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The Detractor-Supporter Technique for pitching big ideas

A simple technique to make your ideas heard

Author

Bruno Nogueira
May 18, 2023

One of the highest-leverage activities in your career is pitching a BIG IDEA.

Depending on what you do, this could be thing like:

  • Convincing executives you should chase a new customer segment

  • Proposing a new operational scheme to cut costs and gain a competitive advantage

  • Introducing a new product line

Entire careers are built on top of just a few of these big ideas.

If you propose one that gets the "go" signal, you'll probably own a big chunk of it…

… And if you execute it well, you'll soon be on the "fast track" to getting promoted and becoming a high-level executive.

This is why I love the tip one of our readers, Sarah, sent us.

I'm calling it the "Detractor-Supporter Technique".

Here is is, in her own words:

Before pitching any big idea in a team meeting - I always schedule 1:1 with a few people. Ideally, someone who is a:

- Detractor (people you know would oppose the idea) - Here, the idea is to just listen to some of their pushbacks against it. It gives me time to prepare for a response in real time or by the next meeting.

- Supporter (people you know would go along with the idea) - Ask them to visibly support you in the meeting and better yet, present their point of view on why this is a valuable idea.

This has been so much more effective than pitching your idea and having it get stuck in a brainstorming session in the meeting.

Besides the obvious advantages of (1) being prepared for the most obvious objections, and (2) being sure some people in the room will openly support it, it has other benefits as well:

  • You'll have new sets of eyes looking at your data to catch any mistakes

  • You'll know what slides or charts people find confusing

  • People will feel like the idea was validated by others and thus more likely to work

In fact, depending on how critical the presentation is (maybe you're presenting to the CEO), you could do to the extreme and validate it with EVERYONE present in the meeting. Another reader, Karol shared his tip:

Another tip that comes to my mind is the one regarding "Meetings".

One of the best tip I heard was that everyone you are meeting with should be familiar with content you want to present.

You don't want to start a meeting with CFO/CEO with one sentence 'ygh, these numbers are incorrect". It doesn't matter how beautiful your charts are - in one minute you lose your chance to present something you've worked for hours.

So keep in mind to consult about content you want to present before the meeting. You want to have a backup when in struggle with disccusion with CEO - comment from CFO could strongly support your thesis/approach and you definitely don't want to defend yourself on your own.

When all other people get known the deck before and agree with your conclusion it will be much more easier to present it in front of CEO.

(btw, these people can help you anticipate questions and become prepared for the meeting as well).

Back when I was at McKinsey, this type of validation for key presentations was one of the most powerful tools in the toolkit to create alignment and generate a strong perception of professionalism.

Still, I saw many people overlooking this simple act.

Maybe they weren't aware they could do it. Maybe they thought it was too much work to do this. Maybe they were a bit shy?

I don't know.

What I do know is that with just a couple of hours you can make your work much more effective and at least twice as likely of causing a great impression.

And because key presentations like these don't happen every day, the math is simple: with a few extra hours of work a few times per year, you can cause a great impression and own projects that make a BIG difference in your company – two powerful things that'll help you grow your career faster.