Capitalizing on Internal Crowdsourcing Part 3
Previous posts have provided some simple tips to help managers start and facilitate an internally crowdsourced project. Leaders embarking on this initiative may find themselves full of nervousness and excitement as they watch the ideas flow. But once the deadline has passed and the submissions are in, what is management to do? It can be overwhelming to be faced, potentially, with hundreds of ideas and thousands of comments that need to be sorted and reviewed. Here are some tips for maximizing the results of a crowdsourced project.
Use experts to judge
While it can be useful to generate ideas from employees who are non-experts, it might be wise to have functional experts involved in making the final decision. Separating the wheat from the chafe will take an experienced eye. They will best be able to evaluate the feasibility of an idea with the broadest perspective. The decision makers will need to have a clear understanding of such things as what has succeeded and failed in the past, if any changes are planned for the future that could impact the project and what constraints are in place that could impact its implementation.
Dealing with the data
The volume of ideas and opinions collected might appear overwhelming. The judging committee will need to set up some clear, user-friendly criteria to be used for evaluation. By doing so, the team can divide and conquer, each reviewing a portion of the submissions separately, saving only the best of the bunch for group review.
Follow Through
If a voting system was in place, a likely outcome is that the idea most popular with the crowd is not the most popular with the judges. Honest and open communication is needed here to provide plenty of praise to the most popular time while explaining exactly why the other idea is the most realistic.
Since quantity does not always equal quality, it’s also possible to come up empty handed. Hopefully the organization has provided the needed incentive and information to spur useful results but even that doesn’t guarantee a winner. In this case the team should take another quick look at their process and at the finalists. Are they being overly critical? Too narrow-minded? Is there a solution that’s viable with a few modifications? Then they are faced with the task of diplomatically communicating with the participants that while the exercise was useful, another route may need to be taken.
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