Last Updated on 22 August 2016

This week at work, bulletproof your ideas.

If you’ve got a new idea, a plan, a program; find people you trust who can poke holes in it for you. Not someone who is going to agree with you, nor someone who will simply be combative. Get someone to provide instructive criticism.

The Starbucks marketing team used to practice this all the time. Often to implement an idea would require efforts from the Operations team, the Supply Chain team, the Creative team, the Legal team, the Customer Care team and others. So, instead of declaring or demanding, “This is our idea, now do it!” We would check with each group who had some stake in the program – see how we could make it better for them without diluting the program.

This worked swimmingly.

We got great feedback, fixed things before they broke, and had built-in buy-in from the various teams. We didn’t have to sell or pitch them on the idea – they were part of building it.