Who's fault is it?

Ever had a good idea? Maybe something simple, like changing the color palette of the app to shades of blue. You brought it to the team, they mostly ignored you.

Later, it turns out, you were right. The users hated the existing color palette. Responses indicate blue would have been best.

Who's fault is it?

In an ideal world, we wouldn't ask this question. Instead, we would move on to "what do we do now that we're in the situation we're in?"

But, usually the person asking this question is the person who suggested the blue colors. "Those idiots should have listened to me. It's all their fault the app looks hideous. I told them to change it to blue."

How hard did you push to change it to blue, though? Mentioned it once?

Often, you have to push an idea several times before people stop and hear you. More importantly, you have to be able to express why blue would look better or appeal to customers. If you can't do these things, then people would have to follow your idea slavishly -- hardly a good idea. If you didn't do these things, then it wasn't really an idea that you were willing to bet on.

A parallel would be the guy who says he knew a month ago Citi shares were going to drop to $1. How many shares did he short? Zero. People would pay millions for accurate advice like that. He could have quit his job, instead of working for peanuts. But he knew.

If you have an idea, you need to put your money down, put your reputation on the line. Otherwise, it's just words.

Many successful projects of all sizes -- Google Reader, Facebook, open source, to name some software examples -- faced strong opposition. They got done only because someone believed enough in it to put their reputation on the line, and communicated the brilliance of the idea convincingly.