Capturing Your Ideas in Ways that Allow You to Take Action

You have conducted a meeting and a brainstorming session on possibly several topics. You now must decide how you put those ideas into action. Many of the ideas will need further discussion and potentially even additional brainstorming. How you begin to understand and organize this information may determine your level of success in taking ideas and moving to implementation. Let’s take a look at how you can make this work for you.

What are you solving?

As you began your brainstorming sessions, you should have had a good idea on what you were solving for. However, that can change as ideas come in. Through further discussion, refine what it is you are actually trying to resolve. In some cases, this is ensuring you are truly getting to the root of your issue. Brainstorming is an excellent way to work through root cause problem-solving. If it is not immediately evident, the steps below can also help to flush out an underlying issue that may be the source of the problem.

MIND MAPPING

Mind mapping is a great way to take the central idea and add more supporting information to it. This can be done as a group or on an individual level. Often, mind mapping is seen as a form of personal brainstorming. That is certainly an excellent approach. I have shared before a great digital tool for capturing this. MindNode is an iOS and Mac-based application that is simple to use, yet powerful to go as deep as you need for any problem-solving approach.

Mind mapping can be a group exercise as well. Taking each of the ideas that came from the discussion and brainstorming, and then mind mapping ideas from that can help identifies the next steps you need to take to begin to put solutions in place. This can also work for building strategic plans and product plans. The beauty in mind mapping is it lets you go wherever you need to go. There is a way to capture the information and build it out to what is actionable.

STARBURST EACH IDEA

Starbursts are a form of brainstorming that will help lead to being able to assign activities and identify what is really at the core. It is not much different from the writer’s or journalist's principle of five Ws and one H. For the ideas you are exploring deeper, ask each of the questions — 

Who

• does this impact?

• needs to be involved further?

• will benefit?

• should lead this?

What

• needs to happen first?

• are the end results?

• are the steps that need to be taken?

• other areas must participate?

When

• does this need to be complete?

• does this make the most sense?

• should we begin?

• will this not work?

Why 

• are we doing this? (Now?)

• is this important to us?

• is this important to our customers?

• should we invest in this?

Where

• does this need to happen?

• will it have the biggest impact?

• will it not work?

• should we begin?

How

• does this connect to other strategies?

• does this impact our results projections for the next four quarters?

• does this help our customers?

• does this support our team?

AFFINITY DIAGRAM

Utilizing an affinity diagram can be helpful in organizing your information and ideas into groups. Brainstorming can often generate numerous ideas; finding the patterns and aligning by theme or similarity will help you move from ideas to action.

You may begin by grouping themes together, by areas of the business, whether it touches the customer of not. The options are yours, but ensure that they will help lead you to your next steps and who will own the actions that will come from the organization of ideas.

DEFINE ROLES, RESPONSIBILITIES, AND TIMELINE

Finally, ensure that you have the ideas arranged in such a way you can begin to summarize what will happen. A key part of this is assigning the ownership for those outcomes, or even just the next step. Define what the role of each person will be and what actions they will be taking. Begin to capture key dates and milestones, so you can bring your plan together with what you need to do, who will be doing it, and when it will be done.

Using a table to organize this information is extremely helpful. I use this to help build out high-level strategic plans. Try four simple columns — what are we doing (the tactics and steps we will be taking), why are we doing this (the expected outcomes and problem it solves), who will be responsible for these actions, and when will each be completed (this can also be milestones for larger projects or phases). Depending on what you are actually putting together, your table may be a little different. You may need categories you group the ‘what’ items together into. The basic principle is to keep your information as concise as possible for this. You can build out the specifics and more granular tactics in another forum.

Taking time to better organize your brainstorming ideas is the best way to ensure you act on the ideas that were shared. Missing this step can cause bigger issues than not getting a solution to the problem you were seeking to solve. It can lead to teams becoming frustrated if they spent time sharing ideas, yet never seen those put into use. Whether you mind map the information further, group into an affinity diagram, or use the starburst method, ensure you take time to organize the ideas you have. This allows you these ideas to begin to work for you and your team in solving your challenges, providing new opportunities, or leading to innovative approaches for future growth.

How will you ensure you take your ideas and put them into action?

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