A mental hack for surviving bad bosses | Beth Comstock | Big Think

A mental hack for surviving bad bosses

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What do you do when "gatekeeper" bosses say no to your great ideas? You go back and pitch them again, says Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair of GE. She learned that it doesn't matter how great your track record is - you can still hear a "no" to your proposal. But what's important is whether you have the passion and the resilience to get back out there and keep pursuing your idea until it's implemented.

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BETH COMSTOCK:

Beth Comstock navigates change. She prepares for it, inspires it, and considers it an essential part of the growth of both individuals and organizations.

For Beth, organizational change starts with the self. Before she ever lead the transformation of a team or corporation, she learned to rely on her natural curiosity to provoke growth within herself.

She infused her life and work with the habit of discovery, of ideas, places, people even during times of discomfort. She continues her quest for evolution having recently stepped down from her position as Vice Chair of GE, the first woman ever to hold the post, and now exploring a path as an author, instigator, and connector.

Over nearly two decades at GE, she led efforts to accelerate new growth and innovation, helping to transform a process-heavy, top-down culture to a faster, agile, and inventive one. Beth initiated GE's digital and clean-energy transformations, developed new businesses, increased GE's brand value and sales, and partnered to enhance its inventive culture. She led the creation of Current, an intelligent environments business, GE Ventures & Licensing, FastWorks, ecomagination and healthymagination, and oversaw GE Lighting. She was responsible for the sales, marketing, and communications functions, and was the company's first Chief Marketing Officer in 20 years.

As President of Integrated Media at NBC Universal, Beth oversaw ad revenue and the company's digital efforts, including early development of hulu.com. She held a succession of marketing and communications roles at GE, NBC, CBS and Turner Broadcasting/CNN.

Beth is a director at Nike and trustee of The National Geographic Society. She graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in biology.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Beth Comstock: Yes, so “‘no’ equals ‘not yet’” is one of my kind of favorite mantras and a mental hack that was very helpful to me.

I think early in my career I—like many people—worked for a classic “gatekeeper” boss and he “had all the answers,” and the team got quite frustrated.

We thought we had a different way, different ideas to keep us contemporary and move forward, and he said no. I ended up leaving that job because I thought the gatekeeper was standing in my way. And what I came to realize is that gatekeepers exist everywhere. They’re probably even in our own head sometimes, where we just say we can’t do it.

And so out of that experience I realized there were a lot of ways I could have kept going back and trying a different approach with the gatekeeper. And I learned that with other gatekeepers and that “no” is “not yet”. So just because you hear no the first time, it doesn’t mean no is final.

And I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen in the course of my career – I’m talking people just starting out which may be a little bit more understandable because you don’t know yet—all the way up to CEOs. When they hear no from whatever person they’re pitching an idea to they leave and you never see them again with that idea.

And you think well, you had all this passion. You had all this insight. Someone told you no and you just let it dissipate? It’s gone?

So to me I had to learn like “no” perhaps is an invitation. An invitation to come back again to try it. I had a three time rule that I would often use with different bosses I had where I felt like I needed at least three times to go back with the idea. What I learned is two things. One is I’m testing the idea myself: I’m trying to like put the right words together. Sometimes it’s just the words are wrong; The story is not there; I’m not being clear.

And I think if it’s the manager or someone is coming to you, you’re testing their passion for it. You’re testing how good an idea they think it is, because if somebody’s pitching you an idea but they’re not that excited about it you’re counting on them to go forward. So I think this idea of “no is not yet” is a resiliency test. It’s a way to say “how much do you care about that idea, how much do you...

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