How to convince your top manager that you have great ideas?

Nobody cares about your ideas.  Good ideas are a) really easy to come up with and b) worthless.  Your top manager probably has 97 good ideas on his list already.

Here's what a truly great idea looks like:-

- Completely solves an obvious and important problem

- Saves money in the long term

- Has a negative implementation cost (i.e. implementing it makes an immediate cash profit)

- Is certain to be welcomed and implemented by the staff

- Requires no training of the staff

- Requires only trivial resources

- Saves the top manager's time in the short term

- Saves the top manager's time in the long term

- Has zero risk of failure

- Does not contradict any company policies or laws or market practices

- Is easy to explain to or conceal from the Directors

- Will not be noticed by customers/suppliers etc (otherwise you'd have to explain it to them)

- Can be completely explained to your top manager, including any hurdles and the solution to them, in four short sentences or fewer

- Has no knock-on effects or consequences

If you have an idea that CLEARLY meets ALL of the above, your top manager will love you.  Otherwise, as a graduate trainee, keep your mouth shut, do what you're told, work hard, and above all - observe and learn. 

In a year's time, when you've learnt just how hard it is to effect change in the real world, reconsider some of your good ideas from the point of view of your top manager. 

Sorry to be so blunt but I have a lot of experience with graduate trainees and their ideas.  It's very rare for a graduate trainee to have considered all the implications, simply because as a trainee you have not yet encountered all the moving parts that make up a business and its context.  Your job is to learn them.

Always remember that when you are giving a good idea to a top manager what you are actually  saying is, "You've worked in this business for 10 or 20 years and you have a senior position.  I've been here for 5 minutes, and now I'm going to tell you how to do your job."

And yes, for the avoidance of doubt, when I was graduate trainee I was one of the worst.