How can you use brainstorming techniques to boost decision creativity in teams?

2 Choose the technique

There are numerous brainstorming techniques available to generate ideas, depending on your team's preferences, goals, and constraints. Brainwriting involves each team member writing down their ideas on a piece of paper or a sticky note, then passing it to the next person. SCAMPER uses a set of questions based on seven verbs to help improve, modify, or transform an existing product, service, or process. Six Thinking Hats utilizes six different colored hats to represent six different modes of thinking. Reverse Brainstorming reverses the problem statement and brainstorming ideas that would cause or worsen the problem. Random Word involves using a random word or image as a stimulus or a trigger for generating ideas. Starbursting creates a star-shaped diagram with the problem statement or the solution idea in the center and asking questions that start with who, what, where, when, why, and how around each point of the star. These techniques reduce social pressure, encourage participation, and help identify potential pitfalls and opportunities.

4 Facilitate the session

As a facilitator, your role is to guide and support the brainstorming session, ensuring that the team follows the rules, stays on topic, and achieves the objectives. Therefore, you need to prepare the materials, such as paper, pens, sticky notes, flip charts, whiteboards, or online tools. Additionally, set a realistic and appropriate time limit for the brainstorming session based on the complexity of the problem, size of the team, and technique used. Furthermore, explain the purpose and goals of the session as well as the rules that must be followed. It is important to encourage everyone to participate actively and contribute their ideas without dominating or excluding anyone. You should also record all ideas generated either by writing them down or asking someone else to do it for you. Make sure that all ideas are visible and legible for everyone and are organized in a logical and coherent way.

5 Evaluate and select the ideas

After brainstorming, it is important to evaluate and select the best ideas that will move forward to the next stage of decision-making. This includes filtering, sorting, ranking, and voting on the ideas based on criteria such as relevance, feasibility, originality, impact, or alignment with the goals. To evaluate and select the ideas, you can use methods such as dot voting, matrix analysis, SWOT analysis, or pros and cons. Dot voting involves each team member getting a number of dots that they can use to indicate their preferences for the ideas. Matrix analysis requires each idea to be evaluated based on two or more criteria plotted on a matrix or grid. SWOT analysis involves analyzing each idea based on its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Pros and cons involves weighing each idea based on its advantages and disadvantages. The ideas that score highest on the criteria are selected as the best ones.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?