How to make faster, better decisions with your team
Brainstorming is fun. And it sure feels productive to write down a bunch of ideas, volley them back and forth with your teammates, and discuss the merits of each one.
But for us, “group brainstorming” is a big no. We’ve learned the hard way that it wastes time and energy. Defending ideas becomes costly and emotional, and the loudest voice in the room often wins — which doesn’t necessarily mean the best idea is chosen.
Instead, we came up with a process that boosts quality by tapping the power of working alone together. We call it Note-and-Vote, and it’s a key part of every Design Sprint and Foundation Sprint.
Ask the team a clear, specific question (for example, “Who is our most important target customer?” or “What is the hypothesis behind this solution?”). Write it where everyone can see, and distribute sticky notes and pens to each person.
Give everyone about five minutes to think in silence and independently write multiple answers, each on a separate sticky note. Keep these anonymous (don’t put your names on them), so nobody has to worry about writing down dumb ideas.
Put all the sticky notes up where everyone can see them. It’s fine if there are duplicate answers. No discussion at this point — maintain the silence! Sometimes teams start discussing as soon as they see the votes appearing, which defeats the purpose.
Each person takes about five minutes to review all the sticky notes, quietly, and places two or three votes on their favorite ideas. You can put multiple votes on one idea. We like using tiny dot stickers or markers for this.
Who’s the decision-maker for this topic? We call that person the Decider. In the next step, they’ll need to review the votes and make a decision. If the Decider isn’t certain which idea they want to choose, they may call for a brief discussion about the top proposals.
The Decider makes the final choice. They can choose to respect the votes or not. This is less awkward than it sounds: Instead of dancing around people’s opinions and feelings, you’ve made the mechanics plain. Everyone’s voice was heard.
And that’s it! It usually takes around 15 minutes, which is never the case for regular brainstorming 😅
Note-and-Vote is a little awkward at first, but it quickly becomes second nature — and it’s well worth the effort to learn, because this mode of working is much more effective than group brainstorming. Note-and-Vote works because it:
We’ve used Note-and-Vote for everything from naming companies to choosing product features to setting a meeting agenda to picking a restaurant for lunch. Whether you’re running a sprint or just trying to make a quick team decision, Note-and-Vote can help your team move faster and make better choices.
This guide is adapted from our new book, Click: How to Make What People Want.
