Creating an Awesome Brainstorm

I love brainstorming. Whether we’re planning a camping trip, riffing on hilarious “what if?!” scenarios, solving a complex technical problem or strategizing for the upcoming school year, the creative exercise of collecting ideas is one of my favourite aspects of community building and problem solving. Here are three strategies for effective brainstorming.

At the risk of acknowledging the superfluous nature of this article, I should mention that there is no shortage of articles about brainstorming on the Internet – a quick Google search of “brainstorm” will generate thousands of excellent articles on the subject. Harvard Business Review’s Julie Gilbert argues that better brainstorming sessions begin when these three questions are considered: “Who is in the room? What is your brainstorm process? What is your leadership body language?” These seven unique brainstorming techniques from Inc, funnily enough, including “bringing people together” and “keeping people apart” as strategies.

Brainstorming is commonly seen as the best way for a group of people to solve a problem; however, there is no consensus about whether or not it is effective. In the past six months, Fast Company has published articles about the need to stop loudmouths from hijacking brainstorming sessions, encourage independent thinking, how brainstorming is fixable BS, and how innovation by brainstorming doesn’t really work.

While an imperfect idea-generating and solution-finding process, brainstorming is certainly effective, at least it has been for my colleagues. One co-worker in particular, Kimberley Rawes, is a fantastic Brainstormer (it’s a word). Kimberley’s positive energy, directness, humility (she always asks for clarification), and ability to build on and/or refine others’ ideas make her a valuable contributor to a brainstorming session.

Kimberley Rawes is “peaking” – she’s done with my explanation. This is a strategy for creating an awesome brainstorm.

Here are Kimberley’s and my three tips for creating an awesome brainstorm:

Get it all out

Get started by suspending your editorial voice, which includes checking your ego at the door. There are no bad ideas. Well, there absolutely are bad ideas, but getting them all out, too, is important. It’s also important to hear everyone’s voice, so try to pair people who think differently from each other – it will be very productive as long as you two can communicate your different ideas to each other and remain unattached. Let folks get their ideas out with their own style, too – allow for active, passive and individual expression as part of the process, such as drawing, mindful thinking, debating, small-group-discussing or journaling.

Play, build and connect

Build on the ideas from your teammates and connect the patterns that emerge. Some people will be great at (as my colleague Marlene says) “throwing spaghetti on the wall” while others will be good at recognizing what sticks and what doesn’t (don’t use actual spaghetti, okay?). Others have a knack for turning a good idea into a great one by building on a colleague’s thought, while some folks have a natural ability to see the bigger picture and recognize themes that are reflected by a number of ideas in the brainstorm and explain how they fit into a larger context. When managing a brainstorming session, invite directness and a spirit of inquiry. Phrases like, “I don’t understand, please re-frame it for me” and “Yes! That is absolutely what I was trying to say” and “No, that’s not a realistic direction given our resources” should all be fair game, as positive and critical directness – however uncomfortable it might be – are essential for great brainstorming. Editor’s note: this is my favourite thing about Kimberley’s role in a brainstorm.

Know when it’s over

Know when to stop or when the momentum is gone. After all, brainstorming can be exciting for some, such as extroverts who are open to criticism and love criticizing, and exhausting for others. Some solutions don’t require a huge amount of ideation, either, so don’t crowd a project with more. A strategy that our team has adopted (thanks to a past facilitator of a great brainstorm) is one of “peaking” – essentially, when you are finished contributing and/or reacting to a brainstorm, you use your hands and arms to form a triangle over your head (see photo) to symbolize that your contributions have peaked. Trust me, this activity will be contagious and it will end a conversation before it goes off track.

So there it is. A recipe for creating an effective brainstorm. At the end of the day, an effective brainstorm should really feel like playing a game. It should be fun, energizing, exhausting and novel. For this reason, I’ll end this week’s article by sharing some wise words about how great creativity is play by IDEO’s Tim Brown.

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This article was originally published on September 18, 2013 (it holds up)