For all the talk about how important ideas are in business, ideas are really a plentiful commodity. What's scarce are the skills to get ideas through the myriad layers of bureaucracy that threaten to declaw, neuter, or bloat them beyond recognition. "There's this irrational notion that when there's a great idea, everybody will see it and rally around it," says Samuel Bacharach, author of Get Them on Your Side. "When you introduce an idea, you've got to think about whom you're going to introduce it to, whom you need on your side in the beginning, how you're going to increase your coalition, and at what pace you're going to keep it moving." The ideas that win are the ones whose creators use a carefully balanced mix of political and managerial competence to build a consensus. The faster, stronger, and more cleverly you do that, the more you'll be able to fend off the naysayers, critics, and tweakers.
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