Brainstorming is a powerful technique to generate and explore ideas with your team. It can help you find creative solutions, spark innovation, and foster collaboration. However, not all brainstorming sessions are equally effective. How can you make sure you get the most out of your brainstorming time? Here are some tips to follow.
Before you start brainstorming, you need to have a clear and specific goal in mind. What problem are you trying to solve? What outcome do you want to achieve? What criteria will you use to evaluate your ideas? Having a clear goal will help you focus your brainstorming and avoid getting sidetracked or overwhelmed by irrelevant or unrealistic ideas. You can also use your goal to communicate your expectations and purpose to your team members.
Setting clear goals is the foundation of successful brainstorming sessions. ?? Here's why it's crucial: Enhances Focus: Clear goals keep your brainstorming on track, ensuring every idea aligns with the desired outcome. Improves Efficiency: Defined goals help streamline the brainstorming process, saving time and energy. Boosts Team Alignment: Communicating clear goals fosters team understanding and collaboration. Better performance: According to a study by the Journal of Applied Psychology, teams with clearly defined goals outperform those without by 17%. A well-defined goal is the compass that guides your brainstorming journey towards innovative solutions! ??
The brainstorming process is often carried out to generate solutions, and for this, it's essential to create a secure environment where everyone feels included and validated. Therefore, identifying the pain points becomes the initial focus. We then shift our attention to the potential solutions suggested by each participating member, narrowing down the ideas. The next step involves aligning the identified pain points with the team's expertise, allowing for a micro evaluation and testing of the ideas.
The quality of your brainstorming depends largely on the people who participate. You want to have a diverse and balanced group of people who can contribute different perspectives, skills, and experiences. You also want to have a group size that is optimal for brainstorming, which is usually between four and eight people. Too few people might limit the variety and quantity of ideas, while too many people might create chaos and confusion. You also want to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and respected in the group, and that no one dominates or inhibits the discussion.
Brainstorming can be more productive and efficient if you follow a structured process that guides you through different stages of idea generation and evaluation. One example of a structured process is the SCAMPER method, which stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. This method helps you generate ideas by asking questions that challenge you to modify or improve an existing product, service, or process. Another example is the Six Thinking Hats method, which helps you evaluate ideas by using different modes of thinking, such as logical, emotional, creative, or critical.
Absolutely! Structured methods like SCAMPER and Six Thinking Hats enhance brainstorming by providing systematic approaches to idea generation and evaluation. SCAMPER prompts creative thinking through substitution, combination, adaptation, modification, putting to another use, elimination, and reversal. Meanwhile, the Six Thinking Hats method facilitates well-rounded idea evaluation by leveraging various thinking modes, fostering a comprehensive approach to problem-solving.
Brainstorming involves two types of thinking: divergent and convergent. Divergent thinking is the process of generating as many ideas as possible, without judging or filtering them. Convergent thinking is the process of narrowing down and selecting the best ideas, based on criteria and goals. Both types of thinking are essential for brainstorming, but they should not be mixed or confused. You should start with divergent thinking, and encourage your team to be open-minded, playful, and spontaneous. You can use techniques such as free association, mind mapping, or word games to stimulate divergent thinking. After you have a large pool of ideas, you should switch to convergent thinking, and apply logic, analysis, and feedback to choose the most promising ideas. You can use techniques such as voting, ranking, or scoring to facilitate convergent thinking.
In my experience, creating an environment free of judgement, where participants know they can share their ideas without prejudice yields the best results. Usually creating a board where people can paste notes anonymously helps people open up and share ideas freely.
Yes this a fantastic way to encourage a robust way of processing the information we have on hand and what to do with it. Here the boundaries need to be clear alongside with the goal: most organisations are aware of the resources they have and time. As such the facilitator needs to communicate this openly to help ideas be focused and as specific as possible. Given time is usually limited, a clear outcome via a simple action plan would be a good success parameter. If an idea is vague, presenting it will be challenging and eventually implementing it would be tough. Ensuring we nurture brainstorming to be as successful as possible with clear business useful relevant information will be key. By enabling, we can make the most use of our time.
I find divergent thinking quite valuable! Starting off a brainstorming session by encouraging the most random ideas allows room for creativity. Generally, you'd disregard any constraints at this stage. As the ideas start flowing and we progress into convergent thinking, you'd group similar ideas into "themes." Next, you'd visually rank each set of ideas by feasibility / practicality, following up and trying to revamp any ideas that seem infeasible. Since this process works best in a visual setting, using collaborative tools like Miro or LucidChart might be useful in a team setting. Additionally, allowing people to brainstorm in silence at the start of the session (~10 mins) can help people share ideas openly
The divergence process needs to be thoroughly consolidated by exploring all possible avenues to address a specific challenge. This involves considering solutions from non-obvious sectors as references, as the creative and innovative process greatly benefits when we look beyond what our peers are doing. On the other hand, the convergence phase comes from a strategic analysis of the potential applicability of the proposed solutions and how well they can be adapted for the most effective testing in dealing with a challenge.
The last step of brainstorming is to document and follow up on your ideas. You should record and organize your ideas in a way that is clear, accessible, and actionable. You can use tools such as sticky notes, flip charts, or digital platforms to document your ideas. You should also assign roles and responsibilities to your team members, and set deadlines and milestones for the next steps. You should communicate and monitor the progress of your ideas, and celebrate the achievements and learnings along the way.
Start without a clear goal to let the problem surface organically or introduce a wildcard participant from a completely different field for fresh perspectives. Gamify the process—points for out-of-the-box ideas, creating a playful competitive spirit. Also, why not embrace silent brainstorming to empower every voice, including introverts? Post-session, an 'Idea Incubator' could revisit wild card ideas, nurturing today's outlandish thoughts into tomorrow's innovations.