The Out Of Office Test

“We just don’t have the budget for it.”

It is the most comfortable sentence in business. Nobody has to be wrong. Nobody has to say the idea was confusing, or aimed at nobody, or a little bit about the person pitching it.

But there’s one belief I’ve got…There is always budget for a good idea.

Money turns up mid-quarter like a twenty in last year’s jacket the second the right person gets excited. Budget is a crowd, and a crowd drifts toward whatever someone can describe to it on the way out of a meeting.

What there’s never budget for is a good idea with no audience attached. Or a good idea nobody else can carry.

I just got back from Portugal where my job was to stretch myself in ways the daily life doesn’t. Back home the meetings kept happening (meetings are the one part of a company that never takes PTO), and every idea I’d left on the table had to stand up without me. I don’t know yet which ones did since I’m logging back on after I write this post… which is sort of the point. A vacation is the cheapest stress test an idea will ever get.

“No budget” is a translation. Unfold it and the original usually says one of these:

Nobody could say who it was for without using the word “everyone.”
It only made sense with you standing next to it, waving your hands.
The person who loved it would have to pitch it to the person who signs, and they heard it once, walking to the parking lot.
Its goal was “awareness,” which nobody has ever been fired for missing.
Nobody’s name was attached to the result.
It needed a slide to explain the slide.
It solves a problem the room doesn’t feel yet.
It sounded vague, and vague always rounds up.
Saying yes meant someone else’s project had to lose, and nobody told that person.
Its best argument was your enthusiasm, and enthusiasm does not survive being forwarded.
Nobody could explain it in the time it takes to pour a pint.
The finance person couldn’t tell their boss what changes if it works.
It arrived finished, with no handles for anyone else to grab and call partly theirs.
“No budget” is easier to say than “I don’t get it,” and much easier than “I don’t want to be the one who carries this.”

Every one of those is a portability problem. Not a budget constraint. The idea couldn’t travel.

That’s the whole game in B2B, and it is humbling, isn’t it?

Your product gets bought in a meeting you’re not invited to, described by someone who heard your pitch once and liked it more than they understood it. The pitch that counts is the one they give. So the work is shrinking the idea until it fits in someone else’s mouth: one audience, one goal, one sentence that survives being repeated by a tired person at 4:45 on a Thursday while you’re climbing stairs of a castle and laughing when your tour guide Bruno forgets to turn the mic off when he blows his nose.

My out of office told everyone exactly when I’d be back. The ideas worth funding never needed to read it.

Stay Positive & Can Your Idea Survive The OoO Test?