The imagination is forever envisioning new things: new ideas, new concepts, new plans. The imagination tends to work best in a non-judgmental environment, with free-flowing creativity. It’s free to brainstorm new ideas. Here’s an example of how the imagination envisions ideas which can be written down in a list called an Idea Queue.
[The imagination brainstorms new ideas which can be collected and recorded in an Idea Queue.]
Eventually, without a control on the imagination, the ideas become plentiful and have no quality control. This can become a burden rather than a boon. There is a need for some kind of control on the process. I’ll refer to this control as idea evaluation, a process to access the usefulness of a new product of the imagination. If it’s useful, then idea evaluation keeps it. If not, it discards it. I’m talking an approach where new ideas are brainstormed then run through a series of critical reviews and the candidates that make it through the gauntlet are pursued. Idea evaluation looks like this.
[The evaluation cycle reviews idea candidates and fails them or passes them to go into a Pass Queue to be saved.]
When creative ideas for new projects or major changes to existing projects present themselves, they can be documented somehow: written down, sketched, recorded (Idea Queue). At a later point they can be reviewed to see if they are worthwhile ideas. A pause in time before the idea is evaluated is often enough for objectivity to determine the usefulness of the concept. Once the idea passes this first review, it is then placed in another queue as a potentially actionable approach (Pass Queue). This pass queue is then periodically reviewed and anything that passes at that point can be made a likelihood for action.