Challenging the Status Quo
Preparing Pitch
When challenging the current way of working, you often consider how the issue impacts yourself or your team and you might overlook the implications or consequences of your challenge for other people or teams.
Being sensitive for other people’s view and deliberately considering the implications of your challenge helps you to be prepared for the responses of the people around you and your team.
For your challenge to be effective – meaning accepted – you need to take three elements into account:
- Complete picture of the challenge
- Implications of your challenge
- Timing of your challenge
Complete picture
When coming across an issue at work, you might think that the issue is obviously visible for everyone and should be solved. That is not always the case. The issue that you encounter might be the consequence of a solution for someone else. In the bigger scheme of things, it could be that the inefficiency that you experience is smaller than the overall efficiency gains of the bigger picture. Therefore, part of the preparation of your challenge is creating a complete picture of the issue within the overall process.
Implications
Considering and assessing the implications of your challenge will help you to get your message across. Having the right arguments does not always mean that your arguments will be accepted by other people. They might have their reasons for not accepting your challenge. Creating awareness of these reasons will make the challenge more effective.
The only way to understand other people’s perspective is an open and honest dialogue. Listen to what they have to say and be clear about what is at risk for you and what is behind your challenge. In these conversations, do not try to convince. The focus is on listening and understanding their perspective.
Timing
Carefully considering the timing of your challenge is a key to success. It happens so often that a brilliant idea or a rightful challenge is ignored due to poor timing. Sharing your issue in an already heated conversation or just in passing by will not make your challenge being accepted. Making a deliberate choice when and to whom you are going to pitch your challenge will increase the likelihood of acceptance. It will not mean they will accept the challenge by default, but it will mean that your challenge gets the attention it deserves.