Multivoting is a group decision making technique, which allows us to prioritize our options from a large number of ideas or solutions. The benefit of multivoting is that choices that are favored by the majority will make the list, even if these choices may not be everybody’s personal top choice. We could use this technique after brainstorming or after nominal group technique idea generation as well. Let’s compare the attributes of multivoting with those of brainstorming and nominal group technique. We will evaluate the categories of discussion, interaction, consensus, benefits, risk and then optimal group sizes. If we review these for a moment, we will identify some differences between the three techniques. Nominal group technique involves individuals with very low group interaction. This is very different than multivoting and brainstorming, which are very much a team sport. Reaching consensus is a little different too. We’ll use scoring in multivoting and nominal group technique, but with brainstorming, we rely on discussion. The benefits of each are pretty obvious. With multivoting, we can generate a lot of ideas and move through them pretty quickly. With brainstorming, we can generate a lot of synergy and energy in the room. And with nominal group technique, everyone has a voice. Everyone will be engaged and everyone will contribute. The biggest risk with any of these is the concept of group think.
This is where all the participants fall into the same mindset. And don’t challenge each other to truly be creative and look at all points of view. Since nominal group technique is conducted on an individual level, it is less likely to fall into the group think trap and more likely to generate a variety of ideas. Finally, optimal group sizes are generally 10 or fewer for a rapid process. We next move into generating a list of ideas or solutions. And as we move through that process, we want to eliminate duplicates. Categorizing ideas into themes can help you find the duplicates and eliminate them. The next step is to give each idea or solution a unique identifier, so that it can easily be tracked. We then ask each participant to choose a specific number of ideas, for example their top five and then move on to the next steps of the process. Once we have a specific number of ideas that are uniquely identified, we’re able to work with our participants to rank the choices. With nominal group technique, that will be done in an individual discreet manner. But with brainstorming and multivoting, we would do that very openly. Then we tally the votes for each idea. We eliminate the lowest ranking ones and repeat the process until we get to a specific number of ideas, perhaps the top five. At that point, we have the few ideas that have the most support and buy in from the group. And we can move forward to present them to our sponsor and executive team and possibly begin to implement them.