When we’re swimming in great ideas—too many priorities and possibilities—we need a way to effectively prioritize. The ICE framework is a simple way to assess an idea’s impact, confidence, and ease—helping us manage our limited resources wisely while delivering big results.
When we’re swimming in great ideas—too many priorities and possibilities—we need a way to effectively prioritize. The ICE framework is a simple way to assess an idea’s impact, confidence, and ease—helping us manage our limited resources wisely while delivering big results.
Modern Mentor is hosted by Rachel Cooke. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hey, it’s Rachel Cooke, your Modern Mentor. I’m the founder of Lead Above Noise—a firm specializing in helping teams and organizations create better working experiences that activate better employee engagement and business results. Reach out to me if your team could use some help activating your full potential
The other night, my husband and I tried a new restaurant with some friends. It’s a fun crew to dine with because we all love eating a pretty wide variety of stuff. So we tend to just hit the menu hard and have the waiters put it all in the middle. Everyone gets a taste of everything.
It’s a great strategy… if you do it right. Which I’ll say, we did not.
In hindsight, we started with the wrong question. We asked ourselves and each other, “What sounds good?” Which is great when the options are limited. But there were a million. And everything sounded good. So we kept on ordering.
When it happens in a restaurant the consequence is some gentle indigestion and a bunch of doggie bags. Not the end of the world.
When it happens at work? Which it does often? The stakes are higher, the consequences more… consequential. This is where we get to overwhelm. To burnout and dropped balls and disengagement.
Because when a new idea hits—a possible priority—we ask ourselves, “Does it sound like a good idea?” But way too many things sound like a good idea. Which is why we need to ask better questions. We need a framework to help us assess not each idea as it presents, but all of our ideas together. So we force ourselves to make choices. To prioritize.
And this is where the ICE framework comes into play.
It’s a simple tool that helps us make choices when we’re confronted with an abundance of creativity, of possibility, of options and directions.
So if your team is swimming in ideas—and some overwhelm—then let’s talk about how you might use the ICE framework to decide which ideas deserve your energy and attention, and which may just need to hang tight for now. To the best of my knowledge, a guy called Sean Ellis is credited with bringing this model to life.
It’s fairly simple. ICE is an acronym that stands for Impact, Confidence, and Ease.
As in how impactful would something be to our business, how confident are we in our ability to execute it successfully, and how easy would it be to achieve?
What makes this useful is measuring a bunch of possibilities against each other. Because it’s about relativity. Usually, all possibilities sound good. The real question is—how do they stack up against each other? In a competition, which ones win?
Maybe an example will help.
So I was working with a tech company not long ago. They’d recently closed the 3rd consecutive quarter in which they hadn’t met their goals. And their teams were burning out. Which meant people were extremely busy. But not effective. Which is an undesirable combo!
When we pulled back the curtain, it turned out they had a lot of projects in flight. All were demanding resources, and none were delivering results. So we decided to do some prioritizing.
We made a list of the top initiatives that people were spending the most time and energy on. And it included things like:
· Translating their user interface into various non-English languages
· Running customer focus groups to capture feedback on how to improve their products
· Attending trade shows to explore new technologies and vendor partners
The list went on. And on. It was a lean organization that had bitten off more than it could chew. And something had to give.
So we went through the exercise of assigning ICE scores to each item. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being low and 10 high), the team asked and answered for each item…
· How impactful would completing this work be?
· How confident are we that we’d get it done effectively?
· How easy will this be to do?
Now, this is more art than science. Scores come from honest dialog—not from a clear-cut equation. And the dialog is really the thing that moves us—helps us choose.
Here’s what it sounds like.
As we talked through, for example, translating their product into various languages, the consensus was:
· Not a super high-impact as most of their customer base is in the US.
· Confidence was high—because they had highly trained translators doing the work.
· Ease was low. It’s a slow process—not to mention expensive.
Now compare this with the conversation about running customer focus groups to capture feedback to improve their products.
· The impact got a 10 out of 10. Because it’s high touch—they’re demonstrating to their current customers a care for their experience. And they’re capturing valuable, actionable feedback at the same time.
· Confidence also got a 10 out of 10 because no one knows better than the customers themselves what’s working and what’s not.
· And finally, ease got a 5 out of 10. These groups were admittedly labor-intensive.
When they looked at just these two priorities alone, it became abundantly and immediately clear that by letting go—for now—of their translation work, they’d have more resources to give to running customer focus groups and taking action on their valuable feedback.
And in a season of burnout plus inefficacy, giving more energy to higher-impact work just makes sense.
So… how can you use this framework with your team? Or frankly, just with yourself and your ever-growing to-do list?
And what problem do you need to solve?
Like, maybe your team has been achieving its goals. Maybe you’re on track. But, collectively, you’ve done a bunch of hard things and you’re feeling the burn. Maybe your goal is to just find one or two things that score high on Ease—because your minds and souls need a break.
Or, maybe your team has taken a bunch of risks lately—you’ve experimented (which is awesome) but your results have been disappointing. Maybe you just need to pick a thing or two with high Confidence scores. Because you just need a quick win.
There are no hard and fast rules with the ICE framework. The value is in the relativity.
Remember none of us can—or should—do it all. So if your to-do list is feeling endless… maybe give it a shot of ICE.