Ask forgiveness, not permission
So you’ve got a bunch of ideas, and you want to try some of them and see what stick.
But you work at a place where you get a lot of…
That’s not how we do things around or here.
Or…
That would never work.
In these situations, a prototype is worth a thousand words.
My biggest career wins all started with me having an idea, running off to build a crappy first-draft prototype without telling anyone, and then sharing my idea as a demo.
Having some tangible that people can see and interact with can often help things click in people’s minds and get folks past mental hurdles like, “that won’t work here.”
I ask for forgiveness, not permission.
Does this always work? Fuck no! When you plant a lot of seeds, many of them never bloom. I’ve definitely gone down many rabbit holes that went nowhere.
But those weren’t failures.
I just learned what didn’t work, and carried that with me into my next idea.