The great strength of visionary founders is their creativity. Visionary leaders have a lot of ideas, and each idea seems like a great opportunity that cannot be overlooked. But such creativity can be a trap at the same time.
The trap of abundance
What happens in a small team where employees are constantly given new ideas to implement? Since it is impossible to do many things at once equally well, this limits the amount of time the team can devote to each activity. As a result, this generally reduces the quality of work.
It can also damage business continuity when new tasks are introduced while old ones are not yet completed. Therefore, a very important competency for leaders in startups is the ability to prioritize ideas.
A project-driven approach to prioritization
The goal of prioritization is to identify those ideas that will bring the biggest business benefit to the company and to focus on their implementation in the first place. What helps with prioritization is a project-based approach, which describes ideas in a measured, objectified way and allows us to make well-balanced decisions about which activities deserve our attention most and which to implement the fastest.
Using measurable framework
How to describe the idea to look at it in a measurable and objectified way? Below please find my recommendation of question list that can help us to do this:
- What is the objective of the idea?
- What is the potential of the idea – financial and operational?
- What resources and activities will be necessary to bring the idea to life?
- What costs will it involve?
- How soon will we see the positive results?
- What will be the business benefit for the company from implementing the idea?
- Based on this description we can additionally identify the advantages and disadvantages of the idea, especially the risks for the company.
Ranking
Based on this checklist, we can assess the validity and the importance of ideas. When assessing the validity of ideas, it is worth answering the question of how well the idea fits into the company’s goals and business strategy. Setting the importance of ideas, on the other hand, it is worth determining how much this action will bring me closer to achieving the goals and strategy.
Points of reference
The best reference points for evaluating and ranking ideas is our business strategy with clear quantitative and qualitative goals. If, as a startup, we don’t have one yet, it’s still makes sense to look at what benefits an idea will bring to the company compared to the costs it involves and build a priority list based on that.
Agnieszka Węglarz is an independent consultant, business strategist and practitioner in B2B and B2C, as well as lecturer, speaker and blogger. She has over 20 years of professional experience working as manager in both large corporations and SMEs, where she was responsible for strategy, marketing and business development. She uses her long term executive experience and training expertise to assist companies and their managers in building their business strategy using a workshop methodology. She specializes in business modeling, segmentation, value proposition, sales and marketing strategies as well as consultative selling. She runs her own consultancy business, as well as cooperates with Google for Startups Campus in Warsaw as the business modeling expert and mentor in the acceleration programs. Agnieszka is an author of many business publications. You can read her writing on her business blog on www.agnieszkaweglarz.com. You can contact her by writing to: agnieszka.weglarz@g2m.biz.pl or directly by sending a message via LinkedIN