than you. Make them understand that they are a key component of the project success. 

- Focus on business benefits: the only thing that matters for your clients is to deliver expected benefits, find ways to bring benefits early in the process.

Meet your objectives and goals! Resolve what really matters!

Reputation takes time to built, seconds to destroy and everything you got to rebuild.

In anyway, the best thing you can do to have success is to continuously keep eyes on what really matters to meet your goals. 

There are zillion causes of distractions, make sure that every step you make does have an impact or has a link towards your objective or goal.

The recipee: FOCUS ON WHAT REALLY MATTERS THE MOST FIRST.


I will give you a slice of my own experience to illustrate how important it is to keep eyes on the objective no matter how hard, complex and difficult a situation or context appears. When I took over a multimillion contract a few year ago:

• the program had failed to deliver not even 5% of the contract after 24 months,
• was late by at least 12 months,
• was not organised to succeed,
• was not providing any visibility on resource requirement,
• did not have a fixed scope & fixed schedule, 
• prerequisites were not all met and not all understood by customers, 
• third party involved were not aligned to the master plan,
• turn around of staff had been a growing issue and
• roles & responsibilities were not clearly defined between client and us
• communications between third party's, team and clients were very poor.

The word that got around at that time was that our client did not believe that we could deliver the contract. By defecto, if your client does not believe in you, your competitors and press will be more than happy to point it out to you.


I knew, when I accepted this challenge, that it would not be easy but I believed strongly in the mission of the Program and could only see the end results we needed to accomplished. Well, some of my mentors and friends thought I was crazy. But hey, I believe that nothing happens for nothing and I felt that somehow, even if we were all over the place when I arrived, I believed in the team and thought that they just needed A DIRECTION.


Meanwhile, press, media, competitors and our own clients had serious doubts on our ability to deliver the contract. No matter why, the issues kept on growing and seemed to be bigger than the Everest! What can you say at that point, the program showed confusion, disorganisation and had red health indicators almost everywhere.


Here's what we did :

1) Understanding show stoppers - resolve what really matters!

Prior to my arrival, program issues were not captured systematically, they tended to be hanging around. The program manager would try to resolve issues on the go given orders to team members without documenting any of the solution trails and would react when an issue would be escalated to management. At the time that I arrived, senior executive would receive several calls and several e-mails from our customers in order to seek progress and confidence in the issue resolutions. With all respect to the program manager that was in place, he came with a disorganised environment and had a leadership style that would make things happen but unfortunately not in a pragmatic way. So some issues would be resolved but it felt that there was no proactive effort to resolve issues that kept on building on the plate.



This situation is clearly unacceptable, if you in your organization is unable to have control on issues and do not address them in a proactive and pragmatic way, you will certainly end up in the same shoes we were.



So when I came in, I told the team that we would not be resolving ALL issues at once and told them that we needed to focus on the issues that had the most impacts in our critical path. I believe it's a question on knowing or understanding what really counts and what really matters for you to deliver your project. Do not think you can do it all, start with most complex issues that are impacting your delivery and you will see endless outcomes. So when I came in, we identified 4 critical issues that were blocking our program. Without the resolution of those 4 issues we would not be successful in meeting our contractual obligations. So suddenly all of our effort when from all over the place to concerting the efforts with our client and third party vendor to identify solutions to resolve those 4 issues. For each issue, we of course identified an owner, assessed alternative solutions, came out with the recommended solution, identified actions to get there and target dates. When at our level we agreed between parties on the action plan, we presented the action plan to our executive committee and presented them to our stakeholders (in our program there are about 50 stakeholders as we are delivering our solution to several government sites).