Too many ideas can slow your organization's progress. This 5-step process can help your smaller business recognize what matters -- and what doesn't
Idea generation is important. It stimulates innovation, drives growth, and it's what many smaller businesses focus on. But for a more direct path to success, smaller businesses need to know how to effectively handle any and all initiatives that come their way.
Specifically, smaller businesses need to learn how to distinguish the good ideas from the bad ones, and, perhaps more important, they need to be able to kill those ideas that don't make sense for their organization.
We've developed a method that can facilitate this process. The following 5 steps provide small to midsize businesses not only with an approach that ensures that each new idea is thoroughly scrutinized but also with the tools to eradicate the ideas that just don't make sense for a company such as yours. Ultimately, it's a strategic, problem-solving process with the potential to save your smaller business a lot of time -- and money. Some might call it a trip to an intellectual playground. We call it "Murder Boarding":
Don't Miss: 4 Rules of Murder Boarding
1. Understand the current situation.
To fix anything, you need to know what you're dealing with. That starts with understanding the current state of affairs in your business -- knowing what works, what's broken, and how the people and organization as a whole manage. This part of the process is about establishing a baseline.
For example, here are two very different situations. In one, the staff has high morale and the technical strength to implement a comprehensive overhaul of a line of business. In another, there are few leaders and poor morale across a base of unproven employees who can't carry a heavy load. Both situations form part of the "current state" and are as much a part of the situation as the market saturation, customer churn data, and other things that can be "analyzed." Emotions, facts, biases, skill sets, or past failures are all valid when it comes to understanding the current state. Without getting a clear picture, it's impossible to know where you are, which means you can't understand where you need to get to.
2. Postpone the solution.
Most people want to stop after they understand the situation. In business, we've been schooled to use past ideas and experience to fix problems and move quickly to execution. This step is counter-intuitive and requires doing just the opposite of that. Following all the steps in the "Murder Boarding" process will enable your team to pit scenarios against one another and view them individually. After those exercises, selecting the one best possible solution becomes much easier.
For now, what you want to do is generate several different paths to solve the current problem.
Listen to all the people who could be involved in implementation. Why? Because that is the only way you will understand what kind of execution is going to work.
3. Present ideas out loud, looking for feedback.
Trust that no matter how much you beat up an idea, the good ones always survive. You need to first know a lot more before you can decide which of the many options can, and will, work. This step allows you to figure out where you have gaps of understanding so you can check facts, gather more information, or find out whatever is needed. The consequence of not doing this in advance of choosing "the solution" is that you find out post-facto all the ways the plan needed to be patched to make it work.
There are no rubber stamps anywhere in the "Murder Boarding" process. Present a rich set of ideas with a solid description of the details so that the scenario can be fully tested. Bring the situation to life in such a way that team members can see more than a flat, one-dimensional picture and effectively apply their operational knowledge. Let people ask a ton of questions. Encourage them to turn over the rock. In this step the team turns into a group of operational "spoilers." They poke holes in the scenario and use their operational expertise to determine what may happen down the road. If the situation has good potential, the team improves on it.
Next Page: Kill the Bad Ideas
