002 | How we help leadership say "yes" to our ideas

EDITION 002 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor Labs​
​READ TIME: 5 minutes

🗓️ New this week

I had no idea that this could be a superpower.

I've had a few colleagues and ex-colleagues point this out to me: when I was working at Intuit, I never got a 'no' from leaders.

I'd be asking the Head of Canada and sometimes the Head of U.S. consumer division for funds, for headcount -- or if you know my experimental work -- permission to break a rule or two or three.

Like many orgs there was a quarterly ritual around making requests. It was both an art and a science. You needed to bring a strong business case, but you also had to sell it.

Here's how I pitched my ideas to executives at a large tech organization to get a consistent 'yes' and support moving into the next phase.

Make a little room to think Now is a perfect moment to take a breath. 8 seconds in, pause, 8 seconds out.

🔬 This week's topic

Executive storytelling.

THE PREMISE

We want leaders to support our next idea.

In order for that to happen we need to share our idea clearly, frame its benefits in terms and figures that matter to leadership, and to pack our entire pitch conversation into as short a slot as possible in order to accommodate questions. Interested leaders ask a lot of questions.

Here's the rough frame of the conversation:

• framing our ask first
• painting a real problem scenario
• describing in parallel the ideal future opportunity
• showing the steps to move from problem to opportunity

Believe it or not, we want all of that content delivered in :10min .

That means we're cutting out all details, all explanations, all proof of how hard we worked to get here, all credible sources, etc. Yeah.

Leaders see confidence in brevity not over-explaining ideas.
We win by being brief, confident and clear.

Then we just have to handle the Q&A questions...

Remember it's OK to say "let me run the numbers and get back to you"!

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO GROWING IDEAS

Leaders make a lot of decisions. Some make a hundred a day.

Barack Obama famously reduced his wardrobe to just two suits so that it was one fewer decision he had to make every day:

Framing our requests like this is going to reduce the mental burden we put on leaders and also reassure them that we own the outcome of the decision, not the other way around.

In my corporate experience, the managers who were refused or delayed in getting approval were simply unclear in their ask.

They were rarely refused based on the content of their request but on its presentation.

HOW WE CAN USE IT THIS WEEK

• Take our big idea and break into into the format above. Asking Claude AI to debate each piece is a helpful use case.
• What's our ask - be crystal clear on what we want from our leadership without hedging or belittling our work. We own it.
• Frame the problem - we do this in parallel; describing how our customer feels the issue and also how the business feels the issue. Verbatim customer quotes are super powerful here. A business problem is usually felt in revenue loss, churn or costs.
• Describe the opportunity - without hedging or embellishment, we describe the range of expected benefits using the same terms as the problem statement. This is an estimate, not a commitment. The best business cases will ask team experts for their opinions, look at industry benchmarks, and cite company historical data.
• Briefly explain the plan - this is the biggest point of failure in most presentations. "Look at all this detail" sounds like "look how hard we worked" to senior leaders and is going to put the room to sleep. Instead we'll be brief, we'll adapt to changes, and we will follow up the meeting with an email sharing any details.
• Prepare just enough for Q&A - even I over-prepare for this and end up getting surprise curveball questions anyway. We try not to overdo it and answer genuinely. Politely ask for a chance to follow up for any question we can't answer in the moment. Most leaders prefer accurate answers later over guesses now.

When we're done, we thank our leaders for their time and then go and high-five our teammates waiting for us in the hallway.

Nailed it.

AN ASK FROM ME

Let me know if you would be interested in a more detailed voiceover for this topic. I sometimes have the space to record and share a ~5-10min talk track behind the slides I share.

Reply to this email and let me know.

Pssssst, hey

These are the early editions of Room to Think.
I could use any support to nurture my growing audience:

• Forward this to the author of your favourite marketing newsletter. Collabs are how newsletters grow.
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• I'm an active speaker and looking for more speaking stage and guest podcast appearances. A quick intro is more than helpful.

Did you learn something from this newsletter? Did you put it into practice? I'm dying to hear how it went. Please email letstalk@formentor.ca and share your thoughts.