As a mid-level manager, when you spot an opportunity for the business to adopt a new technology, enter a different market, or improve a process, how should you approach the people above you so that they listen to your idea and act on it? Executives have a reputation for dismissing suggestions that aren’t theirs. Amy B and her two guests, Sue Ashford and Ellen Bailey, suggest ways to frame the issue, involve others, and manage emotions so that your idea comes to fruition.
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You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review.
I'm Amy Bernstein.
Middle managers should drive your business transformation.
That's the title of an HBR article published in April.
The authors, Michael Mankins and Patrick Leitre, both partners at Bain, implore executives to harness the ingenuity and creativity of leaders under them because that's often where breakthroughs come from.
Directors and department heads have uniquely valuable perspective.
They're deep enough in the day to day operations to appreciate the factors and assumptions that contribute to any given problem.
They're also close enough to the work to spot certain emerging opportunities.
All this means that they're inclined to propose solutions and ideas that are thorough yet doable.
Common sense, right?
But the reason Menkins and Litra implore executives to welcome bottom up change is that senior leaders tend not to.
I mean, think back to the last time you had an idea for changing how your company does business or for bringing in new business, different tech, a new market, an improvement to a process.
How'd that go over?
Did you feel you even had their full attention?
Michigan Ross Professor Sue Ashford says the overarching reason executives pass on an idea from a mid level is that they don't immediately perceive its relevance to organizational performance.
She teaches MBA and exec ed students how to sell their ideas up the chain of command and she's here to share wisdom from her couple of decades of research into that skill.
Ellen Bailey is also here with us because at Harvard Business Publishing she's the VP of Business and Culture Transformation and boy does she live up to that title.
She'll give examples of how she's applied Sue's thinking in her job, tailoring her pitch, framing the issue involving others, and more.