How to persuade someone your idea is a good one

You've got a great idea, but you're struggling to convince the boss. What can you do to get buy-in?

Asking people to imagine the future can be hard. The future can often seem abstract and less important than what's going on right now. Even if they thought it was a good idea, they may focus on the time, effort and cost of making it happen. This is particularly true in situations where the benefits are less tangible and easy to measure.

There's a trick that can make your idea an easier sell, and it's based on the psychological concept of counterfactual thinking. This may sound like a Trumpian version of the reality distortion field, and in some ways it is. It basically asks the question: If the world were different from how it is, how might it be so?

For example, if you weren't reading this sentence right now, what else might you be doing?

Counterfactual thinking can be powerful because it engages your imagination without forcing you to confront all the uncertainties of the future. It's much easier to imagine a different present than a possible future.

Say you'd like to create an internal learning centre at your company. The boss will find it easier to imagine having the learning centre and all the benefits that would bring NOW than at some vague point in the future.

You can then ask: If we had this now, would we want to get rid of it?

This shifts the status quo, so that now in our minds we actually have a learning centre and might lose it. And as you know, fear of loss is a powerful motivator.

It makes accepting the existence of a learning centre as positive.    

The Details

Here's how you can get others on board with your idea through counterfactual thinking.

1. Assume whatever it is you want to do has already happened. Describe it in detail in the present tense using all the senses. What are people:

   1. seeing

   2. hearing

   3. feeling

   4. thinking

   5. saying

2. How does this new reality compare with what you actually have?

3. If you could, would you switch the new reality back into the old one?

Following Through

As long as you don't wallow in regret, it's a good habit to think about what the world could look like if it didn't look like it does. It shifts the focus away from trying to change things, which often makes people feel uncomfortable, to trying on a possibility for size to see what it's like.