How to Use a Sounding Board to Test Ideas Before Acting

Research & Sources / Mentorship & Sounding Boards

Before a new racing car is built, engineers put a model of it into a wind tunnel. Air blows over it, and they see exactly where it creates drag, where it lifts, where it wobbles. Changing a model costs almost nothing. Changing a finished car costs a fortune. A sounding board is a wind tunnel for ideas.

Ideas are cheap to change early

A new product, a new hire, a price change, a new market, a reorganisation. At the idea stage, changing direction costs a conversation. Once money is spent, contracts are signed and people are told, changing direction costs much more, in money and in trust.

Yet many leaders go straight from idea to action. The idea feels good, energy is high, and testing it feels like slowing down.

Why our own testing is not enough

We are poor judges of our own ideas. Emily Pronin and colleagues showed that people see biases in others much more easily than in themselves.¹ And when we love an idea, we naturally look for reasons it will work, not for reasons it won’t.

Gary Klein suggests a simple tool for this: the premortem. Imagine the idea has already failed, and ask why. It gives everyone permission to name the risks they would otherwise keep quiet about.²

How to test an idea with a sounding board

1. Explain it in two minutes. If you can’t, the idea is not clear enough yet. That alone is useful information.

2. Say what you assume. “This works if clients are willing to pay 20 percent more and if we can hire two people by spring.” Assumptions are where ideas usually break.

3. Ask them to find the weak point. “Where would this fail?” is more useful than “do you like it?”.

4. Run the premortem together. “It is one year later and this was a disaster. What happened?”

5. Decide on a small test. What is the cheapest way to check the riskiest assumption before committing fully?

Who makes a good wind tunnel

Someone who understands business, has no stake in the outcome and is willing to say what they see. Research by Ilan Yaniv shows that people tend to underweight advice, even though using it makes their judgements more accurate.³ So when the sounding board raises a concern, give it more weight than your first instinct suggests.

What this means for you this week

• Pick one idea you are excited about and planning to act on soon.
• Write down its three biggest assumptions.
• Test it with one person using the premortem question.
• Design one small test for the riskiest assumption.

Build the model first. The race car can wait a week.

Sources

1. Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y. & Ross, L. (2002). The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(3), 369-381. doi.orgPeople see biases in others far more easily than in themselves.
2. Klein, G. (2007). Performing a Project Premortem. Harvard Business Review. hbr.orgImagining that a project has already failed and asking why helps teams find risks they would otherwise miss.
3. Yaniv, I. (2004). Receiving other people’s advice: Influence and benefit. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 93(1), 1-13. doi.orgPeople give too little weight to advice, yet using advice improves the accuracy of their judgements.