Brainstorming Better. A little help for my friend.

October 2, 2008 By Peter

A colleague wrote to me today.

I wanted to bounce a premise off you. The Ad Club asked me to lead a workshop in December around a topic. I proposed “Better Brainstorming in Today’s Idea Economy.”

What I like is that brainstorming is something everyone takes for granted and something everyone believes they’re good at. But as we know, there are good sessions and bad sessions. If you had to list the top 3-5 factors in successful brainstorming sessions, what would they be?

I gave my friend my first-thing-in-the-morning, top-of-my-head response. I’ve polished it up a bit and it’s below.

Since IdeaConnection is all about collaboration, I invite anyone to comment and add thoughts, amplify or amend mine. By December my friend should have quite a presentation!

1. Preparation. Every brainstorm participant should be prepared. That is, give everybody who will attend the session some homework. They need to prepare their minds. “Chance favors the prepared mind,” say Louis Pasteur.

Michale Michalko talks about the success he’s had with mind popping–writing a message to his subconscious, sealing it, and finding that solutions appear after a night or two of sleep. As you know I advocate a Brainline in advance of a session in order to seed the eventual session with ideas, to hit the ground running. But Brainline also prepares the participants just like mind-popping.

2. Diversity. The more diverse the group, the greater your chances of pulling some really unexpected results out of your hat. Cross-pollination is responsible for the greatest ideas. I’ll think of some examples. Wait a minute! This is a collaborative effort. Give me some examples.

Now that you can collaborate with people all over the world, please recommend that your audience get online and do so. Read “The Wisdom of Collaboration.”

3. Crossing the Bridge. The group has to make a clean break with their typical environment. I once got all kinds of feathers ruffled with a client insisted on brainstorming in their corporate boardroom and I advised that the boardroom was the worst possible place to brainstorm.

Okay, so I could use some tact, but I was right. The space has to say, “Today is different.”

If possible, ban cellphones and other interruptions. Everyone in the session should be totally out of touch with the outside world, as if they were going under for an operation.

If there’s no way to go away to an off-the-beaten-path site, at least go through a bridge exercise. Like this: play some music, unfamiliar and exotic, relaxing, and go through a “close your eyes, imagine a good place…” yoga-like break for about 15 or more minutes. The purpose is to get everyone cleared, to wipe their slates clean, and to prepare them for doing something different. To prevent typical thinking habits from persisting, especially if they are in a familiar space!

Now you can begin brainstorming. You know the rules. It’s good to support them with tangible reminders. For example, I used to give out whistles and noise makers, which anyone could use to call out anyone who broke the “muzzle your judge” rule. Thinking hats to remind them they were thinking divergently all day. Rewards for the first idea, the first “dumb idea,” the first probing rather than critical question, etc.

My speaker-to-be followed up with another question:

As a sub-theme, I’m developing “how to create better ideas, faster.” Feel free to use as a jump-off.

Okay, I will:

Make sure you advise your audience to consider online collaboration. Naturally, here at IdeaConnection.

I’ve connected this blog with a discussion Top Three Brainstorming Tips on The Hub.

Peter Lloyd writes Right Brain Workouts for IdeaConnection.

Share on

Reader Comments

Peter,

as for "strategic stimulus," it breaks out in two ways. Inside out stimulus and outside in stimulus. Inside out stimulus might be bringing in packaging from around the world (i.e. Asia is amazing in what they can do with technology) if you're working on a packaging problem. Who is doing it the best? Who within our set has taken it to new places. "Outside in" stimulus is using anything to get your perspective to a new place. in other words, stimulus that has nothing to do with your category or competitive set. For instance, for the same packaging assignment maybe stimulus can come from nature or from anything you random pull out of a junk drawer at home. That might be diversity from within your world, and diversity from outside it.

Gary

yes. that right
Posted by du an masteri on April 28, 2017

Who is conducting the investigation? ,
Posted by Settor12 on October 22, 2009

Gary,

Diversity is driving me. At least at the moment. I just finished editing Vern Burkhardt's interview with Scott Page about his book The Difference, which is big on diversity.

The Power of Diversity.

Too many of the same size and shape heads make for less effective brainstorming.
Posted by Peter on October 13, 2008

Gary,

In your October 5th comment, you support Graham Horton's call for "useful changes of perspective" but add the idea of focus with your call for "strategic stimulus."

The question begged here is, how focused or strategic? How as in how much or to what degree, and how in the sense of "like what?"

I agree that stimulus should be very stimulating. So that settles that part of the question. But I have concerns about how limiting or broadening the stimulus should be.

What do you recommend?

Peter
Posted by Peter on October 13, 2008

Graham,

Thanks for pointing out the flip-chart bottleneck. I can hardly think of a more inefficient way to gather the ideas that come from a group, much less from a group of intelligent and creative people.

And not just because the just-post-cave-drawing technique of converting words to symbols with the human hand with a marker on a surface is about as slow as one can get. The facilitator, that is, almost all those I've seen, can't help but edit and censor on the spot.

Also, the entire group is forced to sit quietly, (i.e., not generate) as the facilitator scribbles, so often in a hand that few can read!

Your second problem, evaluation apprehension, also resonates with my experience. It deserves a book... okay, maybe just a pamphlet. Some facilitators have gone so far as to remind participants to keep their contributions within certain limits. No "this," no "that" ideas.

These kinds of limitations tend to make a facilitator's role less like facilitation and more like performance.

Peter
Posted by Peter on October 13, 2008

Graham,

Thanks for your comments!

But, sorry, I can't let you leave it at "(because brainstorming won't work)." And tucking it away in parentheses, won't let you wiggle out. What do you mean, brainstorming won't work, for Pete's sake?

You framed your prophecy of doom in the context of classical brainstorming. So the question, more specifically, is "what is it about classical brainstorming that won't work?"

I will add my other comments is separate responses.

Peter
Posted by Peter on October 13, 2008

I came across an idea I've always liked as it relates to brainstorming. The technique is called Ask a Better Question. In a brainstorming setting, sometimes we come up with lame ideas because we're working with lame questions. The creative process starts wherever you want it to start. Why start in the same hacky place everyone else starts. ie Jeff Hawkins, the father of the Palm Pilot, was a big believer in asking better questions. In fact, the question that drove him to developing the Palm Pilot was a question he wrote and pondered as a teenager: "What is intelligence?"

Or, as Morpheus in the Matrix said "It is the question that drives us?"

SO what question is driving you?
Posted by gary kopervas on October 8, 2008

Peter,

I've always believe that a bunch of people sitting around talking about things they already know isn't a brainstorming session, it's a status meeting. Great brainstorming sessions are built around "strategic stimulus." Anything that forces our mind into a difference place to look for solutions is a good thing. That could mean locating the session somewhere interesting and unexpected, or using strategic objects or ideas as possible jump offs for new thinking. While it isn't new to "force associations", done with surprise and clear sense of strategy, and a group can't help but be more creative and productive.

Gary
Posted by gary kopervas on October 5, 2008

as with many interesting questions, the answer is, "it depends".

for example, it depends on
- what kind of problem you are trying to solve
- how experienced and competent the participants are
- how many people are involved
- what you mean by "brainstorming"

if by brainstorming you mean classical brainstorming, and you are looking for new ideas for a tough problem, then the answer is: "don't!" (because brainstorming won't work)

on the other hand, if you are just looking to collect the thoughts a given set of people have on a certain subject, then classical brainstorming is fine.

in this case, the first answer is, of course, osborn's rules for brainstorming:
- separate criticism from ideation
- encourage cross-pollination (i.e. build on ideas already presented)
- prefer quantity to quality
- encourage wild ideas (you can always tone them down later, if needed)

the two biggest brainstorming problems to avoid are:
- blocking (there is a bottleneck in the process which prevents participants from making contributions. in classical brainstorming this is usually the facilitator himself/herself paying attention to, repeating and writing down individual contributions on a flipchart)
- evaluation apprehension (unwillingness to say something controversial for fear of criticism, especially from colleagues or the boss)

almost all ideation tasks are non-trivial, i.e. your participants will not be able to come up with good ideas unaided. if they weren't, people would have already come up with adequate solutions on their own. in this case then your greatest need is for useful changes of perspective. for example:
- how would darth vader solve this problem?
- how can we make the product more convenient?
- how could we portray extreme usage of the product?
- what would google do in our situation?
- aardvark!

for me, this is easily the most important success factor. finding good changes of perspective is the core competence in the art of facilitating ideation sessions.

regards

graham (http://www.zephram.de/blog/profil-von-graham)
Posted by Graham Horton on October 3, 2008

Gregg,

Thanks for a lot of help. Not just above but in your article link.

I wonder, if we have to always think of brainstorming as an in-person process. If we want to compete by generating bigger ideas faster, do you think online brainstorming can beat live brainstorming in speed and efficiency?

Is keeping it live with travel, overnights, breaks, and all that worth the benefit of eye-to-eye, hand-to-hand, personal dynamics?

Or by continuing to meet are we continuing to suffer the same shortcomings of live ideation?

PS: Point 3. Is that why you've had me in some of your sessions?
Posted by Peter on October 2, 2008

Peter,

You've hit on some of my favorite tips already, here are three more:

1.) Use a professional facilitator. If it's just a short quick session and your people are well trained, well, maybe not. Otherwise, if it's a half day, full day or two day session you're better off having someone else do the planning, logistics, and facilitation. Professional facilitators are not only neutral parties, which helps, but good ones have a lot of tricks up their sleeve to keep a session moving and on track.

2.) Have very clear objectives. It's pretty basic but it's often the case that folks are not quite sure what they are ideating about. If you want disruptive, great, if you want incremental ideas, that's great too, but try not to be all over the map, it will dilute your results.

3.) Invite Troublemakers. Properly steered these people can really add a lot to your session. Don't rule somebody out because they don't fit in, or are otherwise weird in some way. Those outside the group or team are often those already thinking differently and it may be just what you need.

4.) a Bonus, Do More Ideation. One mistake folks make is simply not doing enough ideation, the more you do it the better you get.

Best of luck, and for more on a related topic see this article: http://www.greggfraley.com/innovatesafely.html
Posted by Gregg Fraley on October 2, 2008

Add your Comment

[LOGIN FIRST] if you're already a member.

Highlighted fields are required.