By KD Lockhart
When you're deciding on a company name, emotions are high. It's an important decision, and it's hard to get an entire management team to agree. Before you call up an expensive naming company, gather your team into a room with a whiteboard and produce a memorable name that everyone can agree on:
1. Make a long list of all the possibilities. Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm. Write down everything you think of.
2. Remove anything that everyone agrees does not make sense (great for a few laughs). If there is any controversy, leave the name, it will be eliminated soon enough.
3. For each possibility, have everyone vote whether they like it or not. Each person has unlimited votes, and voting decisions should be based on first impressions.
4. Go through the entire list, recording the number of 'yes' votes for each one. Then remove half the possibilities-those with the fewest votes.
5. Repeat until only one option is left.
Essentially this results in the result that is accepted by everyone-perhaps not an absolute favorite of everyone on the team, but something everyone can live with. And, even better, from my experience, the results tend to grow on you. I look back at the other potential names for my company and I'm awfully glad we discarded them.
This technique can be used with names, interview candidates, marketing ideas, and a number of other group decisions. We've used it to name Backboard, Increo and a number of other internal projects.
Thanks to Sarah Arora for her ideas that contributed to the development of this process.
The name for Backboard - http://www.getbackboard.com - was chosen with this technique and served the feedback tool well. If you need feedback on your articles, try out Backboard - http://www.getbackboard.com
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