What do you do if your boss doesn't understand your ideas?

Understand your boss's perspective, goals, and preferences. What are they trying to achieve? What are their pain points and challenges? What are their communication styles and decision-making criteria? By knowing your boss better, you can tailor your idea to align with their interests, address their concerns, and appeal to their value

Well! This is gonna sound easy, but I fully recognize from my past experiences how absolutely shitty this feels. I feel like understanding their perspective will help you better pitch but understanding their energy will help you actually succeed. Let me explain in the end business is an emotional thing as much as logical if not more. In the end, if you vibe well with your boss, he is more likely to make an effort to understand and even if he/she doesn't fully understand to take a chance on you. it's sad but true being a genius is not enough. You need to be likable. You need to create a relationship.

Prepare your pitch. To ensure success, define the problem or opportunity your idea solves or creates. Explain how your idea works and what sets it apart from existing solutions. Evidence or examples that support the value and viability of your idea should be included, as well as questions or objections your boss might have.

Choose the right time and place. To ensure you have their full attention, you should ask your boss for a meeting or a slot in their calendar. Choose a quiet and comfortable location that minimizes distractions and interruptions, and be flexible and respectful of their schedule and availability.

Deliver your pitch. Start by grabbing their attention with a hook that states the main benefit of your idea. Use simple language that avoids jargon and technical terms and supplement your explanation with visuals, stories, or analogies that make your idea memorable. Listen to their feedback, questions, and concerns, and respond respectfully and constructively. Finally, ask for their opinion or approval and suggest the next steps.

Diagrams and simple tables! One diagram worth more than 1K words... From my experience, visualizing the data can make the change. Managers (and almost everyone else) don't have the strength/time/patience to read long documents, or listen to a technical explanation for more than 2-3min. What you need is simple diagram, with not too much details, but with nice colors and arrows that explains your main point. Add to it a simple table with main cons/pros or the improvements you can get with your idea, and that's all.

There is your idea or boss's idea. There is always a right idea or idea that is right for that particular moment. Evaluate and reevaluate your idea and present it in a format convenient to your supervisor. Then, chances are high that they will be convinced. If not, you must make it convenient to take the back seat. If your idea is correct, you will find it will be implemented, if not today but tomorrow for sure. If both scenarios, you will get one most valuable lesson: learning for life??