Lightning Decision Jam

Prioritize your challenges and solutions

Are there enough ideas to improve business processes, but lack time and overview to pick out the really good solutions? Or do you run into a problem for which you don’t see a solution? With an LDJ you can easily and quickly determine which ideas you need to investigate first or how to tackle a problem. By making decisions faster, you are able to take steps faster.

What is a Lightning Decision Jam?

Lightning Decision Jam, it’s got something swinging. It also sounds much better than streamlined decision-making process, because that’s it, no more and no less. It does not provide you with a ready-made solution, but it does put you on the right track to tackle your problem in a concrete way.

An LDJ is part of the Design Sprint. It’s a creative way of looking for solutions to a problem. Just think of all those ideas you have in your head. It is not possible to carry out all the suggestions and often they are not all equally practical. It’s also a shame not to do anything with the ideas at all. By means of an LDJ you can easily determine which ideas can contribute to your goals and which ones need to be taken up first.

Another example: your company is growing, which causes certain processes to fail. With an LDJ you can uncover bottlenecks and then think about solutions.

How does a Lightning Decision Jam work?

With a group of minimal three people you go through a simple process: Note – Stick – Vote – Prioritize – Note – Stick – etc. That’s it!

With a group of at least three people, preferably more, from your company you make a ‘loop’: note – stick – vote – prioritise – note – stick – and so on. That’s it!

Okay, that’s a little short on the curve maybe, so I’m gonna take you through the steps. Each participant writes down positive and negative thoughts concerning an issue (Note). Hang all the notes visible to everyone (Stick). The negative points are ordered by voting on them (Vote). Choose a top three (Prioritise) from the problems with the most votes.

For these top three, you can then come up with new solutions by means of a new loop, which you will then assess on feasibility. The solution that produces the greatest effect with the least effort can then be further elaborated, for example by means of a Design Sprint.

Organize your own Lightning Decision Jam?

Just do an LDJ during a work meeting and you can get to work. That is possible, but with the following comment: although it may seem simple, it is not so easy to do such a process yourself. I’m sure there are ‘blind spots’ in your company too, things you just don’t see for yourself. It is therefore wise to have an LDJ accompanied by an outsider. Over the years I have gained a lot of experience with this way of working, which often makes me feel that there is more going on than meets the eye and that can be the missing link.

In this article you can read a short description. I have further elaborated the Lightning Decision Jam in a presentation, request the pdf here.

‍

‍