Participate in a Point of View Exercise

Learn the WHY behind exercises


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In this article, you will learn how to participate in a Point of View (POV) exercise. This brainstorming platform ensures that the best ideas win, limits the effect of office politics on your decisions, and helps your team have effective and efficient meetings.

Overview of the brainstorming process

Here is an overview of the Point of View Exercise process:
  1. Question - Clearly define the problem by formulating a specific question for the group to answer. 
  2. Brainstorm - The group brainstorms ideas - no idea is critiqued or turned down; every idea is captured as close to verbatim as possible.
  3. Vote - With a thorough ideas list, every participant votes on what they believe to be the best ideas
  4. Understand - With votes in and now visible to the group, each person explains why they voted the way they did.
  5. Re-vote - After each person explains their votes, everyone is given the opportunity to change their mind and re-vote.
  6. Take Action - Now the group has the best ideas identified and a lot of "buy-in" because they took the time to truly collaborate.

Open the exercise

The exercise facilitator should have emailed you a link to the exercise. Click the link in the email > enter your name and email > and log in. You will be taken directly to the exercise.

Understand the question

The brainstorming question is found at the top of the screen. Be sure you understand the question and what kind of ideas the facilitator is asking for.

Share ideas

Share your ideas freely without critique. The facilitator will capture as accurately as possible. Feel free to ask the facilitator to adjust the idea's verbiage if it doesn't quite convey the concept you had in mind. As others share ideas, refrain from commenting on the idea until after the voting phase.

If the facilitator happens to not be sharing their screen, be sure you are in the POV exercise on your own device. You can watch the list develop in the Voting tab by clicking the refresh button in the upper right. 

Vote

Here is how the voting works.
  • Every participant gets 100 "points" and votes using a minimum of 20-point increments for no more than 5 total items.
  • Participants can weigh ideas by, for example, putting 40 points on 1 item and 20 points on 3 other items.
  • Your total votes cannot exceed 100 points.
  • Everyone votes individually and gets an equal weighting of their votes
  • Vote on what you see as the most important, and be ready to explain why you voted the way you did.
Every person will need to open the exercise from their own device. To place votes on ideas,
  1. Be sure you are on the Voting tab.
  2. Use each ideas dropdown menu on the right to add or remove your voting points to/from ideas.
  3. If you are using the standard scale, you have 100 points to vote with.
  4. When finished, click Cast Vote.

From the Results tab, you can see results come in. To keep the list current, refresh the list every so often.

Understand other participants' ideas

After you vote, you can open the Results tab. Everyone will get a chance to explain why they voted the way they did. Here's how it works.
  • Each person will be given the opportunity to explain the reasoning behind their votes
  • Others can ask clarifying questions but, again, please hold serious critiques and challenges. Allow the voting process to promote the ideas with the most believability and demote the less feasible ideas.
  • As you progress, you do not necessarily need to restate your reasoning for a vote if someone already shared a similar explanation. Simply mention that you agree with that person. Although, if you voted for the same idea but for a different reason, do share your reasoning with the group.
  • If ideas are similar, the group can decide to combine ideas. When you do, the voting points for those two ideas are combined.
  • After the group understands each others' votes, there is an opportunity to re-vote

Re-vote

Listening to people explain the rationale behind their votes often changes other peoples' minds. Re-voting completes the brainstorming process and allows the best ideas to win. If you don't revote, your list remains organized by the assumptions brought into the meeting. Re-voting ensures you are getting the best and most current thinking of the group.
To re-vote,
  1. Go back to the Voting tab
  2. You don't need to start from scratch. The way you previously voted is preserved. Simply remove votes from ideas they no longer think are viable.
  3. Add your remaining voting points to another idea(s).
  4. And click Cast Vote.

Act on the ideas

Finally, be sure to help the group take the best ideas and put them to work! Make as concrete of decisions as possible on what you are going to do about the top ideas.

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Access/Security:

  • Participants and facilitators will initially see a list all the exercises they are a part of.
  • But any user can change the filter to access all existing exercises (except those marked as "Private")
  • Exercises marked as "Private" can only be viewed and accessed by participants and facilitators
  • Only facilitators can change an exercise's settings

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