Brainstorming can be a useful way of generating new ideas or identifying potential solutions for problems by tapping into the collective creativity of a group. These tips will help you to make the most of any brainstorming session you run.
Appoint a facilitator
Having a facilitator for your brainstorming session can be extremely useful – particularly if you want to participate fully in the session yourself. While you want ideas to flow freely, a facilitator can also help to bring proceedings back to the main purpose if participants are heading too much off track. You might want to appoint someone who knows a lot about the subject matter to be discussed, or perhaps someone skilled in facilitation such as a member of your learning and development team.
Play by the rules
To ensure brainstorming is effective, the following general rules should apply to ideas generation:
encourage and welcome all suggestions;
aim for quantity over quality;
encourage participants to take others’ ideas and run with them;
don’t allow criticism; and
keep the overall purpose of the session in mind.
Ask people to generate ideas before the session
While we traditionally think of brainstorming as something that happens on the spot, it can be more effective if you ask people to list their ideas before they come along to a brainstorming session. This can have the benefit of allowing the group to build on, or combine, the best ideas on the day, rather than having to start from scratch.
Ensure everyone contributes fully
One of the problems with group activities such as brainstorming is that they can encourage ‘social loafing’. In other words, certain group members will quite happily leave other participants to do the bulk of the work. To prevent this happening in your brainstorming session, you (or your facilitator if you have one) should keep a mental note of who is and isn’t contributing. Draw in non-contributors using prompts like ‘What would you suggest?’ or ‘Could we have some ideas from the other side of the room?’
You could even consider introducing a competitive element to your brainstorming session in order to ensure everyone takes part, e.g. each participant has to generate 10 ideas.
Set an unrealistic target
To avoid the self-censorship of ideas that can often occur in brainstorming sessions, you might want to set a challenging target. For example you might ask your team to generate 20 suggestions in 10 minutes. The advantage of this is that people are more likely to contribute their ideas – no matter how irrelevant they think they are – in order to meet the deadline. Your team might not hit the target, but they will have generated far more, and more interesting ideas in attempting to do so.
Break down issues in to parts
Brainstorming isn’t just about looking at single ideas or issues. It can also be a productive way of working through complex problems or challenges. In these situations it’s a good idea to agree the component parts to be discussed and then divide participants into teams to brainstorm the different aspects. You might even rotate each group round every issue to identify a range of possible ways to proceed for each.
Get some outside help
It can be useful to ask along some people from outside your team to provide some input to your brainstorming session. This can be particularly helpful if you are looking for ideas for a new product or service, or trying to solve a longstanding issue. It is not just these participants’ individual perspectives, but how they can spark off other members of your team that can prove particularly beneficial.
Reference: https://app.goodpractice.net/
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