BRAINSTORMING. LET OUT THAT KID INSIDE OF YOU!

by Kurt on November 18, 2011

Brainstorm sessions can be a powerful tool in getting good ideas out fast. They work fantastic when trying to solve business issues fast, or when innovating.

But they can get scary and lead into totally wrong directions if not managed well. Teams often go into “brainstorming” but end up just randomly shouting ideas. There are certain rules to adhere to, and when you do, the outcome can be 100 times stronger…

 

 

 

 

 

First of all, you need to know that a brainstorm session has nothing to do with a STORM. If anything at all, your brain and all participants’ brains should be relaxed, at ease.  Thoughts should flow freely. You have to be able to go back to fast association, uninhibited -like a kid!

I’ve done many of those sessions when I was in research long time back, and apply the very principles today to get a good start to similar sessions:

1- Brainstorming is in essence “creativity in a box”: be sure to define the box (the area you want to find ideas in) clearly: what’s the issue you want to solve? what do you want to walk away with at the end of the session? Make it precise, but not “narrow” – you need room for solutions. Allow participants to challenge the question and the boundaries; right at the beginning. That’ll set the right tone for an open discussion.

2- Take time up front to make participants comfortable. This is really important. Don’t jump right into it. You need the time to get to “zero base”, a place where everyone leaves the issues of the day behind them. Make sure everyone is in a be-here-now mode!

3- Once you are in a “GO” mode, then don’t stop until you’re done. Interruptions are killing. Don’t allow people to walk out and make phone calls. Even bio-breaks need to be well managed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are some ground rules that everyone needs to follow during the actual “storming” session, and those need to be explained clearly at the start of a session, and need to be reinforced constantly during:

 

EVERYONE IS EQUAL. There should be an equal playing field amongst participants. That is really important. If you brainstorm within the company and have various levels of people in the group, you need to clearly establish this equality up front. If not, the highest in rank will unwillingly influence where the group is going!

ENCOURAGE CREATIVITY. It’s all about exploring new territories, searching for edges, connecting ideas. Motivate participants to be as wildly creative as possible. Let them go loose. And keep that encouragement very active throughout the session. Probe and probe some more.

SPEED. Brainstorming is all about getting a large number of ideas very very fast. Within the set territory, but totally unfiltered (the filtering should never happen while you are still gathering ideas, but only at the very end).

QUANTITY, not quality counts in a brainstorm session. “Whatever comes to mind” is what you’re after. Once you have the ideas, you will kill 80% of them because they are just creative blurs without anything more, but that’s ok. In the middle of the session, it is about quantity. 100 ideas within 30 minutes is a good average.

NO JUDGING. Starting principle is: anything goes! While in the middle of a session, don’t allow participants to judge each others ideas. That completely kills creativity, makes people uncomfortable, and will get you stuck. Consequence of the no-judging policy: every idea, however small or big, gets recorded -on paper! As a moderator, it is important to stick to that principle yourself. You need to write it all down. And you have to safeguard one thing: people can’t loose face (that happens; the most silly ideas are welcomed and so people will relax, laugh, let go, etc … before you know it, the group will go after someone and start making a joke out of them; it seems to be a natural thing. I’ve seen that many times). One single “incident” and your brainstorm session will become ineffective or fall apart all together.

PLAY. To encourage creativity, to keep going, to unclog when the group is stuck, you should have tools to restart and keep going. Saying: “Come on people, I want you to be more creative and give me ideas” is first of all not working, and secondly will have a counter-effect. Throwing some magazines on the table, or a newspaper article, a random object, the picture of a celebrity (“what ideas would BONO have around this subject?”), do wonders!

BUILD. Magic happens when people really are “into it”, grab an idea and make it bigger. Ask you participants to think of others’ ideas and stretch them, turn them upside down, make them bigger, make them smaller, give them color, add features to them, etc etc etc.

HAVE FUN. Brainstorm sessions break through the routine of business. Enjoy. Have fun while you’re at it!

 

After you’ve done that, TAKE A MANDATORY BREAK. Participants need to turn a switch in their heads…because they will move into a next phase…

 

The Filtering Phase

Once done, and when you have the hundreds of ideas on post-its or on a wall or screen, it’s time to filter down. Ground everything again, following the creative brief, and start killing your ideas. As a group, you have to “kill your babies“, i.e. people are not allowed to find for THEIR ideas. The only thing that counts is: will this idea help solve the issue?

And so, this phase is the opposite of the brainstorm phase:

Invite participants to be ruthless. Better to find 1 killer idea out of a thousand brainstorm-ideas, than be soft and be left with 200 fussy ideas that don’t do much.

Come to consensus. This goes back to rule #1 in the brainstorm session. It’s not the highest in rank that should make the call. The purpose of the brainstorm session is to task the group to come with a solution. Stick to that. Task the group, as a team, to come to consensus against the issue or the objective.

Create a parking lot. Some ideas might be difficult to judge. Don’t just toss them away, park them for later in the meeting or even for later after the meeting. Mostly it means “something’s in there, but we need to time think about it”.

 

What’s your experience?

Any more tips for effective brainstorming?

 

Thank you for reading this blog post,

Kurt thumbnail

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

Ann Lowe November 18, 2011 at 6:01 pm

Hi Kurt,
I invented a game that might be useful for your brainstorming sessions called “Imagination Story Cards.” They are a deck of 32 cards with abstract paintings I did on each card. The first person picks up a card and starts a story, the following person continues the story. A slide show of the cards can be seen at http://www.imaginationstorycards.com
Best to you and your brainstorming sessions,
Ann

Reply

Kurt November 18, 2011 at 7:41 pm

Thanks Ann. Pretty awesome, those cards. Thanks for sharing. Kurt

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Glendale web design December 16, 2011 at 12:03 pm

Very interesting points you have observed thank you for posting BRAINSTORMING. LET OUT THAT KID INSIDE OF YOU! — by Kurt Frenier, The Red Hot Marketing Blender

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