75 Evaluate ideas and options

 YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 75 The power of choosing in a workshop is not the count but the discussion of why you chose in that way …  “Free and fair discussion will ever be found the firmest friend to truth. “ Unknown   How can you make evaluation more powerful? I ran a flexible thinking workshop recently and once again, people said “the power of discussion” was a key learning point. Why should discussion be so powerful? Let’s explore… In the course I demonstrate the use of the Options Matrix technique, one used quite commonly by groups to choose between various options. Above I show a simplified matrix based on the challenge of “How to get more funds for the project?” The scoring is based on how well the idea matches up to the criteria, in this case: Excellent =  4;  Very  good =  3;  Good =  2;  Poor =  1 Typically the process is: Those involved in choosing give a rating for each option or idea against each criterion, e.g. Mary rates idea “C” as Poor against Criteria 1, Zane rates it Excellent and Joe rates it as Excellent too The rating is averaged and a score given i.e. 1 + 4 + 4 = 9 / 3 people = 3 The average rating against each criterion is added to give a total The option with the highest total score is chosen (Option “B” in our example) and we have an objective result Or do we? Actually what we have is the objective result of a subjective process, or what I call “Subjective objectivity”. So What we...