Your campaign has closed. You have 120 submissions. You have three people to review them, two available hours this week, and a leadership update in ten days. This guide is for exactly this moment.
The mistake most teams make at this stage is trying to evaluate everything carefully before sorting anything. They read each submission in detail, disagree about its merits, and three hours later they have reviewed 15 ideas without having made any decisions. The alternative is triage: a fast first pass that separates the pile into manageable categories before any detailed evaluation begins.
The Three-Pile Method
Before you read a single submission carefully, agree on three categories and what they mean. Each submission gets sorted into one of them in under 60 seconds. No exceptions, no extended discussion at this stage.
Not Now
This idea does not fit the campaign's scope, is obviously not feasible with current resources, or has already been tried and failed. You are not rejecting it permanently. You are removing it from active consideration in this cycle. These ideas still deserve a short reply to their contributor.
Interesting
This idea is worth a second look. It addresses something real, or suggests an angle you have not considered. It may need more development, more information, or a conversation with the right person before you can assess it properly. These do not advance yet, but they do not die either.
Let's Explore
This idea is strong enough to go forward to proper evaluation. It addresses the challenge directly, is specific enough to assess, and appears actionable. These go forward to your scoring process.
Your target for a pile of 120 submissions: spend no more than 30 to 45 seconds per idea in triage. That means 60 to 90 minutes for the whole pile with two reviewers working in parallel.
Agree on Criteria Before You Start
The 5 minutes you spend agreeing on criteria before you begin will save you 3 hours of disagreement during the review. Before triage starts, your review team needs to answer these questions out loud and agree:
What is in scope for this campaign? (If the campaign was about reducing material waste on Line 2, an idea about improving the onboarding process is out of scope regardless of its merits.)
What is currently excluded? (Budget frozen? Headcount limited? Certain systems locked? Say it now so no one argues about a good idea that simply cannot be implemented.)
What does a minimally acceptable submission look like? (If an idea is so vague it cannot be evaluated, does it go to Not Now, or do you send it back to the contributor for more detail? Decide before you start.)
Write these down somewhere everyone can see them during the review session.
How to Do Async Triage With Multiple Reviewers
If your team cannot be in the same room at the same time, async triage still works. The key is not to let people sort independently and then try to reconcile. Instead:
One person does a first pass and places each submission in one of the three piles with a one-sentence note explaining why. A second reviewer reads the assignments and the notes, not the original submissions, and flags any they want to move or discuss. Only the flagged ones require a conversation. Everything else stands as sorted by the first reviewer.
This keeps decision authority clear and reduces the back-and-forth that kills async workflows.
What to Do When Two Reviewers Score an Idea Very Differently
Disagreements are useful data. If one reviewer places an idea in Let's Explore and another places it in Not Now, that tension usually means one of three things: the idea is genuinely ambiguous and needs a third opinion, the two reviewers have different understandings of the campaign scope, or one reviewer has context the other lacks.
In triage, a quick verbal check is enough. If you cannot resolve it in 2 minutes, it goes to Interesting for now and gets a second look during formal evaluation. Triage is not the place for extended debate.
Three Cognitive Traps in Idea Evaluation
Familiarity bias: We tend to judge ideas we recognise as safer or better. An idea that resembles something you have seen work before will be scored higher than an unfamiliar approach that may be more effective. Be especially alert to this when reviewing ideas from departments you know well.
Seniority hierarchy: We tend to favour ideas from people in senior roles, even in blind reviews. If your review process is not anonymous at the triage stage, acknowledge this bias explicitly and compensate for it.
Complexity penalty: Ideas that are hard to explain are often dismissed as impractical, even when the difficulty is in the articulation rather than the idea itself. If a submission is hard to understand, consider whether that is a problem with the idea or with how it was written before sorting it to Not Now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should you triage ideas before or after anonymising them?
Triage them as-is first, then anonymise for deeper evaluation if bias is a risk. In triage, speed matters more than bias prevention because you are just sorting into rough categories. In formal evaluation, anonymisation matters more because you are making funded/not-funded decisions. Triage then anonymise then evaluate is the right sequence.
What if an idea is so poorly written you cannot understand it?
If the idea is in scope and addresses something real, put it in Interesting with a note: "Good underlying problem, but submission needs clarification." Then reach out to the contributor: "Your idea is interesting. Can you clarify [specific thing]?" In triage, assume good faith and prioritise understanding intention over filtering out rough writing.
How do you handle ideas that are similar but different?
Group them together during triage with a note: "Similar to [other submission], but with this distinction." During formal evaluation, you can either merge them if they are truly duplicates or evaluate them separately if the distinctions matter. Triage is where you flag the relationship.
Can you triage ideas in batches across multiple days?
Yes. Triage 30 ideas per session, same time each day. This prevents fatigue and decision quality degradation that happens when you triage all 120 at once. If you spread it over three days (30-30-60), you maintain consistent decision quality. Just keep the same reviewer team and criteria across all sessions.
What if people disagree with their triage category later?
Use that as feedback. "Three months later, an Interesting idea is becoming clearly valuable. What did we miss at triage?" This tells you about potential blind spots in your initial scope definition. Use it to improve your next triage criteria, but do not relitigate the triage categorisation itself. The point of triage is speed, not perfection.
Related Guides
- The Idea Scoring Scorecard: 3 Models for Different Situations
- How to Prioritise Ideas When Everything Feels Important
- Who Should You Invite? The Audience Planning Worksheet
- The Idea Submission Template: What to Ask (And Why Most Idea Forms Ask the Wrong Things)
See our full comparison of the 10 best idea management tools
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