Diversity Woman Magazine

FALL 2015

Leadership and Executive Development for women of all races, cultures and backgrounds

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Soft Sell If you have an idea that you're excited about, you may be tempted to dive right in and schedule a formal pre- sentation with your company's top brass. "Tat's exactly what you shouldn't do," cautions Melissa Lamson, president and CEO of Lamson Consulting and author of the book #Women Advance. "Start talking about your idea informally to peo- ple who are stakeholders. Have lunch or cofee with people to socialize the idea. Formulate a message that's clear and concise, and repeat it over and over, to create a mantra about why it's good for the busi- ness." Ten when you do your for- mal presentation, she says, you can add some numbers and predictors, but your audience will already have warmed to the concept. Tat's what Richmond did at Ford. "It's important to fnd the key people whose buy-in you're going to need to be successful, and make sure that they're on board before you pitch the idea more broadly," she says. "Tat meant getting some of my IT counter- parts on board and the general counsel, to whom I report." Pitch Perfect During your formal presentation, dem- onstrate clearly how your idea will strengthen the company. When making a business case, numbers are key. But keep in mind that no pitch wins by num- bers alone. In order to "hook" your audi- ence, you need to translate those num- bers into a compelling story that shows the impact that your idea will have. Ford takes pride in its culture of eth- ics, which is built into its corporate DNA. So Richmond showed how an By Kimberly Olson E mployees at Ford Motor Company, like at most com- panies, sometimes face ethical dilemmas. If a vendor ofers a Ford employee tick- ets to see her favorite sports team play, can she accept? If an employee has lunch with a government ofcial, can he ofer to pick up the tab? To get answers, employees often had to do some digging. "But if people have to go search- ing through our online materials to fnd out about the law, they might give up and just give it their best shot," says Raphael Richmond, glob- al director of Compliance at Ford. "So we thought, what if we made it easy? What do we have with us all the time, whether you're a new employ- ee in China or a long-term employee in Germany? It's your phone. What if you had an app to answer these questions?" When Richmond stepped into her current role in Compliance two years ago, she was hoping to burnish the de- partment's reputation as helpers rather than a group that simply nags people to do the right thing. And creating a handy app that would give employees quick an- swers in sticky situations certainly dove- tailed with that goal. "We came up with a clear description of what we wanted," Richmond says. "It needed to be easy to use. And the bulk of the app needed to be available to you once you've down- loaded it, whether you have Internet ac- cess or not." But developing the technol- ogy would require company resources, so she'd have to sell the idea internally. We Mean Business > d i v e r s i t y w o m a n . c o m Fa l l 2 0 1 5 D I V E R S I T Y W O M A N 23 THINKSTOCKPHOTOS Accelerate Speak Up! Be Heard Like Richmond, you may have a bril- liant idea for your company. But your project will never get of the ground un- less you can make a persuasive case for it. So it's important to be thoughtful about how you approach your pitch. Tips for pitching an idea at work

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