Why - What - How Framework for Brainstorming Sessions

Many brainstorming sessions feel like you have been shooting with a machine gun. Ideas flying around like bullets. Question is - did you hit anything?

Sometimes it may feel like we found something interesting and later drew a bulls eye around it. Today we dive into a simple framework to make your brainstorming sessions super effective.

We'll use the classic Why - What - How Framework to help ideate better.

First, let's understand why we did not hit anything meaningful. The core reason is you may not have known what to shoot for. Amorphous targets yield amorphous results.

But, quite often we are given a problem to solve and yet we fail. What explains that?

Please reflect back and ask if you were convinced with the problem your team was solving. We may have not known the reason for picking that problem. Or the assumptions around it. A brainstorming or ideation session is not the place to dive into those aspects. So, you got short answers but never the full context.

Context matters the most for innovation and strategy projects.

If we are not on the same level of understanding, our solutions will be weak. To address that, I recommend breaking up the brainstorming session into two parts:

• Pre-session briefing
• Ideation

The pre session briefing is led by the person in-charge of the program. They should provide information on the background of the initiative, target customers or users, existing solutions, and factors such as cost or size etc. All this information and discussion should help understand WHY we have to initiate this program.

WHY gets us all on the same page with the same context.

Next, based on the analysis done and the constraints involved, we define one key problem to solve. The background provided is ultra critical to understand the importance of this specific problem. The leader must ensure everyone is onboard with that.

WHAT defines one problem for the team to solve.

Now we are ready to brainstorm. It helps to repeat and even leave the problem visible for everyone. Here we focus on how to solve the problem. Let the team shoot with their machine guns at this specific target.

With your ideation muscles, soon enough you will make some breakthrough.

A core issue why ideation went all over the place was due to lack of a clear target. Having an understanding of the context is critical to solving problems.

Use the WHY - WHAT - HOW framework to make your brainstorming sessions super productive.

That's it for today.

Happy Ideation!

Hemang.