Jumpstart Your Creativity (15 page)

Just for fun…Yoshiro Nakamatsu, also known as Dr. NakaMats, is a Japanese inventor who has become something of a minor celebrity for his inventions. He is a prolific inventor, reportedly having over 4,000 patents, although the confirmed number of inventions is in question. In his interviews, Nakamatsu described his “creativity process,” which includes listening to music and concludes with diving underwater, where he says he comes up with his best ideas and records them while underwater. He also built a million dollar toilet room made completely out of gold that he claims helps make him think better. Nakamatsu also has an elevator in his house that he claims helps him think better. He strictly denies that it is an elevator, but rather a “vertical moving room.” Nakamatsu's goal is to live at least 144 years—he is 84 years of age in 2013.

Whether you use formal process tools, modify an existing one for your own use, or simply do as Nakamatsu apparently has done and create your own processes from scratch, commit to creating your own process and take the time to enjoy the journey.

WORK IT

When do you think you would use the five whys?

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Which process tools have you not used? Why?

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Which one have you used?

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When could you use process mapping?

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Which tools are you excited to try?

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CREATE AND THEN EVALUATE

It is not the facts which guide the conduct of
men, but their opinions about facts; which
may be entirely wrong. We can only make
them right by discussion
.

—N
ORMAN
A
NGELL

WE
were working with a company's marketing group in South Florida. The goal was to come up with as many marketing ideas as possible in one day. Using various brainstorming techniques and tools we provided, the group came up with fifty flip chart pages of ideas in eight hours. On each flip chart were ten or eleven ideas, which meant there were over 500 ideas. The group leader turned to us and said, “Well it's great we now have 500 ideas…but what now?”

We patiently explained the goal was to evaluate each of the ideas, but not on the same day. Our philosophy is: “You create, then you evaluate.” These two processes ideally should not be done on the same day or at the same time. They are two separate processes. The create phase is for creating without
judgment, and the evaluation phase is the exact opposite, to evaluate and judge.

In this chapter we give you tools and techniques for evaluating ideas. In our training and development practices we often see groups who are completely puzzled about how they should evaluate ideas. They ask questions such as:

• How do we tell a good idea from a bad idea?

• Is it just based on a gut feeling?

• How are good ideas measured?

• Aren't good ideas qualitative and not quantitative?

• How do we explain how we selected ideas to our bosses?

• How do we justify our selections?

• How do we explain our selection of ideas from a business perspective?

• What would be potential metrics?

These are all legitimate and reasonable questions. If you're involved with a business, a nonprofit organization, or an educational institution, you know the importance of sound business decision making.

You need to first identify how you're going to measure ideas in terms of criteria and metrics, and then use the proper tools to filter ideas through specific filtering processes. Criteria are simply the facts you're going to use to evaluate an idea. We even like to refer to criteria as business criteria. For
example if you are looking at a potential solution to increase sales, you could use some of the sample criteria below as filters to analyze that idea:

• increase profits

• increase revenue

• increase efficiency

• reduce labor

• increase of speed

• increase productivity

• reduce waste

• eliminate redundancy

Okay, you get the idea. Business criteria should be things that if you talk to your executive board about, they would be pleased and would find the criteria relevant to the business. Unfortunately, many times we meet people who say they want to act on an idea because it is cool or hip or neat or cuttingedge. Based on our experience, most people in the executive suite don't want to hear about cool or hip or cutting-edge. They want to know directly how an idea is going to impact the metrics of the business.

So what we need to do then is build a list of metrics that we are going to use to evaluate and measure the business relevance of an idea. This will give you and your team a tremendous amount of credibility and weight when having
discussions about ideas and solutions with anyone, including your CEO.

When we have developed a list of criteria, then we need to figure out measurements for those criteria. For example, if you say increase speed, you need to say increase the speed on what and by how much. In a manufacturing plant, you might say to increase the manufacturing line speed for product X by 2 percent in the next thirty days. If you can then tie a dollar amount to the increase in speed, all the better.

After we have developed a list of criteria and we have figured out measurements for those criteria, we are then ready to evaluate the ideas that were developed during brainstorming or ideation sessions. How? There are some simple tools for evaluation and there are some complex tools for evaluation.

If you have people in your organization who are certified in Six Sigma, they will be very familiar with some of these tools. Some of the tools have a tendency to be more objective and some of the tools have a tendency to be more subjective. Please be aware that no matter what evaluation tool you use, there will always be some level of subjective thinking involved, because people always have opinions that sway their decision making.

Polling is one of the simplest methods of evaluating ideas in a group. The first version of polling is to present ideas on a chart and have people simply vote on their favorite. The second version of polling is to give each person in the room three
sticky dots, and then each person goes up to the charts and puts their dots on their top choices. They can either put three dots on three ideas or all of their dots on one. At the end of that exercise simply count up which ideas have the most dots.

Obviously there are some advantages to polling. It is quick, simple, and easily done. However, there are some significant disadvantages:

• When explaining to others how the selection was made, saying, “We took a vote.” has less credibility.

• Polling really does not consider specific criteria when people are analyzing an idea.

• Group Think Risk—peer pressure can convince people to change their vote when they start to see where the dots are. If they're one of the last people voting, they could possibly change their vote based on how everyone else voted.

The Ben Franklin list is often described as a plus and minus list. Yes, this list technique was invented by Ben himself. You simply draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper or a flip chart page. On one side, at the top of the page, is a positive sign and at the top on the other side is a negative sign. You make one list for each idea; so if you had six ideas, you have six charts. Once you have completed six charts you then count which idea had the most positives and which idea had the least negatives. By subtracting the number of
negatives from the number of positives, one idea for one chart will end up having the highest score. This is the one that will be selected.

The advantages of the Ben Franklin chart are:

• It is fairly quick yet a little more specific on each idea.

• You have more credible information for explaining why you made the selections in terms of the positives and negatives for each of them.

The disadvantages of the Ben Franklin are:

• You still have not applied a specific criteria or measurement in evaluating an idea or solution.

• It is incredibly subjective.

The Criteria Chart, although it seems complex, is simple to use. On the left-hand side of the page on a flip chart, you write all of the ideas. As an example, if there are six ideas, you write down six numbers down the left-hand side of the page. On the top of the criteria chart you draw columns, and each of those columns will contain a specific criteria such as reduce labor, increase sales, increase profit, etc. One key as you're developing the Criteria Chart is you must get agreement from each person in the room as to the criteria people will agree upon. Be willing to invest some time and critical
thinking about the criteria you use, especially the definitions and descriptions of each criterion.

Once everyone in the room agrees on the six to seven criteria that should be written at the top of the page, you are then ready to get feedback on the individual ideas. Using a Likert scale of one to five, with one being the worst and five being the best, you ask the group about idea number one, “How do you rank this idea as it relates to reduced labor?” You get agreement from the group on a number on a scale of 1 to 5; write the number on the chart. This process continues for idea number one all the way across the seven columns. After going through the same process for all of the ideas, add up the numbers across so that each idea has an overall number score. Of course the idea with the highest number is the one that wins.