My experience pitching disruptive ideas to multinational organisations started long before I became a producer of enterprise software looking to convince innovation-oriented companies that there is a better way to get the most out of their workforce.
This post takes a look at two big ideas I proposed to two colossal organisations once as an outsider, and once as an internal consultant. It highlights the grim reality of what takes place when passion and creativity collide with the corporate bureaucracy but how experiencing pitfalls of such provide invaluable learning for future innovators and entrepreneurs seeking opportunities to remove bottlenecks of such in the system.
My first big pitch
The year is 1992. Me and two of my brightest classmates team up with our favourite economics teacher doing a business project to pitch a proposal to McDonalds and Parker Brothers advising them to do a joint marketing campaign by leveraging Parker Brother’s Monopoly game board to promote McDonald’s food products. Mcdonalds welcomed us with open arms and acknowledged us giving us the opportunity to pitch our proposal to their management team in great detail, on-site, and on two separate occasions.
During the course of all this, we were featured in two local newspapers and in frequent contact with the McDonald’s Regional Management Team hoping to get clarity on what exciting next steps to take. I was 17 years old.
A few weeks after the enormous effort in delivering our presentation in person, providing a wealth of support material and the nerve-wracking excitement in bringing our idea in front of the McDonald’s Senior team, we received a written letter informing us there was no interest in a future collaboration.
Within a couple of years, the McDonald’s Monopoly campaign went mainstream breaking almost every marketing record in the history of the company. Coincidence?
Pitch #2
After my unfortunate experience with McDonald’s I finished university, graduated and launched my career in the banking sector. In the 16 years that followed I had the possibility to be based in 6 different countries following large-scale business transformation initiatives for which my curiosity continued to grow on how global companies inspire continuous innovation among their staff while naturally keeping their shareholders protected by safeguarding creative works and what the company perceives to be its intellectual property.
My final days as a career man climbing the greasy corporate flag pole brought vivid flashbacks to my time pitching to McDonalds 20 years earlier.
My grand finale unfolded in an unfortunate and highly visible dispute with a Branch Manager over the recognition or better stated, lack of recognition of contribution relating to a break-through idea I had not only single-handedly pitched internally winning complete support from our C Suite, but also successfully implemented by leading multiple teams through several cross-departmental proof-of-concept test pilots.
Trying my best to be humble, I felt it necessary to make it clear that the idea I brought to the company dedicating hundreds of hours in my off-time was the first of its kind. Furthermore, I showed how it supported our CEO’s long-term digital transformation strategy and that to date no idea of such had been proposed from anyone among the entire 26,000+ person staff across the globe. Finally, I highlighted that for a proof-of-concept test, its acceptance level by business operations was extraordinarily high with respect to all the other proof-of-concept test pilots I had ever been part of.
To make a long story short, my overwhelming level of disappointment reached an all-time low when seeing my ‘change-the-company’ idea that started off so promising finish in the weeds of corporate mediocrity.
My comments were not well received as I had hoped. I was informed that ‘self-promotion’ is frowned upon and that the time I claimed to have worked extra (e.g. weekends) to make the pilot a success was overestimated on my behalf. Adding insult to injury was seeing credit for the key highlights of the project’s success mysteriously fall onto the laps of specific inner-circle and ‘privileged’ middle managers who up until that moment had no involvement but began being magically named as key contributors to the project’s success by our Director in our Town Hall meetings. The final straw which broke the camel’s back came when I was told that an additional layer was to be put between myself and the C-Suite with whom I was previously driving the project directly.
When it came down to be a good corporate soldier and accept silently the highly discounted evaluation of my work and relinquish all I had brought to life to the newly named project leaders, I refused and turned to HR.
This eventually led to my long and drawn out company exit which to close the matter cost hundreds of hours of collective dedication and steep legal fees. Not to mention the termination of the test pilot which as far as I know was never brought forward after my departure.
‘In the midst of chaos lies opportunity’
Reflecting on this in the years to follow and being out in the field with my customers lead me to great enlightenment of the epidemic challenges that most organisations are facing today as middle management is struggling to support the CEO’s long-term vision to innovate the company with short-term hypothesis testing and tactical actions. Knowledge gaps and cultural deficiencies in areas of articulating ideas into value-add business initiatives which support strategy deployment are quite real and cost companies thousands of hours wasted in analytical confusion and stagnated decision making.
Through the above experiences, I also became aware of the true importance of having strong senior leadership sponsorship for R&D projects and what happens when big, change-oriented ideas are left to the middle ranks who are often disconnected to the long-term business vision, short-sighted, and focused predominately on immediate operational profits and often personal gains.
In recent years, this discovery inspired me and my talented team to bring several continuous improvement idea management solutions to the market including a unique strategy deployment product based on the Japanese ‘Hoshin Kanri’ X Matrix now being used by our clients to approach challenges in linking long term goals with short term initiatives and business hypothesis testing.
Summing it up
Great ideas are fueled by passion and nothing brings passion to a more pathetic demise than corporate bureaucracy and the politics that come with it.
Looking back at my experiences pitching my ideas to the big corporate lions, I realise that the two experiences above, as disappointing as the results achieved were, harmoniously make part of a greater opera and underline in screaming bold letters the need for change in the market.
With technology where it is today, there are immense win-win opportunities still waiting to be harvested by those companies looking to take a serious stance on innovation by investing in trusting their staff.
Since 2015 I have been fortunate to have been dedicated full time in leading an amazing and vibrant team in levelling the playing field in areas of organic innovation cultivation, talent management and large-scale idea crowdsourcing. Areas of such will allow companies of the future to stay competitive in their markets by driving cultural changes through enriched employee engagement programs.
With clients in Europe counting on us for continuous improvement and Industry 4.0 guidance coupled with our recent 1-year milestone servicing a group of innovation-hungry companies in the UAE (read full story here), it is probably for the best that I didn’t get the contract with McDonalds even if its Monopoly campaign is still running strong without me. Furthermore, I have no doubt that losing my 9-5 job in the bank was for the best despite my ex-colleagues who continue to call me asking for a copy of my proof-of-concept software that I took with me the day I walked out the door.
Have you ever had an idea that you felt strongly enough to promote at a wide scale?
What can corporations do better to promote free-thinking innovation among their stakeholders while ensuring trust and integrity?
