Advantages of Brainstorming

You must become familiar with a range of brainstorming techniques in order to use this powerful tool effectively.

Urban mythology has it that the modern concept of “brainstorming” was developed in the 1940s by Alex Osborn, an American advertising executive, who believed that anyone could create solutions to any problem. He later called this brainstorming. Today, companies all over world now use these innovative brainstorming techniques.

Here are a few techniques that will quickly improve your brainstorming session.

• When you set up your session, give a brief synopsis of the problem or topic and its history. The group will begin to mentally prepare for the session on that issue. The more specific your session is, the more ideas that will flow.

• Choose people from different backgrounds and expertise. Getting an outlook from all areas is very powerful.

• However, be careful about mixing levels of management, this can create some tension in the group and prevent the lower level employees from speaking up. If you are going to do this make sure you pick the right personalities to encourage the flow of ideas.

• Pass out the rules of the brainstorming session before it begins. The rules should be:

1. No criticism of ideas are allowed

2. All ideas are encouraged, even the wild and crazy ones

3. Quantity, not quality, of ideas is what you are after

4. Refine and build on these ideas at the end of the session or in another meeting

• Schedule the session to last no longer than 30 to 40 minutes. You should have some great ideas within this time.

• Killer phrases are not allowed. You can give each member of the group two cards, one with a green and the other one red. When the discussion gets a negative comment or idea, the group will hold up their red cards, but as long as the session is going at a good positive flow, they can keep their green cards up.

• If more than ten participants have been invited to the session, break the group into teams of five or six people and have each team brainstorm the issue. Smaller teams remove some of the formality and make people more at ease. Remember, feeling comfortable means sharing more ideas.

• Write the objective of the session where everyone in the room can see it. Put it in a question form, starting with either “How can we…?” or “What can be done to…?” For example, “How can we better understand the needs of our customers?” or “What can be done to improve the quality of this product?” Asking this type of question is an important brainstorming technique.

• Be sure to capture all of the group’s ideas. An interactive whiteboard is ideal for brainstorming since ideas are displayed on the whiteboard surface (which can stimulate additional ideas), easily edited and saved to a computer file. Whichever tool you use to record your ideas, be sure that they’re saved for future reference. After all, what good is generating ideas if nobody remembers them after the session ends?

• If the flow of ideas begins to sputter out, the nominated leader should step in. Some ideas to do this effectively are:

1.Re-read every third idea. This may spark additional ideas.
2.Ask a participant to select an idea and give reasons why s/he likes it. This will generate conversation around the idea and provide an opportunity to build on it.
3.If you’re the session leader, keep an idea or two to yourself. When the conversation dies, share these ideas to initiate more discussion.

After the session, edit the brainstorming notes, arrange the ideas in related groups and send a copy to each participant as soon as possible. Ask each participant to select the five ideas he thinks are best. Request that he also explain why these ideas are most promising and how he would implement them. Be sure to include a deadline for when you’d like the ideas returned. Implementing these simple brainstorming techniques will pay you massive dividends in increased creativity.