How Now Wow Matrix Template
Brainstorm and organize ideas based on their originality and ease of implementation.
About the How Now Wow matrix template
What is How Now Wow?
Brainstorming is difficult — but it becomes increasingly difficult as you scale. As you release more and more innovative products and services, it’s harder for your team to get creative. Complicated workflows, hard judgment calls, and resource constraints often force you to be conservative when you’d rather take risks. To overcome this challenge and reinvigorate your team, you can use the How Now Wow matrix.
The How Now Wow matrix is a game that fosters creativity. It consists of a 2x2 matrix with “originality” on the X-axis and “feasibility” on the Y-axis. You work with your team to file your ideas into each category. Working through the matrix can empower you to overcome creative roadblocks.
How do you use the How Now Wow matrix?
The horizontal axis represents originality and rates ideas as normal or innovative. The vertical axis represents ease of implementation and rates ideas as easy or difficult to implement. Ideas that are unoriginal and challenging probably aren’t worth pursuing. “How” ideas that are innovative but difficult to execute may need further work before you can act upon them. “Now” ideas are generally considered low-hanging fruit. “Wow” ideas are both innovative and relatively easy to implement, so this is where you’ll want to try to focus your attention.
The 3 Aspects of How Now Wow
How: Difficult to implement.
This category consists of ideas that are innovative but infeasible. It’s a helpful way to set ambitious goals for the future.
Now: Easy to implement.
These ideas are familiar, so you know they work well.
Wow: Original and easy to implement.
This category describes creative ideas that are relatively simple to execute. Try to file as many ideas into this category as possible.
Who can use the How Now Wow matrix?
The How Now Wow matrix is versatile enough to be used by any number of teams. Use it whenever you’d like to encourage your team to do creative brainstorming. In order to encourage maximum creativity, you may find it beneficial to break teams into smaller groups or let people brainstorm individually before sharing their ideas with a larger group.
Get started with this template right now.
RICE Prioritization Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Strategic Planning, Prioritization
Teams use the RICE framework to prioritize the best course of action for their business. Using the model, you assign a RICE score to different ideas and tasks. This score tells you whether that item is something to prioritize. As a result, you make better-informed decisions about growing your business.
Team Norms + Personal Profiles
Works best for:
Agile
The Team Norms + Personal Profiles template fosters team alignment and cohesion by defining shared norms and understanding individual preferences. It provides a structured framework for collaboratively establishing team norms, values, and communication protocols. Additionally, it allows team members to create personal profiles to share their strengths, preferences, and working styles. By promoting transparency and mutual respect, this template empowers teams to build trust, leverage diversity, and enhance collaboration, driving collective success and performance improvement.
Six Thinking Hats Template
Works best for:
Ideation, Brainstorming
The Six Thinking Hats by Dr. Edward de Bono was created as an alternative to argument, it is designed to help teams explore and develop ideas collaboratively. Use this template to boost creative thinking and get different perspectives so you and your team can make better-informed decisions.
Sticky Note Packs Template
Works best for:
Brainstorming, Meetings, Workshops
Use Miro’s Stickies Packs template to facilitate your brainstorming and group sessions. Use them to organize your ideas, collaborate as a team, and encourage participation from everyone involved.
Organizational Chart Template
Works best for:
Org Charts, Operations, Mapping
Who makes up the team? What roles do they play? Who does each member report to? An organizational chart, or org chart, can answer it all at a glance. Ideal for onboarding new employees, these visual diagrams plot out company structure and the chain of command to help your team members understand reporting relationships, their role, and how they fit into the broader organization. Our template lets you choose your own chart structure and easily plot the connections between employees, roles, and departments.
Mitch Lacey's Estimation Game Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Agile Methodology, Prioritization
A wordy name but a simple tool, Mitch Lacey’s Estimation Game is an effective way to rank your work tasks by size and priority — so you can decide what to tackle first. In the game, notecards represent your work items and feature ROI, business value, or other important metrics. You’ll place each in a quadrant (ranking them by size and priority) to help you order them in your upcoming schedule. The game also empowers developers and product management teams to work together and collaborate effectively.