Documenti di Didattica
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Documenti di Cultura
Championing Ideas
Inuencing Others
JOHN A. DALY
New Haven and London
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
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Advocacy : championing ideas and inuencing others / John A. Daly.
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Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
1
1
The Politics of Ideas
It is harder to get a good idea accepted
than to get a good idea.
stephen fri edman
If we had an Innovators Hall of Fame, it would include Tim Berners-Lee;
William Campbell, Mohammed Aziz, and Roy Vagelos; Patsy Mink and
Edith Green; David Warren; Clair Patterson; Joan Ganz Cooney; and Jim
Delligatti. Their names may be unknown to you, but each is responsible for
at least one extraordinary innovation that affects us every day. They have
something else in common, too. Each faced strong resistance from others
bosses, colleagues, and other decision makerswho often blithely dis-
missed their brainstorm, publicly challenged its value, or, in some cases,
tried to sabotage it. Each of these intrepid innovators came to learn what so
many other creative researchers, scientists, engineers, and business leaders
recognize: It is not enough to come up with a brilliant idea. You also need to
galvanize support through effective advocacy.
Not only did Tim Berners-Lee come up with what we know today as the
World Wide Web, but he also had to convince his employer, the European
Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), to support his work on the
Web. After pushing indefatigably for his notion, he nally won manage-
ments support. But then he faced a second advocacy challenge: to per-
suade CERN to make his brainchild freely available to the public. It took
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
2 THE POLI TI CS OF I DEAS
18 months . . . to persuade CERN directors not to charge royalties for
use of the Web, Berners-Lee says. Had we failed, the Web would not be
here today.
William Campbell was a drug researcher who discovered a cure for river
fever, a malady that every year blinded millions of people living in the
tropics. Campbell, along with his colleague Mohammed Aziz, persuaded
Roy Vagelos, then head of research and development at Merck, to develop
the drug, now called Mectizan. Then Campbell, Aziz, and Vagelos faced a
daunting advocacy challenge: convincing Merck executives to spend enor-
mous amounts on a pill that wouldnt make the company a penny, because
the people who needed the drug were some of the poorest in the world.
They succeeded, and Merck has since donated more than 2.5 billion tablets
(worth close to $4 billion). Today more than 25 million people receive
the drug annuallyand have their sightbecause of Campbell, Aziz, and
Vageloss advocacy. In fact, the World Health Organization recently an-
nounced that river blindness may soon be eliminated in Africa.
If you have a daughter who plays soccer or volleyball today, you should
thank Patsy Mink and Edith Green. In the late 1960s, Mink and Green
were two of the few female members of the U.S. Congress. Struck by the
absurd limits placed on womens involvement in college activities, they
shepherded through Congress, despite blatant sexist opposition, an innova-
tive piece of legislation called Title IX, which today guarantees girls and
women opportunities in education and athletics. In 1972, when the law was
passed, girls accounted for only 7 percent of all athletes in high school; by
2008 they accounted for almost half.
Every time you board an airplane, you might think kindly of David War-
ren. Working at the Aeronautical Research Laboratory in Melbourne in the
1950s, he dreamed up what we now know as the cockpit voice recorder.
Putting recorders on planes would seem to be an obvious step for an indus-
try that celebrates safety. But when Warren pitched his notion, he was
turned down at. The Royal Australian Air Force claimed that his device
would yield more expletives than explanations. The Federation of Aus-
tralian Air Pilots declared that no plane would take off in Australia with
Big Brother listening. He nally persuaded British aeronautics experts to
test his idea. Today, every commercial airplane contains a recorder in a
black box, and we are all safer because of Warrens advocacy.
Do you use unleaded gasoline? If so, Clair Patterson deserves your thanks.
He pioneered the idea of eliminating harmful lead from fuel. Another ob-
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
THE POLI TI CS OF I DEAS 3
vious innovation, right? Yet it took more than ten years for him to get his idea
adopted, so great was the political opposition. Energy companies tried to
stop his research funding; powerful industry opponents asked his university,
the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), to re him. But because of
his tenacious advocacy, all of us breathe cleaner air today.
When the Carnegie Foundation raised the idea of funding an educational
television show for children, Joan Ganz Cooneys boss at New York Citys
Channel 13, Lewis Freedman, said he didnt think she would be interested
in the project. She interrupted to say that she most denitely would be. As
discussion of the project proceeded, Freedman kept turning her down be-
cause he wanted her to continue to work on public affairs documentary
projects (she had won an Emmy on one). She thought getting involved in
the education show for children was hopeless until her husband had lunch
(on an unrelated matter) with Lloyd Morrisett, head of the Carnegie Foun-
dation. Ganz Cooneys husband told Morrisett of his wifes interest in doing
the research. That prompted Morrisett to call Ganz Cooneys boss and tell
him she was the person he wanted to lead the effort. As Ganz Cooney will
admit, it was a little bit tricky going around her boss.
Her involve-
ment didnt grow any easier. When she nally completed the project and
presented it to top executives, one of those attending the meeting asked,
Who are you? . . . Why would anyone be interested in your opinion? . . .
I just think its crazy.
Thanks to
Delligattis advocacy, burger lovers throughout the world can sink their
teeth into Big Macs.
Each of these innovators, and many others introduced in the pages ahead,
came to recognize that creative genius is seldom sufcient to make great
ideas viable. Persistent, well-considered advocacy is just as important. And
advocacy is what this book is about.
The products you nd on store shelves, the processes that make organi-
zations safer, more efcient, and protable, the innovations that let you live
longer and betterall originally sprang from somebodys mind. But these
innovative products and processes didnt magically appear the moment they
were imagined. Instead, the idea for each one needed to be sold inside some
organization before it became a reality.
Victor Hugo was wrong when he wrote that an idea whose time has come
cannot be stopped. Ideas can be stopped. Too often, brilliant ideas ounder
because of the inability or unwillingness of their creators to sell them to
others. Indeed, how many great ideas for lifesaving drugs, world-changing
technologies, and innovative business processes have fallen by the wayside
simply because their proponents were unable to successfully advocate for
their adoption? As the writer David Bornstein said: An idea is like a play. It
needs a good producer and a good promoter even if its a masterpiece.
Otherwise the play may never open; or it may open but, for lack of an
audience, close after a week.
Other awed ideas concern less tangible items. In one company, a sea-
soned advocate sold the idea of moving customer support offshore. As it
turned out, customers wanted support personnel with an intuitive under-
standing of their individual issues. They mutinied against the company and
migrated to competitors. In another rm, corporate communication man-
agers touted moving their companys internal newsmagazine to the Web.
The rationale was simple: it would save lots of money. Six months later,
after an expensive switchover, company executives were stunned to discover
that no one was reading the Web-based materials. Vital information was
not reaching employees. So the company had to go back to the old print
format, which people could take home, to lunch, to the restroom.
Most advocates dont know their ideas will backre. Their notions seem
great at rst. Wilhelm Normann created what we now know as trans fats
(bad for your body); Thomas Midgely invented and campaigned for Freon
(bad for the atmosphere) as well as leaded gasoline (bad for the body).
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
8 THE POLI TI CS OF I DEAS
And even failed ideas can teach valuable lessons. Some argue that Coke
gained a huge marketing advantage from the failure of New Coke (in selling
Classic Coke).
But such lessons are often quite costly, and many of the
people involved in a botched project wish the failed idea had never seen the
light of day.
Quadrants 3 and 4: Good Ideas
Lets look at the other two quadrants of gure 1, which show what hap-
pens with good ideas.
Quadrant 3: Lost Opportunity. If you have a genuinely great idea but cant
get decision makers to adopt it, your idea becomes a lost opportunity. It is the
ideas in this quadrant that led to the writing of this book. When good ideas
languish, companies lose the prospect of making money, and creative em-
ployees leave or become cynical.
Business history is dotted with stories of opportunities lost because peo-
ple within companies were unsuccessful in pitching their ideas. And those
neglected opportunities were consequential. Competitors seized market
share that could have been kept and increased if the good idea had been
adopted. Take the minivan. Who came up with that ideaChrysler? No.
Ford engineers came up with that ideathey called it the van-wagonbut
they couldnt convince management that customers would buy it. In fact,
one executive who endorsed it, Hal Sperlich, was red and went on to lead
the effort at Chrysler, which then dominated the minivan world for many
years.
Eugene Kleiner and many other early innovators left William Shockleys
Semiconductor Laboratory in the late 1950s when they failed to convince
him of the merits of silicon. Joining a small company named Fairchild,
these rebels soon dominated the semiconductor industry. Later Gordon
Moore and other creative thinkers at Fairchild left to create Intel for a
similar reason. Moore recalls that he was frustrated at Fairchild because
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
1 0 THE POLI TI CS OF I DEAS
it was increasingly difcult to get our new ideas into the companys
products. As the company grew, it became more and more difcult to
transfer the ideas and the new technology.
The inventors spent two years trying to sell the idea within Xerox
before they left to create their own company.
Craig Venter left the National Institutes of Health when his proposal to use
whole-genome shotgun sequencing was rejected. He went on to create
his own company, where the rst decoding of a whole bacterial genome
was completed. That discovery was heralded by Nobel laureate James
Watson as a great moment in science.
Why did Xerox miss its opportunity? Perhaps because PARC researchers
didnt understand that they not only had to invent things but also had to sell
their inventions. Douglas Smith and Robert Alexander, in their classic study
of the Xerox debacle, argue that much of the problem at Xerox was a culture
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
1 2 THE POLI TI CS OF I DEAS
clash between young scientists and corporate executives. Most of the re-
searchers had just nished school. Pony-tailed mavericks, they had little
respect for people in suits. As one scientist recalls, When we felt some-
times that someone was not worth talking to, we sometimes told them
that.
These inventors burned rather than built bridges. Even the more
mature leaders of PARC sometimes didnt grasp the value of pitching ideas
as commercial opportunities. For example, when George Pake, a scientic
leader at PARC, presented one of the centers ideas to executives at Xerox,
he emphasized the technological challenges that still needed to be over-
come, not the ideas business potential.
Quadrant 4: Success. Quadrant 4 is the home of good ideas that have been
promoted effectively. Great ideas that have been successfully sold within
organizations fall in this box.
Construction: In 1941, the many thousands of people working in Wash-
ington, DC, for the United States Army were spread across more than
seventeen buildings. General Brehon Somervell, an accomplished ad-
ministrator, imagined a single mammoth building to house them all.
Because of his successful advocacy, the government constructed the larg-
est building in the world. First labeled Somervells Folly, it is now
considered a national landmark: the Pentagon.
Automobile Industry: J. Mays and Freeman Thomas worked at Volkswa-
gens California Design Center. It took them three years to convince the
leadership of VW to resurrect the famous Beetle. The design only took
three days, says Mays. Selling the project took three years.
Lighting: Japanese engineer Shuji Nakamura spent ten years creating blue
LEDs at Nichia, a tiny chemical company on Shikoku island. Managers
continually urged him to work on other projects, and his coworkers
harassed him, telling him that he should quit, that he was wasting com-
pany money, but he kept insisting that he was close to an important dis-
covery. He nally created an effective blue LED, and Nichia has reaped
millions from his innovation.
If Lewis
had stopped pushing, the company would have lost a hugely lucrative
opportunity.
Pharmaceuticals: Richard Miller, a researcher in 3Ms pharmaceutical unit,
developed a new sort of immune-response modier to treat genital and
perianal warts. His bosses were so skeptical of his work that they told him
to move on to another project. Miller persisted anyway. Today his prod-
uct, marketed under the name Aldara, yields millions in annual sales.
Financial Services: In 1997, David Pottruck, a senior executive at the Charles
Schwab brokerage rm, persuaded his rms leadership to make a very
risky move: to create a full-service Internet brokerage business and charge
a commission of only $29.95 for up to 1,000 shares. Pottruck knew the
move would initially reduce earnings commissions the company received
for trading equities. In fact, since the companys leaders compensation
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
1 4 THE POLI TI CS OF I DEAS
was tied to earnings, his idea would probably take money out of execu-
tives pockets. Making the move was a huge gamble. But Pottruck suc-
ceeded in his advocacy, and Schwab took a leadership role in Internet-
based trading. Over the next three years, trading volume skyrocketed 183
percent, and prots doubled.
What do all of these idea champions, some famous and others less so,
have in common? They understood that for their ideas to be realized, they
had to become advocates. Advocacy is an exhausting but necessary skill.
Thomas Edison, a model of advocacy, was brilliant at generating publicity
for his ideas and obtaining funding for them. Robert Fulton didnt invent
the steam engine, but he successfully advocated using a steam engine to
power boats; even before he tested his version of a steam engine, he had to
sell his idea to wealthy investors. When the creator of Ethernet, Robert
Metcalfe, took aspiring entrepreneurs for tours around his Boston Back Bay
mansion, he reminded them that he didnt acquire the mansion because he
invented the Ethernet. He acquired it after spending a decade promoting
the idea.
What Is Advocacy?
Advocacy means persuading people who matter to care about your issue.
It is about getting listened to, being at the table when decisions are made,
being heard by people who make decisions. It is about facing and over-
coming resistance. It is about speaking and writing in compelling ways that
make decision makers want to adopt your ideas.
Sometimes advocates champion brand-new ideas, and sometimes they
suggest modications to existing processes, products, and problems. Henry
Ford didnt invent the car, but he created a new process to make it; Michael
Dell didnt invent the computer, but he came up with an innovative process
to sell it; Amazon didnt invent books, but it devised a new way to distribute
them, as did Netix for lms. Advocates might propose decreasing or in-
creasing the investment their rm makes in an initiative; they might request
changes to budgets, promote the reorganization of work processes, sell a
training initiative, accelerate development cycles, argue that a project needs
to be kept alive, or suggest candidates for important positions.
Advocacy means overcoming obstacles. Unsophisticated advocates think
they have been successful when decision makers give them a rst nod;
wise advocates know they must keep selling long after an idea is launched.
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
Copyright Yale University, From "Advocacy" by John A. Daly
1 6 THE POLI TI CS OF I DEAS
Studies of product development nd that administrative activities account
for 90 percent of the time it takes to get products to market.
So successful
advocates often must persuade slow organizational bureaucrats to speed up
processes.
Advocacy is also involved in attempts to stop or delay bad ideas. Indeed,
when people pitch ideas that fall in Quadrant 2 (Wasted Investment), the
arguments that others make to oppose those ideas are prime examples of
advocacy. While working as a scientist at the Food and Drug Administra-
tion, Frances Kelsey was an extraordinary advocate against the introduction
of thalidomide into the United States. The drug, created in the 1950s in
Europe to reduce morning sickness among pregnant women, often resulted
in serious birth defects. She persuaded the FDAs leadership that further
testing was necessary before the drug could be approved. And she relent-
lessly challenged the drugs manufacturer for data that they tried to hide.
For her work she received the Presidents Award for Distinguished Fed-
eral Civilian Servicethe highest honorary award the federal government
grants career civilian employees. More important, children in the United
States never suffered the horrendous problems that came from thalidomide.
Advocacy is as important in nonprot settings as in for-prot settings.
Fund-raisers must coax people to donate money, time, and ideas. In govern-
ment, the ability to sell agendas and propose alternatives to agenda items
requires incredible advocacy skills. Robert Rubin, former secretary of the
treasury and former head of Goldman Sachs, summarized the role of ad-
vocacy in government this way: Having a signicant inuence ordinarily
requires not only an important piece of work but also a shrewd sense of
how to get attention in the media, Congress, and elsewhere in ofcial
Washington.
General Wil-
liam Billy Mitchell fared even worse than Momsen. Mitchells strong
advocacy for air power in the military in the early twentieth century ulti-
mately proved successful, but it also led to his court-martial.
Advocacy isnt only about getting personal credit for an innovation, grati-
fying though that can be. Organizations prot, too. The future of any rm
depends on the ability of its talented people to passionately and successfully
promote innovative ideas. Successful advocates are catalysts for change.
Organizations prosper because innovations are directly associated with rev-
enue growth, market share, market value, and even the survival of the rm.
Societies, too, advance through innovations. Economists estimate that half
of the economic growth in the world over the past fty years can be at-
tributed to technological innovations.
They
probably have a great deal of emotional intelligence.
Yet personality doesnt account for everything. In any organization you
hear stories about people who successfully pitched ideas but who had none
of the advocacy characteristics identied in personality studies.
Anyone, at any age, can learn to effectively pitch ideas. With time, experi-
ence, and the skills discussed here, people of all types and backgrounds can
become successful advocates. Even experienced advocates must hone their
skills when their jobs change. George Marshall, in reecting on his rst
years of being chief of staff of the U.S. military during the Second World
War, said: It became clear to me at the age of 58 I would have to learn new
tricks that were not taught in the military manuals or on the battleeld. In
this position [chief of staff ] I am a political soldier and will have to put
my training in rapping-out orders and making snap decisions on the back
burner, and have to learn the arts of persuasion and guile. I must become an
expert in a whole new set of skills.
Highly involved
champions often wear blinders when it comes to their ideas. Indeed, they are
especially overcondent with pioneering ideas.