How do you go about making yourself heard at work?

I once caught a fish using a piece of red yarn as bait on a hook. I was less than ten years old at the time, and I thought that was perhaps the most amazing thing in my life – to learn that creatures could live independently and yet be fooled by something so ridiculously transparent. Then I met voters.

Was that the kind of personal anecdote that you had in mind? I don’t see how it’s going to help, but maybe it won’t hurt.

But seriously…

Can you model the change on your own and test it with a closed user group to get their feedback?

I meant personal anecdotes about getting heard at work, but that’s a fun story too! XD

This is likely more than you want to know ;-)

An important component of selling an idea, airing a grievance, etc. is understanding the preferred communication style of the party to whom you’re selling or airing. Often, but not always, you’re going to have a sense of the “personality” of the other party. I’m painting some broad strokes here, and the finer details are important; but let’s say that the person you’re wanting to convince is highly analytical. You’ll want to effectively match that style in your communication: provide details, provide analysis of the impact of your recommendation, respect procedure and protocol, etc.If you want to reveal any observations about the personality types you’re dealing with, I can provide some generic communication recommendations.

I’m often approached with recommendations for change; and I always appreciate someone who is articulate (without being overbearing), passionate (without being overly emotional) and well-informed (without being a know-it-all). And that takes practice.

I’ve observed your postings on Fluther across a few years, and you strike me as one who possesses the positive attributes I listed.

Another general recommendation is to get as much information as you can about why you’re getting pushback. Are you unwittingly crossing some cultural boundaries; are you stepping on some toes; are you providing input at a time when it’s difficult for the other party(ies) to accept it????? You get the drift.

That’s great – thank you!

It is hampering me that I am new to the company and don’t have a good sense of many individual personalities yet. I also have not reached the phase where I’m pitching to a specific person. Let me add more detail…

We make a website that targets patients. This is a broad group and of course contains people with many varied diseases. I have an idea for a feature that would add value to the website for people with digestive diseases, but digestive disease patients aren’t one of our high priority target groups. I have a lot of good arguments for why 1.) we should care more about digestive disease patients and 2.) even if digestive disease remains a low priority, my feature idea is still a good and useful idea that provides value. I have not been able to find a good platform to present my arguments yet, though. Nobody is asking random software engineers about which diseases we should prioritize; it’s not our wheelhouse.

We have a special “hackathon”-esque week coming up in which we get to pitch ideas for things we otherwise wouldn’t be working on. I of course pitched my feature, but the pushback I got was that the feature is too large to finish in a week (which is probably accurate), so it’s not considered a good candidate for a hackathon project. But I still really want to make it happen.

Are you in Sales or Development? Depends on whom you’re trying to sell this idea. Your client / boss?

I’m in development. I’m trying to pitch the idea internally. My boss thinks the idea is cool, but he’s not the person who decides what gets into the final product. The product managers do that. More details in my previous post above ^

Can you make it more generic I.e. applicable to variety of patients and remove some fancy aka nice to have stuff so that it can be done within a week or so?

Keep pushing on the hackathon opp—that’s a great window that could open for you.

I’m obviously not in your space, but I’m wondering if you can outline a vision as to how the site overall would benefit from the inclusion of the feature for digestive disease patients. In other words, take the focus away from the narrow niche and expand the idea on how the feature could be extended more universally . . . or how people with digestive diseases will now be more active on the site because of the feature.

In preparing it for the hackathon, are their components of the feature that could be completed or can this be presented in more conceptual form? These are rhetorical questions—I’m just exploring if YOU can think of the idea in a different light that might be beneficial to your goals.

The pushback you seem to be getting would be that it doesn’t make business sense to allocate the resources needed to the project (and away from other projects), so there’s two ways to overcome that

1) Make your business case and back it with compelling information. Data is best here I think.

##,### people visit our digestive disease section, but 82% are gone within two minutes while our average visit is over five. I think a one time improvement in this section would allows us to keep those people on the site and provide long term value for our patients and the company. I think we could add the features in x weeks (including testing) and the features should last at least 4 years.

I might also check out the competitors in that area and see if there’s anyone doing a great job right now. A void is easier to jump in to.

2) Passion Project – Take it on yourself, convince others to be a part of it if you need to.

Dear boss ;)

I’m new here and getting familiar with the code base and as part of that I’d like to take on something that matters to me. I’d love to go ahead and complete the digestive disease section I proposed and take hack week to do the collaborative parts and finish on my own time. Do you mind if I fork the dev branch for the project? I think I can have it wrapped up in a month and then could review it with the team to see if it’s worthwhile to include in the live site. Worst case scenario, I get a greater familiarity with the development style and patterns in the site and code base. Best case, we improve this section for everyone without losing any dev time elsewhere. What do you think?

So the ideas for presentation during the hackathon must be arrived at by consensus? Are the software engineers expected to submit ideas as a team? And are there limits to the numbers of proposals allowed?

I honestly don’t know how the hackathon projects are chosen. This is my first time being present for a hackathon week; I’ve only been with the company under 2 months. I think, of the proposals submitted (they are submitted by individuals), some managers choose a subset that seem most promising and then we work on those.

I think I’ve already narrowed the idea down as much as a can for it to be usable (we call this a minimum viable product, or MVP, in the software world) and it’s still a wee big for a week. But I thought if we got a group of us working together on it that maybe it could be done.

You must assess the relative enthusiasm for the competing proposals. Then you must face the hurdles involved with convincing your peers to throw in with you on an effort requiring emergency flank speed. It’s a tall order, and I haven’t a clue on how you should handle it. I am however very interested in the outcome, particularly since you have such extensive experience with digestive disorders. I have no doubt that you will bring the necessary passion when fielding your case. Barely in the door, and confronted with politics!

Years ago I submitted a proposal for a new product that I thought would be very profitable. I spent a great deal of time on the proposal and thought it was quite complete. I received the proposal back within a week with a big red NO written across the front. A little confused as to why I got together with my boss to find out why. At first he said there was no cost analysis. I show him where the cost analysis was done. The he said there was no volume projections. I showed him that. We went through a series of objections I showed where each one was covered. Finally he said alright I didn’t read it. When I asked why he said you misspelled my name. It was an ei vs ie thing. I had no secretary at that time and all my proof reading was focused on the body of work. The point is that the reasons for rejection can be obscure and sometimes quite arbitrary. Finding out why it was rejected is the key to success.

BTW, I got my new product after correcting the spelling and it was a great success.

In the specific case that you’ve mentioned, can you make any predictions as to the improvement in process flow, cycle time, user satisfaction or other metrics that would translate to $$$ earned (or saved) vs. cost? It’s all about ROI.

Donuts always worked with the nursing staff. Weird. A lot of them were married to cops.

Sorry, I got nuthin.

I have no idea how to estimate specific numbers, but I have good reason to believe my feature would draw in or retain far more digestive disease patients – my good reason being that it’s the one feature I myself would have wanted in a website like ours if I were still sick. If we drew in more digestive disease patients, we would gather more data relating to the medications they are taking. Our data is how we make our money. This data would obviously benefit research on digestive diseases, but even if we’re not prioritizing digestive disease right now, many of those medications are also taken by people who have diseases we are more interested in (MS and lupus specifically). Also, the reason I’ve been given when I’ve asked why we consider digestive disease low priority is “we don’t think we have the potential to make much of a difference in digestive disease patients’ lives,” but I do think the feature I proposed would help people significantly.

I have no idea who to make this argument to. I’m not sure whether I will be given the opportunity to defend my proposal or if it will just be shot down silently. I’ve been trying to bring it up with the various managers I meet with on a regular basis. My boss thinks it’s cool so he might support me, but I’m not sure if his voice matters much more than mine in this conversation anyway.

What might end up happening is that I use this hackathon to observe and better understand the process surrounding hackathon proposals, and then propose it again at next quarter’s hackathon and talk to all the right people the next time around.

I would also be willing to work overtime during hackathon week to make this happen if I can’t get enough manpower behind it, but as a general rule I don’t work overtime.

Ok well first you really have to feel out the office environment. In my new job you don’t even get heard until you have “proven yourself” which is short for learning the office politics. If you are brand new to the job you’ll need to know if this will shoot you in the foot or not. Aside from that it’s all about delivery. You can’t casually drop an idea and expect a response. You literally may have to force your way in.
I personally would do a “skunk works” meaning either just you or a group of folks who are on board work on it off hours on your own. Get it to a working and presentable state. Then find a time when the key players can meet and formally request a meeting with them that they can attend, overprepare and pitch it. It’s very hard to say no at this point since it’s a nearly finished product. They’ll have little to lose. If the refuse and can’t give you an explanation that makes business sense then you may consider if your idea is really that good or if you are just not being heard and should start looking for a job where employees are respected.

@Jaxk

What was this product?

@SecondHandStoke – This was back in the days of X.25 and 3270 networking before the proliferation of the internet. It was simply a product that could connect a host computer to our network in a matter of days as opposed to months which was our normal lead time. It all seems pretty archaic by today’s standards but back then it was pretty trick.

@Jaxk – I still have to support tn3270 emulators on PCs in 2016 because major employers apparently still use the mainframe for reporting. There’s no end in sight.

Those things are a whole different beast.

Brain dead but still alive. Sometimes it’s better to just pull the plug.

As the new person, you’ll have to be a bit careful about not stepping on toes. I try to find out who can actually make a decision or who can influence the decision-making process. They are the people you need to connect with. If it were me, I’d also try to find out why people might not want to adopt the change. They may have previous experience you can learn from.

I wanted to make a major change to a program, so one of my first steps was to speak to the admin people. They couldn’t make the decision, but they could help me iron out any problems (or possible perceived problems) before I approached the decision-makers with my suggestions. You want to show you’re solving problems, or adding value in some way.

When you’re the boss, everybody listens

Just had my monthly one on one with the VP of engineering. I mentioned my desire to do my idea, and he says I’m welcome to spend the hackathon week on it, but I shouldn’t expect it to actually get accepted into the final product even after I’ve completed the work for it. My goal is to now do a fabulous job and knock their socks off so that they’ll want it when they see it. We’ll see.

@ucme When you’re the boss, everybody listens

I wonder if the corollary is true: If you can get everybody to listen you’re the boss!

If you’re in business then it always ALWAYS comes down to numbers: How much will it cost? What will be the expected increase in revenue? How soon will that occur? What are the ongoing expenses for maintenance and upkeep?

No serious business person would entertain an idea that didn’t come with SOME kind of ROI (Return on Investment) case attached. If you don’t have those numbers, and granted, they’re not always easy to come by, then you need to partner with someone in the organization who can help you to develop – and defend! – them. (“Defend”, because some will almost automatically say, “No, we can’t afford added expenses or investment at this time, because … because … because …”) You have to make the case – with numbers – that they cannot afford NOT to spend the money and do the thing.

@Mariah, I agree with @CWOTUS. So for your particular situation, can you find any stats that show how many people who are likely to access this site will benefit from the information you want to include? Even if it’s stats from other sources that show the prevalence of digestive ailments. You have to show them that this will benefit your organisation (or their clients) in some way. That you are solving a problem or adding value. Even though it’s important to you (and undoubtedly to those who suffer from digestive diseases), you’ve got to document who will gain from this work and why your organisation should bother to implement this change. What’s in it for them?

Does the organisation you work for (or their client(s)), provide any information about their strategic goals? When I apply for funding to do research or to advance a particular project, I have to show how what I’m doing connects to my university’s strategic plans. How does the work I’m proposing connect to their future vision for the organisation? I think you need to do this as well as doing a good job.

Let us know how you go. I hope you’re successful.

Hackathon is next week. I have a team three engineers who have agreed to work with me on this. We’ll see what happens!

Good luck!

That’s terrific!

Hack week has been super successful. I’ve worked insane hours all week, but we put together a really damn good prototype. This afternoon we pitch it – it is still far from guaranteed that it will get accepted into the website, but I’ve done my best!

You go girl!

Oh hey, I just remembered I said I’d keep people updated on this thing.

So people at my company really liked what we demoed last hackathon, but the follow-up conversations indicated that more work needed to be done before it could be considered for addition into the website (which I knew; nothing is ready to go after just a week).

A whole quarter has actually passed since I asked this question and the hackathon week has rolled around again. But NOW…..upper management suddenly really wants this feature, lol. It is no longer a battle – they want it and all I have to do is build it. I’ve been continuing work on it all week and I’m presenting what I’ve got so far in about an hour. It’s still not ready to go but it’s getting closer and closer and I no longer have to convince anybody, so I’m psyched.

That’s wonderful @Mariah. Congratulations!

That is great news!