How to Prioritize Ideas?

Most organizations today face the dangerous pressures of overload and distractions. In other words, doing way too much, or doing the wrong things. This often manifests itself through overspending, underperforming, or simply, the dreaded word: turnover. 
 
"When leaders don't prioritize, organizations don't grow, and people leave." - Patrick Tedjamulia, Discover Possible 

One of the most important capabilities in leadership and business is the ability to prioritize ideas. This is only a guesstimate, but if I had to estimate how much money U.S. organizations lose every year in aggregate due to lack of prioritization, I would guess the figure is more than 10% of their spend, or ~$100 Billion. 

So how do leaders learn how to prioritize? 

I want to share with you one of my most favorite examples of idea prioritization. It's based on an interview I facilitated between Mark Vamos, former Editor in Chief of Fast Company Magazine, and Christian Busch, a innovator who won the opportunity to interview him.  

In the interview, Mark Vamos describes what he would go through to prioritize which stories to write about and include in upcoming issues of Fast Company. He describes it as a mixture of process and chaos. 

Go to this Discover Possible Podcast Episode to hear how Mark Vamos, former Editor in Chief of Fast Company Magazine, would select which stories to write about. 

As Mark and team had their weekly editorial meetings, they were selecting the stories that fit with what felt like a Fast Company story, what was unique to them. In other words, which stories infected them. 

Then, they would divide the stories into the categories that mattered to them, for example: their special issues around design, leadership, strategy, etc... and even their cover story. Then, they would organize these stories into a timeline, which included the next issue and subsequent issues month over month. 

This is a great use case for one of the models that we teach at Discover Possible. We call it: The Path to Prioritizing Ideas™.  See the image below.

Our research shows that most organizations get stuck at the idea capturing phase. They don't have a sufficient system for capturing ideas that really matter. If you can't capture the ideas that matter, you become overloaded and filled with distractions. It is vital for a leader to develop the capability of determining which ideas are actually ideas that have infected your organization. What ideas your organization was meant to bring to life. Then, you can put them into appropriate categories, and make them possible.