It is an attractive and safe way (reduces tripping) to tidy and stow loose line.

1. they care,

2. how neat and professional, and
3. what great attention to detail.

One of the reasons I admire Walt Disney is the way he pushed his teams to take extra steps to care and make their work neat and professional. His animation, theme park legacy, and brand was built on this attention to detail or “flemishing the lines.”

For this, I recommend using a “swim lane” diagram. (It involves parallel rows akin to lanes in a pool). This diagram allows you to rank an unlimited number of ideas by an unlimited number of qualities.

How It Works (The Basics)

Play along with me for our example. Let’s say you and I have come up with three really great ideas that will help us build awareness and excitement for our winter product line. They are summarized as…

• Idea A,

• Idea B, and
• Idea C.

We have also determined that there are four key parameters by which we want to judge these ideas. They are…

• Ease of Implementation (challenging to easy),

• Investment of Money (expensive to cheap),
• Brand Fit (erodes to strengthens), and
• Investment of Time/Training (high to low).

Let’s plop these into a swim lane diagram.

Next we’ll plot our three ideas where they fall in each lane.

Finally, I’ll connect the lines.

Now we can see how these how these ideas rank according to our key parameters.

• Idea A is difficult to implement and requires a lot of training, but doesn’t require a lot of cash.
• Idea B is the easiest to implement, but is fairly expensive.
• Idea C is expensive, but helps build the brand and doesn’t require much training.

At a glance, I would say Idea C may be our best bet.
I know… I know what you’re thinking… this isn’t very scientific. AND if we had any more ideas or parameters to plot, it would be unclear how the ideas rank.
If the basic method isn’t robust enough for what you’re working on, I recommend these additional steps.

How It Works (Advanced Method)

Let’s allocate an Importance Score – a value between 0% and 100% – for each parameter. 0 will indicate lowest importance. 100 will indicate highest importance.

We’ll then multiply the parameter score by the importance %. (The parameter score for “ease of implementation is 1, multiplied by the importance score of 100%… and so on).

Finally, we’ll do this for each idea and see which has the highest weighed score. THIS is the idea that is our best bet.

Using this advanced method I was able to confirm my initial assessment that Idea C would be our best bet.
With more parameters and more ideas to plot this advanced method will provide you reliable results.
After you’ve given this a try, please share your success stories!

Update

I’ve added a hand drawn version of the swim lane diagram below. I don’t want the fact I used a drawing program to make this look like a complicated exercise. You can use a white board or flip chart and do this process in just a few minutes. – Paul

This can be helpful to create a visual report card for you at your job, for your company, or even personal goals.

Here’s how it works…

1. Make a list of important qualities (qualities important to customers, to you)
   
   Style, Approach, Intelligence, Focus, Attitude, Sophistication, Gender-bias, Magic, etc.
   

2. Add the superlatives – the low and high end of this quality.
   • Style: modern -> traditional

   • Approach: unconventional -> conventional
   • Intelligence: easy -> academic
   • Focus: people-centric -> tech-centric
   • Attitude: excited -> laid back
   • Sophistication: upscale -> lowest denominator
   • Gender-bias: feminine -> masculine
   • Magic: reality -> fantasy
3. Plot where you want to be on each continuum.
4. Plot where you actually are. (This could also be your perceived status, as in… what customers, your boss, the media think).

Here’s a sample of what this could look like…

Uses

Here are just a few ways to use this tool:

• Product/Marketing Development – Use this when creating a new product to outline your choices before it is created. Make this part of your brief and refer to it during the production process.

• Decision Making – Before you brainstorm, create a performance chart plotting what the optimal solution should be. After you have finished brainstorming use this as a way to filter out ideas that do not rank where you need them.
• Personal Development – Use the characteristics outlined on your company’s performance evaluation as the high end of the scale, put the opposite on the low end. Map where you feel you fall on this chart. Where do you think your boss and colleagues perceive you?

The Template

In the spirit of saving you 20-minutes time in formatting, I’ve included a blank Performance Chart template. Enjoy. Performance Chart Template [Microsoft Word document, 180kb]

Your iBoard is your collection of business leaders, role models, and personal heroes who inspire and challenge your thinking. The iBoard helps you discover solutions you may not find on your own.

Building & Accessing Your Imaginary Board

In his book, Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques, Michael Michalko provides a few suggestions for this technique…

1. Select three to five business movers and shakers, living or dead, whom you admire most.
   I suggest expanding your list to include any person or character, real or fictional, living or dead. Who knows, you may find a great resource asking what would Captain Picard (Star Trek) or President Bartlet (West Wing) do?
2. Get photographs of your Board and pin them up to constantly remind you of the talent at your disposal.
3. Research your heroes. Read everything about your heroes that you can get your hands on.
4. Take notes on your favorite passages. Pay particular attention to the creative techniques they employed to solve problems.
5. When you have a challenge, consult the members of your board and imagine how they would solve it.

The founding member of my iBoard was Walt Disney. I regularly challenge myself by asking “How would Walt do this?”
My other board members include…
Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Tom Jefferson, Leo da Vinci, Steve Martin, and I’ve recently added Tina Fey.

Recruitment Tools

Need to find or learn more about people you admire? Here are a few resources to explore:

Websites

• “The Time 100: 2007” – Time Magazine has a list of “the 100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world.” They include five categories: artists and entertainers, scientists and thinkers, leaders and revolutionaries, builders and titans, and heroes and pioneers.

• “Business 2.0: The 50 Who Matter Now” – an unabashedly subjective list of people, products, trends, and ideas that are transforming the world of business.

Books

• “Radicals & Visionaries: Entrepreneurs Who Revolutionized the 20th Century” by Thaddeus Wawro. This book features short biographies about 90 men and women who have shaped the past 100 years.
• “Discover Your Genius: How to Think Like History’s Ten Most Revolutionary Minds” book by Michael J. Gelb …. he features… Plato, Brunelleschi, Columbus, Copernicus, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Jefferson, Darwin, Gandhi and Einstein.

When trying to solve a business or marketing problem… I’ll ask myself… What would Mark say? What would Leo do? How would Steve handle this situation?

Who would you put on your board?

My iBoard of Directors FY 2007