Q. How do you compromise across generations?
You have to know the hierarchy of the most influential people. If you really watch a meeting or two, you’ll find out. They’re the people who don’t necessarily say a whole lot, but when they say something, everybody really heeds their advice.
If they’re against something, it almost never gets approved. If they’re for something, it almost always gets approved.
You have to [identify] who it is that disagrees with you. If it’s somebody that’s very influential, abandon it and move on to something else. If it’s somebody that’s not very influential, go to the people that are on your side and say before you present it, ‘Do you feel comfortable backing me up?’
You should always hit at least most of the management team one-on-one before you actually bring it out publicly so they’ve had an opportunity to express their objections. If you can get a couple of those key people to say, ‘I’ve been thinking about this; I think it’s a good idea,’ that starts to create that domino effect of everybody else going along.
When people don’t like a project, ask them, ‘What could change to this program that would make you support it?’ You can’t be everything to all people. But oftentimes, in that vetting process, your idea is refined and becomes even better.
The other thing that happens, too, is some people process information more slowly than others. They need to hear an idea several times before they feel comfortable with it. So if you present it a couple times, they start to think, ‘Oh, I’ve heard this before. It’s starting to grow on me.’
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