Four Key Leadership Roles: Conceptualizer

As I mentioned in my last post, there are four critical leadership roles:

• Conceptualizer
• Strategizer
• Actualizer
• Maximizer

In this post, I will delve into the first role: Conceptualizer.

As Conceptualizers, leaders are responsible for crafting ideas, visions, goals and objectives for their organizations.   They must be creating constantly.  Business is very dynamic and requires constant flows of ideas in order to survive our challenging environment.  Things are always changing and business must adapt quickly. It is the leader’s primary responsibility to ensure the conceptualization of the aforementioned items.

Leadership is all about making things happen!  To make something happen, you must first conceptualize it by forming a clear image of it in your mind or on paper. Conceptualizing is about developing, conceiving, creating, crafting, or devising things such as:

• Ideas
• Solutions
• Decisions

Let’s delve into idea conceptualization.  Ideas are the life of business.    Without ideas, business would not exist!  Ideas give birth to businesses and keep them alive and thriving.  Creative business ideas are hard to come by.  There are several categories for business ideas:

• Growth ideas
• Profit ideas
• Other ideas

I have devised a four phase approach to idea conceptualization that leaders can use to help them ideate.  These phases apply to any of the categories above.

Phase 1: Framing

Framing provides context for the idea. The purpose of this process is to ensure the effort to generate ideas is efficient and effective.  The goal is to ensure ideas are generated in the context of the business goals and objectives as well as its environment.  The framing process requires certain inputs, takes a number of prescribed steps, and produces an output that feeds the next phase: Idea generation.

Phase 2: Idea Generation

Idea generation is the phase where you come up with a number of ideas regardless of anything.  Whatever comes to mind goes within the frame set in Phase 1.  Think and list whatever comes up.  Let the storm brew in your brain and gather any and all thoughts.  Quantity not quality is the goal at this stage.

Phase 3: Idea Evaluation

In this phase you take the list of ideas previously generated and you take a careful look at it.  There are many ways to sort through them.  You can use affinity diagrams to find common themes or you can look for similar ideas and combine them.  Once you have the list down to a manageable level, you need some criteria to evaluate them.

Phase 4: Idea Selection

Using the criterion you developed, go about choosing the most applicable ideas given your goal.  Ultimately, some gut feelings will come into play as you go about making the final selection.  Obviously, involving others in these processes can always add to the probability of success.

In the case of a growth idea, there are many approaches to grow your business:

• New, improved, or expanded products and/or services
• New, improved, or expanded processes
• New, improved, or expanded methods
• New, improved, or expanded markets
• New, improved, or expanded channels
• Etc.

As you can see, it can get complicated.  Having a well-planned process available to help you can make this a very effective and efficient endeavor.  Give it a try!

In my next post, I will delve into the next leadership role: Strategizer.  It is not enough to have great ideas.  Leaders must make them happen.  The next step to get ideas from paper to reality is to develop a strategy.  That’s what I will focus on in my upcoming post.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO