36. THE IDEA BRAVERY SCALE
* The Idea Bravery Scale is a good way to establish how adventurous ideas should be before a lot of time and effort is spent enacting them.
* At first glance, many people think all ideas should be as brave as possible, but this is wrong. Plenty of companies actively dislike ‘brave’ things, particularly if their culture is inherently conservative.
* One school of thought also equates bravery to high risk.
* So to determine a suitable scale, you need to pose two questions:
1. How adventurous is the company culture?
2. Against that backdrop, how brave should the ideas be?
* A score out of ten is generated to see whether conservative (5-7), average (7) or brave (8-10) levels are desired.
* The scores can also be blended to create one overall figure. For example, a conservative company asking for brave ideas may need to have its scale weighted downward to reflect their overall conservatism.
* As the ideas come closer to being enacted, the scale helps to remind everyone involved what level of bravery was agreed, and provides a measure against which to compare.
EXERCISE: Pose the two questions. If the company culture is fairly conservative, then reduce expectation levels for the bravery of the ideas. Now score each idea using the scale, and work out which ideas are too brave, not brave enough, or just right.