Limit decisions and final choice

- Anyone that knows me, knows I like to focus on the positive and come up with ideas. At the same time, I also know that you have to eliminate ideas sometimes. Some people might see that as focusing on the negative, but it really isn't. No matter how optimistic you are, you need to eliminate certain ideas to focus on the ones that move you forward. Here are a few ways that you can narrow down your choices and find the best one to pursue. The first place you need to consider is the assessment criteria you've already established. Any options that fall outside your criteria need to be eliminated. Another way to vet options is through multi-voting. Full disclosure, I love multi-voting. I actually have clients that can be troubled about how many little sticky dots I own. Multi-voting is where you put several ideas up on a board and then give the participants a number of votes represented by stickers. They then come up and put the sticker on the idea they like most. There are a couple different variations on this. One clear demonstration of how it can be used is how I use it with one community leadership development program I facilitate. When they sit down to determine what community need topics, they're going to cover that year. We start with brainstorming and then cluster those ideas. Usually, they end up with between eight and 10 ideas. I then give everyone three stickers, one red, one green, and one blue. They are then instructed to put the green sticker on the topic they find most important. The red on one, they find least and the blue on one, they find interesting, but not the most important. What emerges is that there are several options that few want to do, and a couple that many people find important. The blue is good to highlight secondary issues that might be interesting. This technique can also be good when you know, there's a bad idea that someone likes, but confronting them directly might lead to issues. When they see that there are a bunch of red stickers on their idea, they can bow out without losing much face. You can also use the positive, negative, interesting exercise. So, with each idea, you ask people to write one positive, one negative, and one interesting thing. What tends to happen is the better ideas end up coming on top. Some other techniques include doing a cost-benefit analysis, using two-by-two matrices and evaluating sources of information and stakeholder effects. The best advice I can give you here is, do not shoot for perfect, it won't likely happen. Find the best choice, given the amount of information, the amount of time and the amount of available resources you've got. If you do this consistently, you're going to win much more often than you don't. And more importantly, your team and your managers will see you as a strong, effective leader.