The Information and Knowledge Professional's Career Handbook

9

Winning support: ‘selling’ proposals with the business case approach

Many of our colleagues have indicated in various ways how surprised they were to learn through their careers how important it is to be skillful at the art of convincing. Getting others on board with a new way to do things, a new project, an investment, a particular hiring choice, changes in priorities – you name it – turned out to be much more challenging than they had believed. Rather than being no-brainers, the overhaul of the intranet, the launch of a needs assessment study, the usability test, or the feasibility investigation for digitizing an archival collection required a significant effort in persuasion before it was approved and funded. In other words, our colleagues ...