Getting your new program initiatives accepted requires overcoming a lot. So, to help you get that done—and impress your boss doing it—you need to have a winning strategy.

The corporate budget is a funny thing. Getting approval on a budget in the corporate world doesn’t mean you get to spend it. Quite the contrary. You often have to get the budget approved for what you might spend and then when you want to spend it, you get approval again.

When you read it written out like that, it sounds super inefficient and completely silly. However, my guess is that many of you that are responsible for a budget know exactly what we mean.

Plus, change is hard for people. As a champion of a business program that would result in significant change, you are already going to have a challenging time getting that approved.

This episode helps you get through this inefficient and silly process successfully, and impressing your boss while you do it. We share our tips and tricks for handling this process with clarity, influence, political awareness, realism, credibility, and professionalism.

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

1:32 Colin shares a personal story about getting permission to spend his corporate budget, what he did to get it, and how it led to this podcast.
05:43 We share the first one about being clear about the goal and how numbers are essential to these discussions.
13:44 Now we explore how the good clear ideas you have that are supported by numbers need this critical spin so people can hear what you mean, followed by a foray into managing company politics.
21:52 We get into credibility, which is essential to convincing people to follow your way of thinking.
26:40 To round out the discussion, we get to the most important one, the one you have the most control over, professionalism.