“Rome was not built in a day”
Making idea proposal, but check your ego at the door
Our ideas may, or may not be good, but not the best fit for the company, or situation or person. Also, just because it is not good now, does not mean you cannot continue to make suggestions moving forward, to maybe find a mix and match solution that works great some other time. Basically, we always want everyone to immediately see the value in our ideas, and jump on board right away. Very funny when I think about my own situations now!! So I am going to jump into everything in this situation we have all been in, multiple times, and how to deal with it.
This has come up for me many times in my career, where I forgot to check my ego at that door, and forget about how I felt about my ideas. There is always a good chance that your ideas will be shot down, or at least told that there are many things wrong with the idea as even as a BA you do not see the whole picture. What you need to keep in mind, this is the way all ideas are met, regardless of whether you are a Business Analyst, or in a position from another person in a different role. Thus, check your ego at the door and regardless of what reaction you get, know that you crafted an interesting idea and it was worth bringing up. There maybe some value their from the stakeholders point of view, and they may see it, or they may not see it. Ultimately, if they do not see it, no worries, move on, but make sure to store the idea for later, as it might be this was just the wrong time for the idea. Bottomline, leave the proposal knowing that a rejection is not a rejection of you as a person, but a rejection of the idea right now, maybe not forever, but for right now based on more factors than can be listed here. So check your ego at the door.
There are 3 possible scenarios that are most likely. The first scenario is your idea could get accepted as is, and want to run with it. Hooray!!! This is something you need to be ready for with an outline, or possibly a diagram to summarize the idea that the stakeholder can walk away with, or that will allow initial elicitation of requirements to move forward. All this does not mean to keep your ego in the situation, as there are 1000 reasons why the idea could be canned right after the meeting, up to just before launch of the project the idea was regarding. Thus even in this most ideal scenario, check your ego at the door.
The best case scenario in most situations is that the stakeholder says “yes, but…”, where basically they want you to know they like the idea, but this that and whatever would need to be modified. This is the best case scenario as chances of two people (at least) with different opinions to actually agree on all aspects of an idea, and want to implement right away, have the resources for it, and so on, is going to happen almost never. So this is the scenario you need to walk in expecting. And what you need to do is make sure you have that plan (diagram and/or outline) so you understand how to explain the approach you would take, and then you would have something for discussion to begin collecting requirements. The key here is that you need to expect lots of questions, as basically if there is lots of questions there is interest, which is fantastic!!! But again you need to check your ego at the door, as the process will likely be longer than you expect to get the idea, in some form, to actually get legs and get implemented, and ultimately the idea may never gets legs at all.
The last scenario is over complete rejection. And this is of course the hardest, scenario to swallow, as of course you have put real time into coming up with this idea. Again this is where it is soooo important to check your ego at the door, as you may come up with 100 ideas, and none of them get accepted. The thing is you are still bringing value to the company, and likely far more value than most people. So check your ego at the door, understand you do not know everything about the company, and your idea might be accepted, or not good for right now!
So the big take away here, is keep generating ideas, have a basic diagram/outline to be capable of explaining it to the stakeholder whom you feel would be most receptive and connected to the people that would sponsor it. Be capable of summarizing the idea in a few sentences, and then listen to the response. If they say they want to hear more and maybe modify it to allow it to get legs, great, if they do not accept it this is not personal and you are still valuable.
Being a BA, one ‘why’ at a time!!!
