Brainstorming is improvisational by nature. Individuals share ideas, which the rest of the group then builds on, using them as a springboard to generate further ideas.
While brainstorming meetings are a technique commonly used by businesses and organisations for creative problem solving and innovating, there are many factors which affect their usefulness.
The most effective brainstorming comes from emergent thinking. This essentially means we are working as a collaborative team, building our ideas together from the ground up, in an environment free from hierarchy, built on trust and mutual respect.
The following ‘10 Rules for Brainstorming Meetings’ will show you how to get your team into a place of emergent thinking, offering exercises, activities and ideas vital for running effective brainstorming sessions.
Short on time? Head straight to our Key Takeaways on these ten rules.
1. Define the Problem
Whatever problem the brainstorm will be solving needs to be clearly outlined beforehand. While seemingly obvious, this is the first hurdle that brainstorming meetings fall at. Using a brief that is too wide will produce a brainstorm that has vague applications at best, and will end up a waste of time and effort at worst.
Treat this problem defining stage as its own process. Use this time to gain insights through research and analysis which will allow you to pinpoint a clear creative brief for your brainstorming session. If you don’t, chances are you’ll be putting your time and energy into solving the wrong problem.
While defining your problem you might consider using the ‘5 Whys’ exercise. After identifying an obstacle, or area for improvement, you often end up with a symptom rather than the root cause of a problem. By iteratively asking, “Why is this the case?” (classically 5 times but it can be more or less) you can explore the problem on a deeper level. By finding the root cause of the problem to solve you will increase the overall success of the whole brainstorming process.
2. Build on Previous Ideas
While coming up with a diverse array of ideas in a brainstorm is one of its key objectives, we also want to give depth to any ideas that inspire us. In doing so we reach the end of the brainstorming session with a greater number of more thoroughly developed concepts.
We can utilise the ‘Yes, and’ improv tool in order to do this. This means we accept the ideas that are inspiring us without judgement (‘Yes’) and add to them to flesh them out (‘And’). By applying ‘Yes, and’ to existing ideas we also cultivate an environment of collaboration that removes the feeling of individual ownership of ideas. Putting too much emphasis on individual ownership of ideas can lead to other people being afraid to make suggestions or changes to it. However, by encouraging group ownership we can take great ideas in new directions that the originator wouldn’t necessarily have been able to see on their own.
Finally ‘Yes, and’ removes the pressure of wanting to continuously ‘think outside of the box’. It allows us to work with the ideas in front of us and keeps our focus in the room, rather than continuously racking our brains for new concepts.
3. Cultivate and Encourage an Energetic Environment
Sitting around a large board table crammed in with your co-workers isn’t the most stimulating of environments. It quickly becomes uncomfortable and everyone’s energy will plummet. To avoid this happening, try some of these exercises and ideas:
- Do a team building warm up – we have lots of examples listed here – to get everyone’s creative juices flowing.
- Keep people alert and high energy by having participants on their feet.
- Create opportunities for mingling, where you get people to work with colleagues they are less familiar with.
- Make things as visual as possible: flip charts, post-it notes and anything more creative will keep participants much more engaged, making it easier to digest the ideas being developed.
- Split the team into separate groups and ask each to come up with their own ideas, which they can then pitch back to the room.
- Encourage people/teams to create stripped back, simplified prototypes of ideas. This is a great brainstorming exercise to serve as an early testing ground for promising concepts and avoids the group coming up with a list of grandiose ideas that go nowhere.
4. Quantity Over Quality
While not every idea that gets shared during a brainstorm meeting will be amazing or even workable, generating a large volume of ideas will lead to a greater amount of originality from the group and is more likely to result in one brilliant idea than pouring all your energy into the first few suggestions. If this seems counterintuitive, consider the story below from Art and Fear.
A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups. He told the first group that the work they produced would be graded on the quantity, and he told the second group that they would be graded on quality. When the grading day came, the ceramics teacher found that it was the ‘quantity’ group that produced the best, and most original, results. By producing a higher volume of work, they were able to learn by doing; from making mistakes, actively testing their concepts and making discoveries that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. The group that had focused on quality, on the other hand, had a single, uninspired piece of work. They had focused on grandiose theories and finding the one ‘correct’ answer. But one ‘correct’ answer doesn’t exist when we’re trying to solve a creative brief. Finding a solution requires exploration and learning from our previous attempts.
In a brainstorming session the first ideas that the group produces will rarely be the best ones. But by generating many new ideas, as well as building on and learning from what’s come before, you improve your chances of coming up with that killer creative solution.
5. Write Down Every Idea
One barrier to producing a large volume of ideas during brainstorming meetings is the belief held by the participants that ideas will be immediately judged and rejected. You can address this by writing down every idea that gets said, regardless of the initial perceived quality of the idea. Let everyone know that there are no ‘bad ideas’ and that ‘mistakes’ are a huge part of this process. Ultimately, by the end of the process there will only be one or maybe a couple of good ideas that will be taken forward. But we raise our chances of finding this successful idea by giving ourselves lots of possibilities. So if you can make sure people know that all ideas are accepted at this stage – verbally and by writing them all down – it will open your team up to generating and sharing more ideas without fear of judgement.
Writing everything down is also a very practical way to make sure no good ideas slip through the cracks or get forgotten.
6. Shuffle the Scribe
Swap the person who is writing down ideas during the brainstorming session. At timed intervals, such as every 5 or 10 minutes, switch up the scribe. Have a system in place for this changeover, whether it’s through a random draw or the current scribe picking the next.
Swapping roles means everyone will have a chance to add to the discussion at some point without having to multitask or split their attention. It also helps to remove any bias from the brainstorming process, eliminating selective hearing that workplace status and personal relationships may bring. And it reduces wrist strain, which we’re sure the scribes will thank you for…
7. Generate Ideas Individually First
While having a cohesive group coming up with ideas together sounds like an ideal situation to be in, it can increase the risk of what is known as ‘groupthink’. In trying to maintain harmony within the group, members steer clear of breaking consensus or raising any controversial topics. In the worst case scenario, members will gang up on and actively oppose any new ideas that go against the grain, making it impossible to innovate and create new concepts.
To avoid this scenario, ask your team to come up with their own ideas alone, prior to the brainstorming session. By giving them the opportunity to develop their ideas individually there will be a wider range of proposals brought to the session, unimpacted by ‘groupthink’. Strands of these diverse suggestions can then be combined within the brainstorming session itself, leaving you with a fuller final idea than would have been possible in a room that is talking with a singular voice.
8. Have a ‘Bad Ideas Round’
This is a fantastic brainstorming exercise to do during any periods of ‘ideas block’, when contributions are running dry. Set a five minute timer where only ‘bad’ ideas are to be shared by the participants. This will raise the energy in the room, getting people’s brains back into a contributing mode and reinforce the idea that anything that gets said gets written down.
This may be met with initial resistance, so have some of the more senior members of the group lead the charge with their ‘bad’ ideas, encouraging the rest of the team to feel they have permission to join in. Doing this can also help level the status in the room, removing biases in taking ideas more seriously from those higher up on the company ladder.
As well as improving the atmosphere in the room, surprising results can actually surface by approaching the problem from this radical perspective. Often seemingly useless contributions can be tweaked to find the beginnings of a workable idea.
9. Limit Distractions
While you might not have total control of the surrounding environment in your brainstorming session, there are some small steps you can take to create more optimum working conditions:
- Limit the use of tech in the room to keep your team focused on the task in hand. A person taking a call or sending an email is not only a distraction for the rest of the group, but that person also sends the message that what they’re doing is more important than what the team is working on. Try a ‘No phones or laptops’ rule to remove the temptation to read any shiny new notifications that pop up. If someone is waiting on a vital call and can’t be without their phone it may be the case that this person is better off sitting out the session this time around!
- Avoid holding the session just before or just after lunch. Brainstorming just before lunch is likely to mean most people are distracted by hunger, and going just after will leave you with a very sluggish room.
- Keep the room at a comfortable temperature.
- Try to avoid holding the meeting in an environment where people are walking through the space, or can be seen walking past the room.
- Ensure convenient placement of resources so that everything you need is readily available.
- Try to plan around any potential noise pollution from outside, or from within the rest of the office.
Essentially, do what you can to get your room to Goldilocks conditions so that everyone can focus on the brainstorming!
10. Pick the Most Successful Ideas at the End
After generating a large volume of diverse ideas, shift to a convergent thinking mindset to pick the ideas that are likely to be the most successful.
It is important to remain democratic during this stage, else you risk falling into old habits of ‘groupthink’ or a hierarchical structure based on perceived ‘status’ in the room. Have a voting system in which everyone who contributed gets a chance to vote for what they believe the most successful idea will be. This could be done anonymously to stop people from following the crowd or feeling the need to vote based on personal relationships.
Members of the team could also vote for ideas on a sliding scale with their hands: five fingers for an idea they think will be very successful, one finger for an idea they don’t think will work, and everything in between. To stop people from following the crowd here, have a short countdown after which everyone needs to immediately show their hand. Any results that split the room dramatically (i.e. multiple votes of 1 and 5 for the same idea) may require further discussion to explore people’s insights into why they believe the idea will or won’t work.
Key Takeaways
- Define the Problem: Clearly outline the problem to ensure the brainstorming session focuses on the right issues and leads to effective solutions.
- Build on Previous Ideas: Use the “Yes, and” technique to accept and expand on ideas, fostering a collaborative environment where concepts can develop more fully.
- Cultivate and Encourage an Energetic Environment: Create a dynamic and engaging atmosphere with activities like team-building exercises and visual aids to keep energy levels high and creativity flowing.
- Quantity Over Quality: Encourage generating a large volume of ideas to increase the chances of finding innovative solutions, as more ideas lead to more possibilities.
- Write Down Every Idea: Document all ideas without immediate judgment to ensure no potential solutions are overlooked and to create a non-judgmental brainstorming environment.
- Shuffle the Scribe: Rotate the person recording ideas to give everyone a chance to contribute equally and reduce any potential bias in capturing suggestions.
- Generate Ideas Individually First: Have team members develop ideas on their own before the session to prevent groupthink and ensure a wider variety of ideas are brought to the table.
- Have a ‘Bad Ideas Round’: Use a session dedicated to sharing ‘bad’ ideas to break through creative blocks and stimulate unconventional thinking that can lead to viable solutions.
- Limit Distractions: Minimize interruptions and create an optimal environment for focus by managing tech use, choosing the right time and place, and controlling the room’s conditions.
- Pick the Most Successful Ideas at the End: Use a democratic and anonymous voting system to select the best ideas, ensuring everyone’s input is valued and preventing biases from influencing the outcome.
Conclusion
Brainstorming meetings are an essential part of the creative process for, and also the development of, many businesses. Running effective brainstorming meetings that foster creativity and innovation within a team requires some thought and planning.
By implementing these ten rules, you can create an environment that encourages emergent thinking, collaborative idea-building, and a positive, energetic atmosphere. From defining the problem clearly to embracing the concept of quantity over quality when it comes to ideas generation, each step is designed to maximise the potential of your brainstorming sessions.
Remember, the goal is to cultivate an inclusive and dynamic space where all contributions are valued, leading to the discovery of more innovative and original solutions that are more likely to succeed. Start applying these techniques now to transform your brainstorming meetings into powerful engines of creativity and progress.
There are many other ways the qualities of improvisers have applications in business. You can read about how we use the principles of improv with our business clients here.
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