Multi-voting, Rank Ordering and Structured discussion

This is a bundle of Convergent thinking techniques. Used in this order, they can be very useful to help a team to choose from a large number of existing ideas. This bundle is usually the final part of the Divergent and Convergent thinking exercise following the Affinity Diagram.

Every team member has the opportunity to vote and rank every idea in a non-hierarchical manner. The structured discussion part should also encourage all participants to express their view on the chosen ideas. It’s a very important task for the facilitator to encourage participation and also keep an eye on the time.

At the end of the session, teams should not only have a small group of ideas that are approved by the majority but also a perspective on what it means to take those ideas to practice.

Multi- Voting:

This is usually recommended when a team has more than 10 ideas available to choose from. It is called multi voting because each team member will have more than one vote to assign to the ideas of their preference.

Before starting the voting round, all ideas must be charted in a visible place that is accessible to all team members. The facilitator gives out the same number of sticky dots to each participant. Each dot represents a vote. At this point the facilitator has to clarify if participants can either put only a single dot per idea or more than one.

In a silent manner team members post their dots in the ideas they prefer. Finally the facilitator counts the number of dots in each idea and selects the top 5 most voted ones.

Rank ordering

Rank Ordering

In this exercise, every member of the team gives a rank to each idea. At the end the rankings are added up and a final ranking comes up. An easy way to carry out this exercise is to build a matrix. Ideas are the heading of the rows and the team members names are the heading of the columns. After the matrix is set up, the participants rank each Idea.

There are also two ways to rank an idea, similar to the voting options on multi voting. One option is to rank all ideas with any number from a defined scale. The other option is to assign a different number in the ranking to each idea. Below is an example of the rank-ordering form.

 

Structured discussion

In this final activity each participant has a limited amount of time (for example 2 min) to say anything they think about the selected ideas. The facilitator, again, has the challenge to keep an eye on the time because often participants may extend beyond their time. The discussion also should be guided to think about the application or use of those ideas in real life context. Suggest examples such as like pros and cons, restraints, cost.