5 steps to managing Ideation at scale using Jira Product Discovery

[#1]

We're entering a new era where every knowledge worker is now supercharged with the power of AI. We are in a world where individuals with no design or coding experience, can bring their ideas and concepts to production, faster than ever before.

As leaders, it's now imperative to capitalise on these ideas originating from within and across your organisation. These ideas may be your next best selling product, most adopted feature, or the next big revenue stream.

But how do you go about doing that at scale in a large enterprise? How can you help your employees bring ideas that are aligned with your goals? How do you pick the most impactful idea out of 10's and 100's and perhaps 1000's of concept submissions?

Here are 5 steps with the tools and practices you will need to foster a culture of innovation and manage ideation at scale. Ready to give it a shot? Let's go!

1. Communicate your goals and make them visible

Here's a challenge for you as a leader. Go meet with 5 individual contributors in different parts of your organisation and ask them if they can show you what your company goals are? If they're able to do that, skip this entire section. You're set!

But there is a high chance, they would struggle. It's probably written on a physical wall somewhere, or it's something that's shown to employees once a quarter, or spread across multiple tools and pages.

Here's a fact: where I work, any employee can show you exactly what our company goals are, who owns it, and how we are tracking on the goal with a single link, and we are 12,000+ employees spread globally. And the secret to that is a combination of 2 tools: 

1. Goals App: where we track our goals, see who owns the goal and how we are tracking. Any employee can subscribe and stay up-to-date with our objectives.
2. Loom: where we communicate our goals and provide updates to the whole organisation in a regular cadence. I recommend at least every 2 weeks for most leaders. A quick 5 minute loom to talk through the goals, reminding them why we have set those goals, and if changing direction, explaining the "Why".

2. Decide on a single prioritisation framework for new ideas

There are several different prioritisation frameworks available, each designed for different needs. But it is important to settle on a single prioritisation framework for new idea submissions within your organisation.

Below are two links you will find helpful: 

1. 6 product prioritisation frameworks, an article by Atlassian
2. 15 prioritisation frameworks every Product Manager should know, an article by theproductmanager.com

My recommendation is to consider the RICE framework (Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort). In my experience, I find this very effective when working with early stage ideas.

3. Provide a simple experience to submit new ideas

A note about fostering innovation and new ideas: As leaders, it's your responsibility to foster a culture of innovation, and a big part of that is creating a psychologically safe environment where people can take risks, try new ideas, and learn from failures. I will not go into the culture part in detail, but I will link to one of my favourite articles that you might find helpful: Fostering an innovate workplace by Google

Back to our topic about submitting ideas, your employees do not need to spend hours and hours documenting every detail just to submit an idea. Ideas are just an early stage thought or concept, with many assumptions and hypothesis that will further need time, teaming, and investment.

Jira Product Discovery provides a simple interface allowing anyone within your organisation to submit new ideas. It comes out of the box with the RICE framework for prioritisation, but if you choose to use your own, you can customise it the fields for your chosen framework.

Now this step is important. Connect your idea to a goal. Connecting your ideas to a goal helps your leadership team review the ideas that are most aligned with your company objectives.

My recommendation is to create a single project for employees across your organisation to submit ideas. But depending on your scale, you may choose to break this down into different projects for different businesses, whatever works for you.

4. Identify Ideas to further invest in

You have now made it possible for anyone within your organisation to submit ideas. If you see no ideas submitted in 3 months, perhaps it is time to discuss what's not working culturally.

But if you are seeing ideas flowing in, Congratulations. You are doing something right, and hopefully, you are sitting on a treasure trove of ideas.

How do you pick the next big bet? All the ideas submitted now have two things: 

1. they're connected to a goal that you communicated in Step 1
2. a prioritisation score based on the framework you chose in Step 2

 The above two factors will help your leadership determine what is the next big bet to invest in and progress to the next phase. And Jira Product Discovery makes it easier to pick the next big idea using the Matrix View (Impact vs Effort View). You can further filter the ideas down by Goals, and easily identify the ideas you want to progress to the next phase.

I recommend having a dedicated time for your leadership team to discuss and review ideas every 45 days, or once a quarter. If you find ideas that you will not continue with, make sure you provide some actionable feedback and update the status.

5. From ideas to execution

As a leader, you have now provided a platform for anyone within your organisation to submit ideas, your leadership team have picked the ideas that are well aligned with your company goals, and it is now time for the next big step.

You'll need to support your innovator with the confidence, direction and guidance to move from idea to execution, and global success. You can do this with a practice we refer to as a "Demo Trust". A demo trust is an opportunity for the innovator to meet with the leadership team directly, to share more information about their idea, their execution plans, and ask for any help they need to be successful. It is a platform where you as leaders can ask any questions that will help build trust in your investment.

We have a playbook your leadership team and your innovator can use, to confidently and comfortably run your first demo trust. Take a look at the Demo Trust Atlassian Playbook.

There are 2 other tools you will find helpful along with your demo trust: 

1. Confluence: The Project Poster template is where your innovator can further refine their idea and break it down into a detailed project requirement
2. Loom: Your innovator can provide a walkthrough of the Project Poster before your Demo Trust meeting, which gives your leadership team to ask any questions that they can come prepared for

---

Above are 5 tips that will help you as leaders manage ideation at scale. It goes without saying, ideation and innovation requires a culture that encourages it.

Here are a few questions you should be asking yourself on a regular basis to check if you are on the right track. 

1. Can my individual contributors easily find our company goals?
2. Do we have a standard way of prioritising ideas within our business?
3. Can anyone within my company easily submit an idea for my leadership team to review?
4. Are we confident about the ideas we are choosing to invest in?
5. Are we supporting our innovators to be successful once we invest in an idea?

 I hope you found this article helpful. Happy ideating!

[Carolyn McNicoll]

Love it @Bhushan Nagaraj !  Thanks for sharing.