Have you ever wanted to create a new idea within your team? Have you used conventional ways of trying to get people round the table to think of ideas? Well, I’ve got 5 steps you can use that will help maximise ideas and get them to the final stage of evaluating the product that you have produced. Welcome to another video by Innersummit.
Whenever creating a new product or idea, it’s important that you get everyone’s input, however, sometimes people can become a bit defensive. Have you ever seen that happen? Where they might come up with a suggestion and it might not have been right for that time but automatically there is an atmosphere of defensiveness. Well there are 5 simple steps that you can use to create a new idea and get everyone involved. I call it the 5 Time Cycle.
Stage 1 – Clay time
Here’s the first one, Clay time. If you consider clay, it is something that you would make a wonderful jar with later on, but clay is essential to make that final product. Clay time becomes the time where everyone involved can throw in as many ideas as possible. No idea is a bad idea. Clay time is that place where whatever you think could contribute to the final product should be placed on the ideas table. It is a great time where people can go nuts, use there creativity and come up with really strange and bizarre solutions for what the client needs. It is also the time where you get the client or stakeholder involved as well.
Stage 2 – Play time
After clay time – what you would do to create that jar – is begin to shape that clay so the second stage is play time. Play time is when you begin to bring your ideas together and shape it into the beginnings of something. Play time is also where you remove parts of the initial clay for a later date. It gives everyone an opportunity to say “That idea there, can be used for something else and that idea there will be really good in this product.” Play time gives people that wonderful opportunity to be involved in shaping their own ideas as well as other people’s and what you get is a cohesiveness between people because they are beginning to shape each others ideas.
Stage 3 – Stay time
After that you get something that is a first draft of a product. So in the illustration of the jar, you would find out whether there are any cracks in the jar. This brings us to the third stage, stay time. Stay time gives permission for everyone involved to critique the product. It no longer becomes about critiquing individual ideas because it’s about the product. Stay time is the opportunity for everyone, even the stakeholders and the clients, to critique the product and find any errors or any holes in what they are wanting. It is beautiful to watch when people get together on the same side of the table and start to go, “Do you know what, that won’t look good, ah there is a gap here, that product is actually showing something we never considered.” Stay time is essential in creating a final product which is solid, robust, and fit for the client or stakeholders needs.
Stage 4 – Display Time
So after stay time, you get to run the first pilot, which is known as display time. Display time gives a series of opportunities to take the first draft of what you have designed and place it in front of a pilot group. They will then test the product, whether it is a workshop you are designing for leaders, or whether it is actually a tangible product like building a jar. You run the pilot and get essential feedback because you are then beginning to get a sense of “Has this product met the clients needs?” You tend to find at display time you will get some minor tweaks to do but all of it has been achieved in stay time.
Stage 5 – Replay Time
Finally you run the product live, you then ensure that everyone who has been involved gets to be part of that process. Once it runs live, you enter the final stage of creating those new ideas and making sure that the product is excellent and that is replay time. Replay time is the point where evaluation is essential, it is critical, and getting evaluation: be it from a workshop; a training; a product you have made like a car, or even a one to one that you might have had with your team. Evaluation, or replay time allows you to re-look at the product and make it better. No product should ever remain the same, or constant. A product should be made better and better and at replay time you get all your team together to take on board the evaluation and then improve the product for the next version, or the next stage of development within that idea.