What is it?

Everyone writes a bold idea on an index card, then the whole group gets on their feet and starts milling around, passing cards from person to person. When you call "Stop," each person reads the card in their hand and scores it from 1 to 5. This happens five times, so every card collects five scores. At the end, you add up the scores and call out the numbers from the top down. The highest-scoring ideas are read aloud, and the group's top 10 emerge in less than 30 minutes. It is fast, physical, anonymous, and produces a prioritised list of ideas that the whole room has shaped.

Also Known As

• 25/10
• Idea Rating

When to Use It

• You need to generate and prioritise ideas with a large group in a short time
• After a conference session, Open Space, or unconference, when you want to capture the group's boldest takeaways
• When you want every voice in the room to contribute equally, regardless of hierarchy or personality
• You are looking for bold, unconventional ideas rather than safe, predictable ones
• The group needs energy and movement after a long stretch of sitting
• You want anonymous idea generation to bypass politics and groupthink
• At the start of a planning process when you need a wide scan of possibilities
• As a closing activity to crystallise commitments or next steps from a longer session

When NOT to Use It

• The group is smaller than about 12 people. With fewer participants, the same card keeps coming back to you, and scores cluster too narrowly to be meaningful
• You need deep analysis or detailed proposals. This technique surfaces headlines, not business cases
• The question requires specialist knowledge that not everyone in the room has. Scores become random when people cannot assess what they are reading
• Participants have mobility issues that make standing and walking difficult, unless you adapt for seated passing
• The group is not psychologically safe enough to write honestly. Anonymous cards only work if people trust the process
• You need a binding decision. This produces a temperature check, not a vote

25/10 Crowd Sourcing was developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless as Liberating Structure #12, with inspiration drawn from the work of improvisationalist Keith Johnstone. It is one of 33 microstructures in the Liberating Structures collection, designed to include and unleash everyone in a group regardless of size.

What You Need

Group size: 12 to 200+. Works best with 20 or more. Below 12, cards circulate too often and the scoring loses meaning. There is no practical upper limit.

Time required:

• 20 to 30 minutes for the core process
• Allow 10 extra minutes if you want a debrief or next-steps conversation.

Space:

• An open area where the whole group can stand and move freely
• Enough floor space for people to mill around without bumping into furniture
• A wall or board at the front to display the top-scoring cards

Materials:

• One blank index card (or half-sheet of paper) per participant
• Pens or markers for every participant
• A loud signal to stop movement (bell, horn, clap, or music)
• Tape or pins to post the top cards on a wall
• A flip chart or whiteboard to record the top 10

The Process

Setup

1. Clear the room so people can move freely. Push tables and chairs to the edges if needed.
2. Place one index card and pen at each seat, or hand them out as people arrive.
3. Write your invitation question on a flip chart where everyone can see it. The classic prompt is: "If you were 10 times bolder, what big idea would you recommend? What first step would you take to get started?"
4. Prepare your signal for stopping movement.
5. Have tape ready to post cards on the wall at the end.

Step 1: Write Your Bold Idea

Time: 3 to 5 minutes

Purpose: Get every person's best thinking onto a card before any group influence kicks in.

1. Read the invitation question aloud and let people see it on the flip chart.
2. Say: "Take your index card and write one bold idea. Include a first step you would take to make it happen. You have about 3 minutes. Do not write your name on the card."
3. Give the group quiet writing time. Resist the urge to rush this step.

Watch for: People writing novels. Remind them: "One idea, one first step. A sentence or two for each is plenty."

Step 2: Mill and Pass

Time: 1 to 2 minutes

Purpose: Shuffle the cards so that scoring is anonymous and random.

1. Say: "Stand up, hold your card face down, and start milling around the room. When I say 'pass,' exchange your card with the nearest person. Keep moving and keep passing. Do not read the cards yet."
2. Let the group mill and pass for 60 to 90 seconds. The goal is at least five to six passes so nobody knows whose card they hold.
3. Sound your signal and say: "Stop. Hold on to the card in your hand."

Watch for: People reading cards while passing. Remind them to keep cards face down until you say stop.

Step 3: Read and Score (Round 1)

Time: 1 to 2 minutes

Purpose: Begin the distributed evaluation process.

1. Say: "Turn over the card in your hand and read the idea. Score it from 1 to 5. A 1 means 'not bold or not practical,' and a 5 means 'this is brilliant and we could actually start on it.' Write your score on the back of the card. Do not look at any other scores."
2. Give people about 30 seconds to read and score.
3. Say: "Flip the card face down again. Start milling and passing."

Step 4: Repeat for Four More Rounds

Time: 8 to 10 minutes total

Purpose: Each card collects five independent scores, giving a robust crowd-sourced rating.

1. Repeat the mill-pass-stop-score cycle four more times, for five rounds total.
2. Each round follows the same pattern: mill, pass, stop, read, score on the back, flip face down, mill again.
3. After the fifth scoring round, say: "Keep the card in your hand. Add up all five scores on the back. Write the total at the bottom."

Watch for: People scoring their own card. It is rare but does happen. If you spot it, ask them to pass it on and score the next one they receive.

Step 5: Call Out the Top 10

Time: 5 to 7 minutes

Purpose: Surface the highest-rated ideas and make them visible to the whole group.

1. Say: "Does anyone have a card with a total of 25? Hold it up." (A score of 25 means five people all gave it a 5.)
2. If someone holds up a 25, ask them to read the idea aloud. Post the card on the wall.
3. Work downwards: "Any 24s? Any 23s?" Continue until you have posted 10 cards on the wall. This is your Top 10.
4. If you get more than 10 cards at the same score, read them all and let the group hear the full set.

Watch for: Ties at the cutoff. If your 10th and 11th cards have the same score, include them both. The number 10 is a guide, not a rule.

Closing

Time: 5 to 10 minutes

1. Read through the Top 10 ideas displayed on the wall.
2. Ask: "What patterns do you notice? What surprises you?"
3. Invite the group to consider which ideas they want to take forward, and what the first steps might look like.
4. If appropriate, use the Top 10 as input for a follow-up process such as 1-2-4-All, Open Space, or 15% Solutions.

Facilitator Guidance

What Makes This Work

The power of 25/10 Crowd Sourcing comes from three things working together. First, the anonymity removes politics. Nobody knows whose idea they are scoring, so quality wins over status. Second, the physical movement generates energy and breaks the passive-audience dynamic that kills most large-group ideation. Third, the distributed scoring is statistically robust. Five independent scores from five different people produce a reliable signal about what the group values, without the anchoring bias of public voting. The result is a transparent, crowd-generated priority list that everyone helped create and nobody can dismiss as "the facilitator's pick" or "the boss's pet idea."

Common Pitfalls

• Rushing the writing step: If you cut writing time to less than 2 minutes, people produce generic ideas. Give them 3 to 5 minutes of quiet. The quality of the output depends on the quality of what goes onto the cards.
• Not enough passing rounds: If cards only get passed two or three times, people can guess whose card they hold. This kills the anonymity effect. Make sure the milling phase includes at least five or six passes.
• Weak invitation question: A boring question produces boring ideas. "How can we improve communication?" will get you nothing useful. "If you were 10 times bolder, what would you change about how we work together?" will get you real answers.
• Skipping the debrief: The Top 10 list is a starting point, not a conclusion. If you just read the cards and move on, the energy dies. Connect the results to a next step.
• Letting hierarchy creep in: If a senior leader reads the cards aloud and adds commentary, the anonymity collapses. Keep the read-aloud mechanical: just the idea and the score.
• Discarding lower-scoring ideas: Cards that scored 15 to 20 may still contain seeds of something useful. Collect all cards and keep them available for later review.

Adaptations

• Virtual/remote delivery: Use a digital whiteboard tool (Miro, Mural, or similar). Each person writes their idea on a virtual sticky note. Enable private mode so others cannot see during writing. Disable private mode and have participants drag stickies into random positions. Each person reads and scores a sticky, adding a numbered comment. Repeat for five rounds. It works, but loses the physical energy of the in-person version.
• Smaller groups (12 to 15): Run three scoring rounds instead of five, so the maximum score is 15. Call it "15/10" internally. With fewer people, you may only surface a Top 5 rather than a Top 10.
• Larger groups (100+): The technique scales naturally. With 200 people, you will have cards scoring in the low 20s. The only adjustment is to allow more milling time so cards get properly shuffled.
• Seated passing: If the group cannot stand, have people pass cards left around their table group, then swap a few cards between tables at each round. Less energising but still works.
• Different question formats: Instead of bold ideas, try: "What courageous conversation are you not having?", "What one decision would you unmake if you could?", or "What do you hope can happen in the future?"

Real-World Applications

Post-conference action planning: A conference organiser used 25/10 with 150 attendees at the end of a two-day event. The invitation was "What is the single boldest action our industry should take in the next year?" The Top 10 became the published conference commitments.

Sprint retrospective with multiple teams: A Scrum Master ran 25/10 with four teams (about 40 people) after a challenging quarter. The question was "If you were 10 times bolder, what would you change about how our teams work together?" The top-scoring idea led to a cross-team working group that cut handoff delays by half.

Strategy kickoff for a leadership team: A consultant used 25/10 with 25 senior leaders at the start of a strategy day. The question was "What is the biggest opportunity we are ignoring?" Three of the Top 10 ideas were variations on the same theme, which redirected the entire day's agenda.

Community engagement event: A local council facilitator used 25/10 with 80 residents at a town planning consultation. The question was "What would make this neighbourhood a place you are proud to live in 10 years from now?" The Top 10 ideas fed directly into the council's investment plan.

Innovation day at a technology company: An L&D team used 25/10 with 60 engineers during an internal hackathon kickoff. The question was "What product feature would you build if you had zero constraints?" The highest-scoring ideas became the seed projects for the hackathon teams.