The nominal group technique (NGT) is a decision-making method used by teams to separate the vital few from the trivial many.
Use: Separation of the important items from the not-as-important items can be made using various techniques. One technique is majority rule. The decision made by majority rule is quick, but those in the minority feel alienated because they lose. It is better to get a win-win decision. A popular nominal group technique is to give everyone on the team five votes. Some use Post-it notes where one note equals one vote. Each member can vote on one item and use all of their five votes on that one idea. The team member may choose to split his or her votes among a few different ideas. For example, they might want to put three votes on one idea and two votes on another idea. They might even want to put one vote on each of the five items.
If all of the ideas are listed on a whiteboard or large piece of paper and they use Post-it notes, each member can walk up to the wall in place there notes according to how they want to vote. Names of the team members don’t need to be put on the Post-it notes if anonymity is important. Within a few seconds, it is obvious to all of the team members which items are of most importance, and which items are of no importance.
This is a win-win decision-making method, but it’s not as comprehensive as the third nominal group technique referred to as the ranking method. With the ranking method, all of the items are listed down the left side of the whiteboard. Across the top of the whiteboard going from left to right, the facilitator places the initials of each of the team members. Listed along the vertical axis on the left-hand side of the board is a listing of each of the items being evaluated. Starting with the first item at the top, each person states out loud to the group how important they feel that particular item is on the scale of 1 to 10. (1= low, 10 = high) Note that it is a good idea to rotate who starts the voting each time to minimize the effect of stronger-willed team members influencing the weaker members. The facilitator checks for internal validity meaning that if there is a range greater than three (3) for any of the items being evaluated, the facilitator will ask each of the members who think that something is very important (e.g., rated 8, 9, or 10) why they feel that a particular item is so important.
Conversely, the facilitator will ask why the members who think that something is not important (e.g., rated 1, 2, 3) why they feel that the item is of little or no importance. Much discussion comes out of this method because the team gets closer to consensus using this ranking method. The team might even set up a trigger number before the exercise begins. With the use of a trigger number, if the average of all of the responses on any particular item exceeds the trigger number, it is set apart from those that did not exceed the trigger number.
How does the team come up with a trigger number? The facilitator explains to the team that a trigger number that is set too low means that every item will make the cut – ultimately meaning that no separation will occur. Likewise, a trigger number set too high — the opposite will happen where no idea will exceed the trigger number and no item will make ‘the shortlist.’ Usually a trigger number is somewhere around 7 or 8 and each person on the team weighs in on what a trigger number should be and typically an average is taken. That average ends up being the trigger number.
