You're working on a project with a team. How can you get the most out of brainstorming?

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.

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.

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.

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.