3 Surefire Ways to Activate Your Greatest Ideas

Have you ever had a brilliant idea that fizzled because you couldn’t decide on the best way to act on it? The key to making good decisions in these situations is to organize and evaluate your options thoroughly. You can move great ideas to action by following a few tried-and-true decision-making techniques.

Starbursting Technique
The Starbursting Technique is a comprehensive, systematic way to generate questions – rather than answers – in order to understand and challenge a course of action. It supports decision-making by allowing you to gain a wider perspective of your options.

Method: To begin, draw a six-pointed start on a piece of paper and write your idea in the center. At the interior tip of each point, write one of the following words: who, what, where, when, why and how (just be sure to use all six words). Then, at each point, generate questions that begin with that word, and write the questions outside of the point by the corresponding word. Don’t worry about answering the questions yet; just think of as many questions as you can and answer them at the end.

Plus-Minus-Interesting (PMI) Technique
The Plus-Minus-Interesting, or PMI, Technique is an enhanced version of the old “pros and cons” method. It not only weighs pros, cons and implications of a course of action; it also checks the validity of the course of action that is chosen.

Method: On a sheet of paper, make three columns: Plus, Minus and Interesting. Write down all of the positive results of the action under ‘Plus’, the negative effects under ‘Minus’, and the implications and possible outcomes under ‘Interesting.’ Here, you may already recognize if this is the correct course of action, but if not, then proceed to assign a positive or negative score to each point and add up the scores under each column to reveal whether or not you should implement the decision.

Grid (Matrix) Analysis
The Grid, or Matrix Analysis is a valuable tool when you have many options from which to choose, and different factors to consider as they relate to your options. This analysis helps you focus your efforts by rating the importance of each option and factor, and delivers a weighted score for a comparative analysis. For example, let’s say you want to purchase a new copier for your office: the different brands would be your options, and the factors could be price, capabilities, reputation and warranty terms.

Method: Using a grid or table structure, list your options (brands) in the rows (left column, one option per row) and all of your factors (price, capabilities, etc.) in the columns (top row, one factor per column along the top). Assign a weight to each factor using a scale from 0 to 5 (poor to very good) based on the importance of each factor to your overall decision. Then weight each option based on how well the option meets the terms or conditions of each factor (using the same 0-to-5 number scale). The option that satisfies most – or all – of your decision factors at the highest weighting (meaning most important to you) will likely be your “money idea”. You can subjectively add considerations like how you feel about a choice to pick a lesser-weighted choice as your money idea.

Starbursting, Plus-Minus-Interesting (PMI), and Grid (Matrix) Analysis are three decision-making techniques that you can use right away to choose one idea of many on which you will spend your time and resources. While each tool differs in its approach, they can all help you apply a more-objective, effective and successful decision-making process to your choosing your money idea.