As an employee, you are expected to have opinions and ideas and you shouldn’t be afraid to share them. Good employers love employees who are pro-active and can bring new things into the business.
But you have to know how to organize and present your ideas to your boss or management in a proper way or you just might be kissing your job goodbye.
Some problems that usually come up with presenting new ideas to the management is that if you have a superior, he might feel threatened that you are taking initiatives he is unable to take. Your co-workers may also be jealous or feel you are trying to outshine them.
So, it is important that you know how to carry everyone along and present your ideas in a way that wouldn’t backfire. Here are some tips to guide you in presenting new ideas to your boss or management-:
13+ Ways to Present New Ideas to your Boss or Management
1. Understand your bosses’ personality
We are all different in the way we see and do things. It doesn’t make one person better than the other; it just goes to show that we all have different strengths and weaknesses. Some of us are careful, analytic thinkers while some of us are spontaneous decision makers.
So before you present ideas to your boss, make sure you understand his personality so that you can tailor your presentations to suit his personality.
2. Be a credible employee
You cannot be on the list of worst employee of the month for six consecutive months and then suddenly have ideas and expect your boss to take it serious.
You must work hard on your personality at work and the way you present yourself so that you can earn the respect of your employers. It is only when they respect you that they can take your inputs or ideas serious.
3. Embrace the management’s ideas
Ensure that you are not pursuing your own personal agenda and that anything you are suggesting or trying to bring in is something that would help to achieve overall management goals and objectives.
4. Structure your proposals in such a way that it can be accomplished in phases
Before anyone can climb up to the position of a manager, you should know that the person has some unique skills of which analytical thinking is most definitely going to be one of them.
The management would want to avoid any ideas that may backfire and to prevent your ideas from being rejected; you should consider structuring them in phases such that it can be accomplished stage by stage and if one stage doesn’t work out, it would be easy to pull out and cancel the project before further damage is done.
5. Start with your conclusions
There’s something called an executive summary in business plan writing. Although it is the last part to be written in the business plan, it is the most important part and it contains all information about the project summarized into a page. This executive summary helps anybody reading your business plan to understand what it is all about easily.
You should adopt this strategy too when presenting your ideas to your boss; let them know what you are driving at early into the conversation/presentation because most people form opinions and decisions in their minds few minutes into the conversation.
6. Show them how the idea would benefit them and the company
You also need to show your employers all the ways through which your ideas would improve the company or contribute to the achievement of the company’s vision and missions.
7. You should also analyze the costs
If there are any financial or non-financial resources that would have to go into accomplishing the ideas, you should ensure that your employer is aware of it.
8. Present your recommendations
Don’t just present ideas without backing it up with action plans and an analysis of ways which it would be executed. You can urge your bosses to make faster decisions by showing them that you know what you are talking about.
9. Offer alternatives
It would also help to come up with some alternatives courses of action and leave your bosses with enough options to choose from so that if they do not like one idea, they would be able to choose an alternative.
10. Support your ideas with research and facts
Another thing to consider is backing your ideas with facts. You should conduct enough research about the idea you are presenting and ensure that you have enough raw facts and information to back your propositions.
For instance, if you are trying to convince the management to venture into manufacturing a new line of products, you must be able to prove that demand exists for that product and that the company would make profits if the eventually embrace your suggestions.
11. Make the idea his idea
You can make the idea seem like your bosses idea by stating that some of his remarks or complaints inspired you to brainstorm on how to solve the challenges and this is what you were able to come up with.
12. Carry your supervisors or direct bosses along
If you are going to be presenting your ideas to the management, ensure that your direct superiors are carried along and informed of what is happening and what you are trying to do. Bypassing your superiors to present your ideas straight to the management might boomerang.
13. Give credits to whom credits is due
If you engaged the help of any of your co-workers in the process of developing your ideas, please make sure you inform the management of this person’s input too. Don’t use people’s ideas and parade them as if they were your own.
14. Decide on how you would respond to rejection
It’s a two way thing; your ideas might be approved and adopted or it may end up in the trash can. However it plays out, you should be ready to accept the management’s decision without any hard feelings.