Frank: “I thought when I got the title, everyone would listen to me. But I’ve never been so frustrated in all my life.”
Frank is a Fellow in one of Silicon Valley’s largest high-tech companies. “Fellow” is an extremely prestigious and the most senior title one can achieve in a scientific or engineering career. Fellows are the geniuses behind the inventions we all enjoy.
So far, Frank’s scientific and engineering breakthroughs had made his organization over $42 billion as new products he dreamed into existence rolled out to eager customers around the world. He should have been someone everyone listened to.
The problem Frank was having, however, was happening full blown in frustrating meetings with the senior leadership team. No one was listening to him. Led by a new CEO, the company was now going in a direction that Frank saw was never going to be viable.
Frank: “The company is going off a cliff.”
The people making the decisions did not have the technological expertise to understand why they were headed for a disaster. The new CEO got his technical advice from The Wall Street Journal. If it wasn’t in his morning paper, he dismissed it.
Frank’s problem was that he was SO smart, and knew so much, he was at a complete loss for how to explain complex technology principles to people who didn’t even understand the basics.
What made it worse was that Frank knew the technology advance that would save them and lead the company rather quickly into a new realm of innovation, consumer joy and market leadership. But when Frank tried to explain it all to the senior leadership team, their eyes glazed over. They told him, “No time, no budget, and very risky.”
Being the smartest guy in the room was excruciatingly painful.