Steve Brunker, CIO at LSI Industries Talks About Determining Whether or not an Idea is Worth Pursuing

How do you determine whether or not an idea is worth pursuing?

“As we communicate with our business partners about a project, they are intimately familiar with what the value is of the things they are asking from us. Whether it be improving customer service, or delivery times, whatever that business-level requirement is, they can articulate quite well what the value side of it is. If I say that it will cost X number of dollars to make this change in support of that, it isn’t a hard equation to work through. The real challenge is in prioritizing what to work on in the present, and the real skill is in discerning timing. My CEO uses a phrase I’m very fond of because it embodies the idea very well; “skate to where the puck is going.” There is a huge array of things that we could do now; some of those things will provide us value in the future, but there are some that we just miss the window on, so we have to make the decision to skate to where the puck is going next and be there.”