Coaching practices for Select the Best Idea

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Select the Best Idea, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I come up with three or four obvious options, one of them seems fine, and I just grab it
• I grab the first idea that pops up and start poking holes in it immediately, so I never get more than two or three options on the table
• The first decent idea shows up and I grab it and call it done
• I treat every idea on my list as its own separate thing, judging each one solo, and it never occurs to me to mash two of them together
• The instant a workable idea surfaces I grab it and we stop looking

Practices that may help

1. Go for quantity first
   Aim for a high number of ideas; the best ones tend to come later in the list.
   Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas
2. Ideate — generate options before judging
   Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
   Design Thinking, Step by Step
3. The obvious veto: reject the first three ideas before keeping any
   Force yourself to generate more by vetoing the first plausible ideas — they are almost always the most obvious ones.
   Deliberate Constraints, Made Practical
4. Combine and build on others’ ideas
   Treat every idea as a building block — the best ideas in a session are usually hybrids.
   Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical
5. Generate Options — explore the full range of possibilities before committing
   Invite the person to generate as many options as possible before evaluating any of them.
   The GROW Model: Coaching Conversations That Actually Move People
6. Kill your darlings deliberately
   Identify the idea you’re most attached to, then set it aside first.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
7. Quantity first: generate the most ideas possible before evaluating any
   The best way to have a good idea is to have many ideas — originality rises with volume, so generate recklessly before selecting.
   The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice
8. Balance divergent with convergent thinking
   Treat creativity as two phases — open up to generate, then close down to select.
   Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas
9. Maximize quantity of ideas before evaluating
   Set an explicit quantity target — generate at least 20 ideas before reviewing any of them.
   The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection
10. Harvest and cluster ideas after the session
    The generation phase is worthless without a systematic harvest: sort, name, and prioritize the output.
    Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical

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