We were six hours into the planning session. We had covered a lot of territory, lots of flipchart pages on the wall. Several items had emerged in three areas that were deemed important by the group. The ideas were good, but I still wasn’t happy.

Gordon had been quiet most of the afternoon, but as we circled the table for comments, he wasn’t shy. “I will be very interested to see how you take all of these ideas and turn them into something we can work with,” he said.

My heart skipped a beat. I had seen many planning sessions get stuck at exactly this point. There were lots of good ideas recorded on the wall, but in the end, what would come of those ideas? Gordon was serious because he had seen it, too. Lots of energy, high fives, but few results.

I took Gordon’s curiosity, not as a challenge, but as permission to move to the next step. This group wanted to make some things happen, but without some very specific work, all this planning would be wasted.

“Q-tips,” I said, reaching in my pocket. I pulled out a handful of the cotton tipped swabs and tossed them on the table. “The next step is Q-tips. For each idea that you are serious about, we simply have to define the Q-tip. We have to define the Quantity, the Quality and the Time period. QQT.” -TF