how to convince a manager with a new idea?

[Andrew]

A manager shouldn't be too hard to convince IF the idea is a good one and his supervisor is a manager as well.

But ONE boss in the immediate chain of command throws everything out the window. Bosses (who believe it is their job function to boss people around, unlike managers whose job function is to manage to get things done....) all believe that they are fundamentally smarter than everyone working under them - if THEY were smart, they'd be in his job, after all. So any idea from below is to be squashed, because it MUST BE fundamentally flawed in some way to have come from a less intelligent underling.

Welcome to Corporate America. It's not what you know, it's who you suck up to.