Have you ever had a great idea at work that died on the vine because you just couldn’t get the right people to back you up?
You knew the idea was solid—yet it just wasn’t landing, no matter how clearly you explained it.
It’s not just frustrating, it’s discouraging.
You start to second-guess yourself OR wonder why your male colleagues can say something similar and their idea gets traction.
But here’s the truth:
- It’s probably not your idea that’s the problem.
- It’s how you’re building influence around it.
If you wait until the meeting to influence the decision, you’ve already lost.
Decisions are shaped in the conversations and relationships you build before you ever ask for something.
In this episode, I’m sharing how I secured $500K in just two weeks—not because I had a better technical argument, it was because I learned how to turn stakeholders into advocates.
How Strategic Relationships Help Your Ideas Gain Traction
My first management role was over Portal Services in IT. And I’ll admit, I had a lot to learn about the kind of leader I wanted to be.
My team was responsible for redesigning and redeveloping the intranet and extranet presence for our company, so it was a very large and visible scope of work.
Eventually, everyone in the company would be using what we built—so the visibility (and pressure) was high.
I managed a team of user design specialists and software developers that worked on this scope of work and they were all rock stars in their area of expertise.
Our CIO made the decision to purchase the software with minimal input from other technical leaders within IT, which came with its own set of challenges.
Regardless, our task was not to question the decision—it was to figure out how to implement it. And I had lots of confidence in my team that they could do it.
This software was complex and operated on multiple servers. An assumption had been made by our CIO that our Hosting organization had all the hardware they needed to operate it.
As it turned out, that assumption was wrong.
And suddenly, we had a major problem no one had planned for.
The Linux system administrator assigned to work with us had a lot of experience. He reviewed all the operational specs and informed us it would take 10 servers—5 for internal and 5 for external.
Hosting didn’t have any new hardware at the time, so we had to use what was readily available.
It wasn’t a long-term solution—but it got us up and running so people could start using the collaboration features our CIO had promised.
This collaboration software I’m referring to was critically important and provided a safe and secure way for our researchers to collaborate with external industry partners, universities, and tech companies on new technologies.
Aging hardware eventually caused the software to become unstable, directly impacting the influential researchers and partners who depended on it.
The request to purchase new hardware became my challenge to solve and I remember thinking, “I don’t even know how decisions like this get approved.”
My manager said there was a council that all the Directors attended that I would need to present the $500K request to.
He invited me to attend one of the council meetings prior to presenting my request, but I still had a lot of questions about how to approach this challenge.
So, I met with one of the IT Division Directors that attended the meeting on a regular basis. He had a lot of marketing experience and was someone I decided to ask for help.
The advice he gave me completely changed how I thought about influence.
He said:
“Don’t wait until the meeting.”
“Meet with every voting member beforehand.”
Let them know the:
- Date of the meeting you’ll be presenting at
- Amount requested – $500K
- Value it will provide to their organization—you see, this wasn’t just about hardware. It was all about the collaboration capabilities it provided to their organizations and those brought needed funding into our Company.
I knew that if I tried contacting the Directors directly, I would get nowhere. So, I called their executive admins and asked them to set up a 15 minute meeting with the Directors. And I had just two weeks to make it happen.
The date for the council meeting arrived and I only had about 5 minutes to discuss my request. As I looked around the room before presenting, I saw familiar faces—people I had already spoken with, people who already understood the value.
And that’s when it clicked for me:
- The decision didn’t happen in that meeting.
- It was made before we ever walked into the room.
And this is where so many women leaders in IT get stuck.
They focus on:
- Making the idea better
- Explaining it more clearly
- Hoping it will land this time
But the real issue isn’t the idea.
It’s a lack of influence.
I felt confident that the funding request would get approved because I had met with each of the voting members and secured their vote in advance.
And yes, I received a majority ‘YES’ vote and the $500K was soon transferred!
While this experience was a success story, I’ve had many in my IT leadership career that were not this successful, even when I had great ideas.
Because I didn’t understand the importance of developing allies and having an influential network of supporters in my early career.
And this is especially important for women leaders in IT. You’re often in the minority and that means your ideas don’t always get the benefit of the doubt.
The next time you have a great idea and want to gain traction with your leadership team…
Don’t start with the meeting.
Start with one or two key allies.
These are people who:
- Have influence in the room.
- Can advocate for your idea.
- Will help shape how others perceive it.
When you do that, everything changes.
This is exactly the kind of work I do inside my business, Empowered Women in IT—helping women leaders in IT become more assertive and develop allies so they can confidently deliver on their best ideas.
If you’re navigating a leadership challenge like this right now, I’d love to support you.
I currently have an opening in my 5-month Empowered Leadership Breakthrough program.
You can apply using the link in the show notes, and we’ll start with a free Discovery Call to see if it’s the right fit for you: https://empoweredwomeninit.com/work-with-tina/.
So let me ask you—who are the one or two people in your organization who could become allies for your next big idea?
Stay empowered and lead assertively!