Katherine William-Powlett shares her thoughts on innovation and on leadership in the voluntary sector. Katherine no longer works for NCVO but her posts have been archived on this site.
My previous blog posts on Generating Ideas looked at how to get lots of good ideas to meet your current challenges. This series looks at how to narrow them down when you have them. One way to aid selection is by setting up a simple matrix on a spreadsheet.
Set up a grid and put your ideas down one side and criteria along the top. Then score the ideas against the criteria. It helps if you choose scores like 1,3,5 and 9 so that people don’t cluster things in the middle. Get your team to complete the grid individually to avoid group thinking.
You may like to weight the criteria (See Selecting Ideas 5). Distribute points out of 100 across the criteria. Apply the weightings to each score and add up totals. Download more detailed instructions and a free worksheet
You will end up with scores for each idea. Remember that this is simply a guide to inform and assist discussion. You may find that the highest scoring idea is not the one that everyone in the room actually wants to go with. This may mean you selected the wrong criteria in the first place. Passion and enthusiasm from staff should not be overlooked because people work best on things they really care about.
NOTE: This method works best when you have under ten ideas to decide between so if you have masses of ideas that you like, you may need to filter them down first using some other method. See Selecting Ideas page on this site for suggestions.
Posts written by guests who have contributed to NCVO projects and events. 
