Guidelines for Brainstorming

by John J. Hagedorn

Masa Jaya Sdn Bhd, the Malaysian watch company, had a problem. Their trendy line of fashion watches for the teenage market, Masa Muda, was an instant hit, and demand soon outpaced supply. Orders began coming in from Singapore, Thailand, and Taiwan as the sporty designs took hold across Asia. Something had to be done before the Japanese market opened up.

The board of directors called a meeting with a few people from Sales & Marketing, Production, and Finance to come up with a short-term supply solution while a new production line was installed. The agenda opened with a description of the problem, followed by a brainstorming session in which participants were free to express their ideas.

The first person to speak up was a new marketing exec freshly graduated from Australia. “One thing we might try,” she said, “is retool our ladies’ watch production line to manufacture Masa Muda until the new production line is in. That way…”

“That will never work,” interrupted the production manager. “It would only shift the supply problem to the ladies’ watches.”

“Oh,” said the marketing exec.

An assistant manager from sales suggested, “Why don’t we hire another shift to come in and work on Masa Muda production through the night. The lines are idle at night anyway, and…”

“That will never work,” interrupted a board member. “We’d have to fire half of them once the new production line is installed and deal with all those labor legalities.”

“Oh,” said the assistant sales manager.

With the tone of the brainstorming session firmly set, no one offered any more suggestions. People sat silently brainstorming for the next fifteen minutes, but no one wanted to be embarrassed by anyone else’s tactless evaluations.

The board finally decided to speed up production on the existing line. As a result, quality control suffered and hundreds of defective Masa Muda watches were shipped.

Lots of good ideas walked out of the meeting room that day without ever being expressed. Why? Because the brainstorming session was never permitted to succeed.

Brainstorming sessions are a part of many business meetings. Meeting Leaders may call for brainstorming sessions to solve problems, answer questions, generate lists, or encourage discussion. They provide opportunities for all participants to express their views and to put their ideas on the table. For brainstorming sessions to be successful, however, they need to follow some important guidelines.

1. Don’t evaluate

The objective of a brainstorming session is to collect as many ideas as possible. Not all of the ideas will be good ones; some of them, in fact, may be quite bad. The time to evaluate, however, is not during the time allotted for brainstorming. A time should be set after the brainstorming session to go through the list of ideas together, then everybody can decide which ones are keepers.

Negative evaluation clearly discourages people from contributing. Positive evaluation, however, may do the same thing. If someone receives praise for a very good idea, others my stop contributing for fear of not producing something as good. ?

2. List every idea

Until the evaluation session begins, every idea is a good idea and should be listed for all to see. Ideas that are not listed are, in effect, judged as bad and this is a form of negative evaluation.

Listing ideas helps keep track of where they are going. Sometimes a pattern may develop, and the best idea will evolve from the others. Participants will be able to keep track of the flow of ideas if they can see them.

3. Expand on each other’s ideas

?Brainstorming sessions are not meant to be competitive. No one should get an award for coming up with the best idea. Rather, brainstorming sessions should be cooperative, where one idea leads to the next until the best ideas develop.

Sometimes the ideas offered by one participant will catalyze the flow of ideas from others. Sometimes one participant may offer a suggestion which suddenly clarifies the whole picture for somebody else. The point is, a brainstorming session is a room full of brains storming collectively, not individually.

4. Don’t associate people with ideas

Once an idea has been written down, disassociate it from the person who offered it. No one in a collective brainstorming session should receive individual credit. And, if the idea is not a good one, no one gets stigmatized.

When the brainstorming session is finished, the group Facilitator needs to remember to refer to the results as “Our Ideas”. If the group feels ownership of all of the ideas, the evaluation session can be more objective. Some ideas can be tossed without worry over hurting people’s feelings. Other ideas can be developed within the spirit of teamwork.

5. Value off-the-wall ideas

Some people think crazy ideas are the products of a lame brain. Other people recognize that crazy ideas result from creative thought. Very often, it’s the craziest ideas that work the best.

Sometimes individuals within the group will withhold an idea just because they think it’s too crazy to consider. This, however, is a form of evaluation. Internal evaluation can also prevent the flow of ideas. Any idea, no matter how crazy, deserves to be tabled.

Crazy ideas may be laughed at initially, but when they’re scrutinized, they may make a lot of sense. (For further elaboration on this, check out my article on one of my own crazy ideas - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/crazy-idea-died-john-j-hagedorn).

Some meetings take forever because participants are asked to sit and think about solutions, not simply to generate ideas. Other meetings fail because no solution is reached and participants are asked to go think about it until the next meeting.

Successful brainstorming sessions remedy these problems. Ensure the success of brainstorming sessions by allowing and encouraging the freedom to think and to express.?