Creating opportunities in a corporate world

Talking with e over at pixelxpixel is always a though-provoker. I was talking with her about my lack of being able to figure out what I want to do with myself professionally. I have some big ideas about what I want to do, but I’ve not been able to figure out how to actually make those ideas a reality.

She pointed out that I am a relative newbie in the corporate business world (which is rather true). I have worked for corporations in every job I’ve had, but I’ve never been closer (in proximity) to the upper management than I am now. I used to think that proximity would be enough to be able to have my ideas and thoughts heard. I’m learning the hard way that that’s not true. At least not the way I’ve been going about attempting to voice my ideas.I’ve been pushing individual ideas to people, yet it feels like very few of them are actually understood and acted upon. I think e was on the right track with explaining why that is.

I don’t speak their language. I don’t know or understand their motives for choosing what they do or don’t do. I only know my perspective, and my reasons for having these ideas and why they would be good for our customers and our company.

As much of a pain as it would be to create one, a well-written and thought-out business plan is a great way to make my idea understood. I would need to prove to the company why it is in their best interests to follow this idea, and make it a reality. Money is king in the corporate world (yay, capitalism! in the words of Austin Powers), and being able to show how this could improve our situation is a great way for me to be heard.

I don’t mean to say that money is the only reason we do things at our company. Some people say that the company is trying to be more “client-centric.” Others want to be better than our competition. We don’t want to lose clients because we can’t compete. My feeling is that to become a client-centric company, we need to look past our competition. Not forget that they’re there, but to know what it is that they have to offer and that they probably have people that are just as good as the ones we have in-house.

To look past the competition, we need to not just make sure we do everything they do. In fact, I think that’s a good way to lose. I don’t think we need to offer the same kind of package they do. We should offer things they are either not capable of doing, or come up with some crazy new idea that they have not produced yet.

e’s perspective for me was this: show the upper management a plan, with the steps included, that will get us to that new point. Explain to them what we do great, what we should stop doing because it doesn’t do us any good, and how doing each of these things in a planned out manner can get us to where we want to be.

I have never written a business plan before, but now is as good a time as any. I want to be successful, and even though I don’t feel like the company is where I think we should be, proselytizing is not the way to get it there. I need to bring myself down to earth, and look at things from a different perspective. I may not like the way things look from there, but that may be the only place I can actually create change.

I don’t know that I can be successful in this kind of venture, but all I can do is try my hardest. I may fail, but I’m guaranteed to learn lessons along the way.