Bridges don’t get built when you decide things in your head and impose them on others. They get built when you continually speak to your team members, letting them into the entire process.

Nor do bridges get built when you go into a huddle, get the act done – a product, service or project – and spring the surprise on your peers or superiors. They get built through continuous dialogue, sharing your thoughts and welcoming theirs.

Why do you need the bridge anyway?

Because human nature being what it is, an alienated person thinks you and your department are the enemy or the weakling who underperform and is more ready than usual to attack or discount you.

It’s true for nations, states and communities – it’s true for organizations. The less you interact with the other, the more there is a shared antagonism.

Letting the others in is a painful process that we are happy to avoid. It’s easy to tell ourselves, “He doesn’t understand,” or worse still, “She’s bent on attacking our work”.

But then this kind of thinking creates apprehension in us. And defensiveness.

Your job doesn’t end with conceptualizing and delivering the service or product. It ends only when you carry the rest of the stakeholders, convincing them of the worthiness of the product.

What happens when you don’t?

If you are at the lower levels, you end up the immediate loser – with the danger of the product getting sidelined or ultimately not used. If you are a senior executive, you live with the danger of alienating your own and the other teams.

People need to buy into your idea, your roadmap, your path. If it means working harder to draw analogies, show the numbers and convince them to give it a try, do it. And if you are good at it, you will even make them think it’s their idea.

If after all your efforts, you couldn’t convince them, go back and take a relook at the reasons as objectively as possible. If you still believe you’re right with logical reasons behind the belief, if it’s a big enough event and if it happens consistently, then you are working at the wrong place. Find yourself another job.