It is spring in Wisconsin. From under the frozen tundra, small but strong green shoots are emerging, just as ideas do from a traditional brainstorming session. But many of these shoots will turn into flowers that last longer than the ideas that emerge from a traditional brainstorming session.
In a recent article by Kevin P. Coyne and Shawn T. Coyne titled “Seven steps to better brainstorming” in McKinseyQuarterly.com, the authors point out that traditional methods of generating ideas are flawed. Their approach is designed to reduce the tension associated with generating out of the box ideas and replacing it with a process that better utilizes the human capital participating in this exercise.
Know your organization’s decision-making criteria
Ideas hatched in brainstorming sessions often go nowhere because they are beyond the scope of what the organization would be willing to consider. Managers hoping to stimulate creative thinking should start by understanding the criteria the company will use to make decisions regarding the ideas generated. Are there any restrictions or limitations? What constitutes an acceptable idea? The result will be a more productive session delivering ideas that are practical, affordable, and profitable.
Ask the right questions
Your workshop should be built around a series of right questions that your team will explore in small groups during a number of idea generation sessions. The questions should have two characteristics. First, they should force your participants to take a new and unfamiliar perspective. Changing your participants’ perspective will shake up their thinking. Secondly, the question should limit the conceptual space your team will explore, without being overly restrictive, forcing particular answers or outcomes.
The Coynes suggest it’s best to come up with 15 to 20 questions for a typical workshop attended by about 20 people. These questions should be chosen carefully, as they will form the core of your workshop.
Choose the right people
Pick people who can answer the questions you’re asking. Choose participants with firsthand, in the trenches knowledge.
Divide and conquer
Don’t have your participants hold one continuous, rambling discussion among the entire group for several hours. Instead, have the group conduct multiple, discrete, highly focused idea generation sessions in subgroups of three to five people. Each subgroup should focus on a single question for a full 30 minutes. The social norm in groups of this size is to speak up, whereas the norm in a larger group is to stay quiet.
When assigning people to subgroups, it is suggested to isolate the idea crushers in their own subgroup. These people could prevent others from suggesting good ideas if they are in other subgroups. There are three varieties of idea crushers: bosses, big mouths, and subject matter experts.
The presence of the boss often makes people hesitant to express unproven ideas. Big mouths take up air time, intimidate the less confident, and give everyone else an excuse to be lazy. Subject matter experts can squelch new ideas because everyone defers to their presumed superior wisdom.
By isolating idea crushers, you’ll free the other subgroups to think more creatively.
Take the 15 to 20 questions you earlier prepared and divide them among the subgroups, about 5 questions each. Whenever possible, assign a specific question to the subgroup you consider best equipped to handle it.
On your mark, get set, go!
Remember, your team is accustomed to the traditional brainstorming approach. You need to orient your participants so that your expectations about what they will and won’t accomplish are clear.
Each subgroup should consider and discuss a single question for a half hour. Inform the participants that if anyone thinks of a solution that’s outside the scope of discussion, they should write it down and put it into the “parking lot” to be discussed at a later time.
Inform your participants that when a subgroup attacks a question, it might generate only two or three ideas. Knowing this probability in advance will prevent participants from becoming discouraged. Reassure the participants that after all the subgroups have met several times there will be no shortage of good ideas.
To motivate participants and demonstrate how a question based approach can help, share signpost examples before the start of each session, real questions previous groups used, along with success stories.
The first five minutes of any subgroup’s brainsteering session may feel like typical brainstorming. Participants should persevere. Enhanced thinking soon emerges as the subgroups try to improve shallow ideas while sticking to the assigned questions.
Wrap it up
A typical subgroup will produce up to 15 interesting ideas for further exploration. Don’t have the full group choose the best ideas from the pile, which is common in traditional brainstorming. Your attendees won’t always have an executive level understanding of the criteria and considerations that must go into prioritizing ideas for actual investment.
Have each subgroup narrow its own list of ideas to a top few and then share all the leading ideas with the full group. The full group shouldn’t pick a winner. Instead, close the workshop on a high note, describe to them exactly what steps will be taken to choose the winning ideas and how they will learn about the final decisions.
Follow up quickly
Management should communicate the results of the decisions quickly to everyone involved, even when an idea was rejected. Participants are often desperate for feedback and eager for indications that they have at least been heard. By respectfully explaining why certain ideas were rejected, you can help team members produce better ideas the next time.
When designing your next planning session, consider breaking the mold and adopting the brainsteering approach. You will find that the ideas generated will be more focused on the questions you selected for each group and subgroup to consider.
