When narrowing down ideas, replace generic dot-voting with prompts tied to strategic goals. Ask participants to vote based on criteria like "potential to generate X million in revenue" or "ability to increase customer retention." This ensures the winning ideas directly address core business objectives.
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For goal-setting to be effective, limit company-wide goals to three. Designate one goal as the ultimate tie-breaker in resource conflicts. Ensure goals are simple enough for an intern to understand. Crucially, your strategy must involve painful trade-offs ('strategy should hurt'), otherwise you haven't truly prioritized.
To avoid generic brainstorming outcomes, use AI as a filter for mediocrity. Ask a tool like ChatGPT for the top 10 ideas on a topic, and then explicitly remove those common suggestions from consideration. This forces the team to bypass the obvious and engage in more original, innovative thinking.
To ensure the "triumph of ideas, not the triumph of seniority," Sequoia uses anonymized inputs for strategic planning and initial investment votes. This forces the team to debate the merits of an idea without being influenced by who proposed it, leveling the playing field.
Before an innovation workshop, focus interviews on employees and customers who interact with the product daily, not just executives. Their ground-level insights are essential for defining the strategic 'white spaces' that will guide the workshop and ensure it addresses real problems.
Jacobs's team uses the acronym WOTWOM—Waste Of Time, Waste Of Money—as a rapid check on new ideas. Any suggestion can be challenged with this label if it doesn't clearly contribute to organic revenue growth or margin expansion. This simple tool creates a culture focused on high-leverage activities.
Structure your final presentation by calling out specific problems you learned from individual contributors by name. Then, immediately pivot to show how solving their problem directly contributes to the high-level business objective owned by the executive decision-maker. This makes every stakeholder feel heard and demonstrates their strategic value.
To encourage participation from everyone, leaders should focus on the 'why' behind an idea (intention) and ask curious questions rather than judging the final output. This levels the playing field by rewarding effort and thoughtfulness over innate talent, making it safe for people to share imperfect ideas.
Counteract the tendency for the highest-paid person's opinion (HIPPO) to dominate decisions. Position all stakeholder ideas, regardless of seniority, as valid hypotheses to be tested. This makes objective data, not job titles, the ultimate arbiter for website changes, fostering a more effective culture.
Instead of a top-down agenda, Brad Jacobs has his leadership team collaboratively create it for key meetings. Attendees submit and rank questions based on pre-read materials. Only the highest-rated topics make the final agenda. This bottom-up approach ensures the meeting focuses on what the team collectively deems most critical.
The work that makes an innovation workshop successful happens before it starts. Before the session, assign a clear owner for the outputs and create a rubric for evaluating ideas. This structure ensures that promising concepts are systematically advanced for investment, rather than dying on a whiteboard photo.