Meeting with CEO and Founder of Comapny

I met with the CEO and founder of our company Cyrus Massoumi (http://www.zocdoc.com/ourteam) about an idea i had for one of the features I set up for allll my doctors, which is Google Places. 

Google Places is something we set up for each doctor to list them on Google Maps for patients searching in their area to help find a Doctor and have them be listed first (or at the top). 

Here is an example for this doctor's google places lsiting, I listed her website with a book online button I added to her website, https://plus.google.com/110374017837841914970/about?gl=us&hl=en

So patients can click the website and the 'book online button in red to make an appointment right away. Its how we find the offices even MORE new patients.

So the problem was, the listings we set up KEPT getting suspended. Every time we made it, Google would reject it. So i had an idea (a good one I thought) so I told my boss and I was walked over by him to the CEO's office to sign up for office hours (all our CEO's have office hours) to see if he would approve it. I can't tell you how nervous I was to just walk over and speak to him (to introduce myself and tell him i'm signing up) with my boss watching me interact with the CEO. The only time left was on a Friday night the following week.

All my fellow employs had left for the day and gave me a 'sucks for you' smile (of COURSE that would be the Friday we got out early), I nervously sat at my desk pretending to work. At 7pm I walked over to his office with sweaty palms and waited for him to get out of his last meeting. 

When i walked in, I tried to control my wavering voice and steadied it and told him my idea. He talked so quickly and the meeting ended so soon, I left feeling defeated. Really I felt like he wasn't listening.  Little did i know how smart he is ( I mean, I know he is smart but really really smart), he took care of it right away the next day by assigning the problem to two different groups to take over. He then took my idea and used it with one of his contact's at Google.  

I forgot about it until I got this email from my boss today (he also sent it to all upper management) :

Hi Team,

Great news!The black hole of what to do when our Google Places email accounts become suspended has been resolved!!BIG thanks to Avalon Sawer who took it upon herself to take action and quit being frustrated with her GP account suspensions which hurt those practices she is trying to properly setup. She OWNED IT by setting up office hours with Cyrus (staying late on a Friday), gathered evidence of our GP account suspensions, explained the importance of us finding a way to resolve this, which ultimately lead to an executive order for this to be fixed!


I think this is a great example of how sometimes, you can think you were defeated and your ideas aren't great, but really, you have no idea what you can do/change by speaking up.