Working Outside the Company
The company that exists in a vacuum is one that isn't viable. Any business has ties to the rest of the world. There are customers, suppliers, and stockholders, and all three can be powerful allies in your quest to help the company.
Customers as Allies
It is difficult for a company to refuse to even consider significant customer reaction to an idea. Customers, in this case, can be single large sources of business, or they can be collections of customers that are small individually but large when considered together. Customers generally have an incentive to at least hear you out if you are suggesting something that could improve service, provide attractive new offerings, or otherwise positively affect the business relationship.
More significant customers should be approached directly through the team members that most regularly deal with them. Get their support, and you will now have an even warmer reception in your own company because management cannot readily discount them.
What do I do if there isn't a receptive significant customer?
Smaller customers in aggregate can represent powerful forces. Consider using a survey or other source of appropriate and accurate statistic to show trends and interests of customers on the average. It is a way of representing the customer view without having a specific significant customer buy-in to your goal.
Suppliers
The companies from which you obtain goods and services are another source of support. They include consulting firms, auditors, and legal firms as well as providers of components or ingredients or those who handle shipping and logistics. They have the obvious impact on costs but can also work closely with virtually any number of departments: engineering, purchasing, manufacturing, marketing, accounting, and so on. Get a supplier to buy into an idea, and it can communicate its support and enthusiasm to part of the company that is critical to your undertaking. A supplier can also help create a process or modify a term that might be the difference between success and failure.
Investors and Governors
This, the trickiest category, can be the most powerful as well. Those who own the company — whether directly or through stock ownership — and the board of directors that provides oversight have enormous influence on the thought of upper management. They often directly affect corporate strategy. However, corporate management often takes a dim view of employees contacting them and, essentially, going over the heads of direct supervisors.
Success generally requires a direct connection to one of the people, whether a director, an owner, or an influential investor. There are almost no circumstances under which you'll be able to approach someone on this level whom you don't previously know. Develop these relationships, if possible, before problems occur. That means you need to network and find someone who can make the introduction in a reasonable way, or use happy circumstance — like being asked to present something to some of these people — to listen for questions or requests and find ways of fulfilling them. Do so in a way that allows you to remain in contact.
