My first response is "why?" From there we can explore what the actual problem is. If it's a rational "that won't work" with a plausible reason, we can just drop it there.
If I'm unsatisfied with their reasoning, I can either lobby for it if this person has influence enough to block it, or just ignore the person otherwise.
Unfortunately, in politics a good way to block something is to bury it in paper: "Hey that's great! Draw up a proposal and we'll bring it up next meeting!" For this you need to go full-on political, with all the crazy games that entails. At this point you have to decide whether it's really worth the energy or not.
I had one particularly terrible manager whose response to any new idea was "Great! Make a Github issue for it!" Some employees even made a meme of it. By the time my tenure there ended, the GH issue list was thousands of entries long with no action taken on anything, and no way to find anything in that huge pile anyway (basically a garbage dump by design). For these kinds of situations, don't expect to have any impact.
I'm not sure I agree with the the last 2 paragraphs. Maybe it could be abused by political types but I feel like making someone write out their idea forces them to think it through and sets up some filter for ideas. Honestly if you can't get your idea through something as simple as writing a proposal then how do you expect to it get through any other challenges that come up during implementation. Also, why aren't people following through on their great ideas? If they're actually so useful why are they sitting a graveyard of ideas?
> At this point you have to decide whether it's really worth the energy or not.
>Maybe it could be abused by political types but I feel like making someone write out their idea forces them to think it through and sets up some filter for ideas.
I think as your organization gets very big you need to do this to be able to have any overview, the problem is that when your organization gets very big this is also the time when political types start to use these tactics to gain more power.
Yup, there are good faith and bad faith ways to say "draft a proposal". I was continuing in kind with the "That won't work" themes of this article, speaking to the bad-faith situation where it's just a way to push the idea into a graveyard. If your manager is trustworthy, then of course drafting a proposal is an important step.
My first response is "why?" From there we can explore what the actual problem is. If it's a rational "that won't work" with a plausible reason, we can just drop it there.
If I'm unsatisfied with their reasoning, I can either lobby for it if this person has influence enough to block it, or just ignore the person otherwise.
Unfortunately, in politics a good way to block something is to bury it in paper: "Hey that's great! Draw up a proposal and we'll bring it up next meeting!" For this you need to go full-on political, with all the crazy games that entails. At this point you have to decide whether it's really worth the energy or not.
I had one particularly terrible manager whose response to any new idea was "Great! Make a Github issue for it!" Some employees even made a meme of it. By the time my tenure there ended, the GH issue list was thousands of entries long with no action taken on anything, and no way to find anything in that huge pile anyway (basically a garbage dump by design). For these kinds of situations, don't expect to have any impact.