Brainstorming and ideating with your team can be a fun and productive way to generate new ideas, solve problems, and foster collaboration. However, it can also be challenging to facilitate a smooth and effective process that engages everyone and leads to actionable outcomes. Here are some tips and techniques to help you brainstorm and ideate with your team.
Before you start brainstorming and ideating with your team, you need to have a clear and specific goal and scope for the session. What is the problem or opportunity you are trying to address? What are the criteria and constraints for the solution? What are the expected deliverables and timelines? Having a well-defined goal and scope will help you focus your team's efforts, avoid distractions and confusion, and measure your progress and results.
Before starting any work I need to find and Clear the objective of doing, this will save time and energy both for doing any work
Without clear goals, you are just throwing ideas on a wall and seeing what sticks. With an end goal in mind, you will be able to shift conversations while collaborating to ensure you do not go off topic.
Respecting the opinions of others is one of the most significant parameters for ideation with a team. In my experience, here are some tips that will help: -Active listening: Show genuine interest in their perspective.Maintain eye contact, avoid interrupting, and truly listen to what they are saying. -Avoid judgment: Suspend judgment and refrain from immediately dismissing or criticizing their opinion. -Empathize: Try to understand the reasoning behind the opinion. Put yourself in their shoes and consider their background, experiences, and values that may have shaped their viewpoint. These will create the platform for a more constructive conversation.
The primary goal of brainstorming within the team is to generate a diverse range of creative ideas and solutions to address a specific challenges or issues. It aims to tap into the collective intelligence of the team, fostering collaboration and innovation.
There are many different methods and tools for brainstorming and ideating with your team, depending on the nature and complexity of the challenge, the size and diversity of the group, and the available resources and time. Some common methods include brainstorming, mind mapping, SCAMPER, six thinking hats, SWOT analysis, and prototyping. Some common tools include whiteboards, sticky notes, online platforms, and apps. You should choose the method and tool that best suits your goal and scope, and that allows your team to express their thoughts and opinions freely and creatively.
-Traditional brainstorming: Involving open idea generation where team members freely contibute thoughts. -Mind mapping - create visual diagrams to explore and connect related ideas, fostering a non linear approach. -Reverse brainstorming - focus on identifying issues instead of solutions, then work on finding the solutions to those issues (best practices). Tools : White boards, charts, Feedback tools, etc
To ensure a productive and respectful brainstorming and ideating session, you need to set some ground rules and roles for your team. Some examples of rules are: no criticism or judgment, quantity over quality, build on each other's ideas, stay on topic, and have fun. Some examples of roles are: facilitator, recorder, timekeeper, and participant. You should communicate the rules and roles clearly and consistently, and make sure everyone understands and agrees to them.
One of the main benefits of brainstorming and ideating with your team is that you can leverage the collective wisdom and experience of different perspectives and backgrounds. However, this also means that you need to encourage participation and diversity among your team members, and avoid groupthink and dominance. You can do this by creating a safe and supportive environment, asking open-ended and probing questions, inviting feedback and suggestions, acknowledging and appreciating contributions, and rotating roles and groups.
As a manager, it's important to take an active role in facilitation to prevent only the loudest voices or most opinionated folks to share their perspectives. I like tools like dot voting (giving everyone a sticker to vote on ideas), popcorn discussions (the person talking calls on the next person), or polling features (if using Zoom or Google Meet) to ensure you're getting more voices into the conversation. Continually create moments to invite more people into the conversation, and watch for interruptions and people talking over each other when discussions get lively. It's great if there's a free flow of ideas, but return the floor to someone who didn't get to finish their idea if needed.
As a leader, you will need to build a comfortable space for all to collaborate. Some require prompting, others may take the lead. But it is all about balance. Asking individuals of their thoughts and ideas is one way to ensure the group is participating and communicating their ideas.
-Encourage participation -Listen carefully -Value their perspective -Ensure participation -Showing that we care their perspective -Acknowledge and celebrate Creating and environment that values diversity and encourages participation is an ongoing effort. Regularly, assess and modify the approach based on feedback to continuously improve the brainstorming experience. -Encourage silent participants : Actively involve quieter team members by directly inviting their inputs and validating their contributions. -Setting time limits for each idea generation phase to keep the session dynamic and prevent dominance by a few individuals. -Anonymous idea submission can be encouraged initially to eliminate biases and encourage introverts.
After you have generated a lot of ideas with your team, you need to evaluate and prioritize them according to your goal and scope. You can use various criteria and methods to do this, such as feasibility, desirability, viability, impact, novelty, and alignment. You can also use techniques such as voting, rating, ranking, grouping, and filtering to narrow down your options. You should involve your team in this process, and explain the rationale behind your decisions.
Be careful here. Prioritizing does not necessarily mean one idea is actually better than another. Sometimes the problem solved by one idea is simply more urgent/larger than another. Be cautious not to deflate anyone unnecessarily when you give your rankings and reasons. Make sure to continue to encourage input and ideas:
The final step of brainstorming and ideating with your team is to take action and follow up on the selected ideas. You should assign roles and responsibilities, set deadlines and milestones, and communicate expectations and progress. You should also monitor and evaluate the results, and seek feedback and improvement. You should celebrate your achievements, and recognize and reward your team's efforts.
Action items are the way to take the ideas and collaboration and put it to use. These can be short or long term plans to ensure that the time spent is not wasted.
Transfer the information to a tool like Trello, Asana, Notion, or another project management tool. Alternatively, keep it simple and use Google Sheets to ensure everyone involved knows what needs to happen, whose role it is and the due date. If using Google Sheets, use a traffic light system so it's easy to see at a glance the status of different tasks.
For much of my career, I've led small teams. Brainstorming is a great activity to spur innovation and help create change, but can be challenging in smaller teams. While our team has worked through SWOT analyses - and they are really beneficial - here are a couple of other ideas that have helped us. Go really old school - we've used post-it notes to effectively map out projects, tasks and plans. It helps give a visual that is easy to read for all, and helps those who are less technologically advanced be a huge part of the process. Use Generative AI - On the opposite end of going old school, embrace new technology! Being mindful of sensitive information, use tools like ChatGPT (particularly via Bing) to act as another member of your team!
With large teams across the regions, it's better to explain the objective, clarify the expectations and give them time to come back with ideas. In my experience, coming prepared with a basic thought yields better ideation and brainstorming sessions in comparison to doing it on the spot.
Collaboration is different in remote vs. in office collaboration. There is a skill to be learned about how to collaborate different in each scenario.
Just like with most things, practice makes perfect. If your first brainstorm doesn't give you the results you hoped for, don't lose heart. Try again! Don't lean too heavily on specific methods, tools, or processes. Some might work better for one team but not so well for another. Mix it up! Give credit where it's due. Use the victories you've had in the past as a solid base for future brainstorms. In conclusion or as a recap, I would advice you to remember that practice, versatility, and acknowledgment of good ideas are key ingredients of successful brainstorming.