User Guide 2: Using the Kathink Key®
The Kathink Key® is a simple tool that can help you identify those Business Thinkers who most clearly comprehend the specifics of your business issue at the time that they submit their Proposals to you.
How the Kathink Key® works
The Kathink Key® gives you a way to assess at a glance how well the views of Business Thinkers submitting proposals for your requests align with your own views on the specific business issue.
Defining a Kathink Key®
When you post your original request, you may complete a Kathink Key®, which consists of a number of “Key Criteria” that relate to the issue.
You give each criterion a percentage score, which indicates how relevant or important that aspect is, in your view, to the business issue. This is done by simply typing in short descriptions of the Key Criteria, and dragging a gold bar to the appropriate percentage.
Note: The scores you give represent the relative importance or relevance of each key factor, and do not need to total 100%.
If you choose to define a Kathink Key®, when each Business Thinker wishes to make a proposal, they must complete their own assessment of the Key Criteria. They do this “blind”, i.e. they don't know your percentage scores, and the order of the criteria is also jumbled. The Kathink system will calculate how closely the business thinker's (BT's) assessment fits with your own.
Filtering Proposals
When you come to review BTs' proposals, you will see percentage scores showing how closely each BT's Key assessment fits your own assessment. This may help you identify BTs who could be likely good fits, because they show similar appreciation of the business considerations as your own company does. It can also be a quick way to filter out proposals from BTs that are unlikely to be of use.
When you view the details of any shortlisted proposals, you will see a more detailed graphical view of the fit between the BT's Key and yours. The graph shows, at a glance, your own relevance levels, plus how the BT's levels vary (the shaded areas below).
Tips on using the Kathink Key®
- Include as many Key Criteria as are relevant to evaluating a BT's insight into your business issue. Don't include more than necessary, as this may discourage BTs from submitting proposals.
- Do consider including one or more criteria with lower relevance. If you only include a number of criteria, all rated very highly, it takes less discernment on the BT's part to assess, which could give you lots of similar Kathink Key® responses that don't help you differentiate.
