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Brainpower For The Overwhelmed |
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Walk into the room and can’t find your keys? Or forget why you entered the room in the first place? Wondering what has happened to your short-term memory? Feel overwhelmed by information, people, to-do lists and demands on your time? You very well could be suffering from SADD-situational attention deficit disorder, a term coined by Anderson Consulting Institute for Strategic Change. Specifically, most of us are now in situations in which we are bombarded by so many demands for our attention that our brains close down. It’s a phenomenon of our time. Our brains, evolved over eons to respond to our environment and each other are exponentially being taxed by the growth in information and... |
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Brainstorming Effectively |
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BRAINSTORMING: The basic tool used in generating many possible solutions to a problem is brainstorming. To use the brainstorming process effectively requires following a prescribed set of rules very closely. These rules are: 1. No positive or negative comments are allowed during the brainstorming phase. 2. Positive or negative non-verbal evaluations are discouraged as well. 3. A group member may ask for clarification if the member does not understand a given suggestion, but it is important to avoid any questions that are directed to “how” or “why” of the idea. In other words, the person suggesting a solution is not to be asked to defend the idea! 4. “Far out” or amusing suggestions are... |
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Problem Solving: This Simple Process helps Identify Creative Solutions to Difficult Problems |
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Five years ago, a couple of instructors that I was working with and I were brainstorming about different ways to promote our training programs more easily. Up to that point, I had spent my entire career in training focused primarily on helping individuals become more successful by helping them strengthen certain skill sets such as public speaking, management skills, and selling skills. We noticed that out of our classes, about 80% of participants were individuals, about 15% came with a friend, and about 5% came as a group. We knew that these groups who attended together leveraged the results of the programs significantly, because they held each other accountable for implementation of the... |
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Translate/Traduisez/Übersetzen Sie/Traduzca/Traduca/Traduza:
Make Brainstorming Work for You, Not Against You
Author:
Glory Borgeson
I enjoyed the Martha Stewart apprentice show (not sure why "America"
didn't like it). Even the frustrating parts of the show caught my
attention, in an inquisitive, "here's something to learn" kind of way. Week after week, Martha's apprentice nominees started a new project
by gathering with their team to come up with ideas of how to
implement their new task. Each team wanted to come up with something
that was better than the other team so that they would be declared the winner. And week after week, I observed mismanaged brainstorming and evaluating,
resulting in frustrated team members and lukewarm ideas. What did they keep doing wrong? One week, team member Leslie from the (constantly) winning team came
over to the losing team to lead them as their project manager. It took
this team too long to perform the tasks of brainstorming and evaluating.
During the brainstorming session, they kept evaluating. When they finally
got to the evaluating part of the task in order to choose one idea, they
kept brainstorming new ideas! Getting to the point of choosing one idea
took them 6 hours, when it should have taken about 2 hours. On another episode, Sarah, as the project manager, decided that her
team members would start out by brainstorming silently.
WHAT? What in the world is brainstorming silently? I'll tell you
what it is: It's nothing! The basic idea of brainstorming is that everyone gets to hear everyone
else's ideas, and that ideas generate more ideas! In other words,
when people hear other peoples' ideas, it gets their thoughts going, and
more ideas appear. So, even bad ideas generate good ideas! And that leads me to the problem I've seen from Martha's apprentice candidates
over and over. It is the same problem repeated in millions of businesses
worldwide. While they're brainstorming ideas, they're evaluating ideas;
and when they're evaluating ideas, they're brainstorming even more ideas. No wonder it takes too long to get through this process! Here is a very simple solution to this chaotic problem:
- The brainstorming phase is for idea generation only!
- When you are brainstorming, there is no evaluation of ideas allowed.
- During brainstorming, there is no development of ideas allowed.
- Schedule a set amount of time for brainstorming.
- Appoint someone as the "scribe" who writes all ideas on either a flip chart or a white board.
- Even bad ideas get put on the list (because "even bad ideas generate good ideas" ).
- Once the brainstorming session is over, the evaluation stage begins.
- During evaluation, there is no more brainstorming.
- Schedule a set amount of time for evaluation.
- First, weed out the ideas that are bad, goofy, distasteful, and just won't work (according to the group).
- Try to whittle the list down to the two best ideas (without developing the ideas yet).
- Once you have your two best ideas, spend a set amount of time brainstorming (yes, again!) how each of these two main ideas could be developed (and, again, only ideas and more ideas at this time).
- Evaluate one of the main ideas (and all of the development ideas you just thought of that go along with it).
- Evaluate the second main idea (and all of its development ideas).
- Decide between the two which you are going to implement!
If teams would focus on this method for brainstorming and evaluation,
they would come up with better ideas and better ways to implement those ideas.
Also, they would no longer feel that this process is a heavy, mind-numbing burden.
Rather, they would feel that this process is fun, invigorating, and challenging
(in the good way!). Read on to my article titled "How to Brainstorm with a Large Team" (also available
at EzineArticles.com) to find out how to do brainstorming with a large team.
Even if you have a team of less than 20 people, the additional ideas will help
you to use each individual team member's talents and skills to generate the
best ideas possible. © 2006 Borgeson Consulting, Inc. Glory Borgeson is a business coach and consultant, and the president of
Borgeson Consulting, Inc. She works with two groups of people:
small business owners (with 500 employees or less) to help them increase
their Entrepreneurial IQ, which leads to increased profit and
decreased stress; and with executives in the
"honeymoon phase" of a new position (typically the first two years)
to coach them to success. Top athletes have a coach; why not you? Click here for Borgeson Consulting, Inc. This article was originally published in The Business Express, Borgeson's
free monthly ezine. You may subscribe by clicking here:
Ezine
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A Quick Note
From The Publisher...
If you like the article above, you may be
interested in the following article which is also related to Brainpower...
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The Secret To Effective Brainstorming |
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Have you been in a "brainstorming" session where each person just defended their own ideas? Worse is when people don't suggest ideas at all, for fear they'll be attacked. That's no way to brainstorm. Brainstorming is using the power of many minds, and ideas should flow freely and trigger other ideas. How do you make that happen? The Key To Good Brainstorming You have to have a good leader to have good brainstorming. The leader isn't there to impose his will, though, but to stop the imposition of anyones will. His role is to stop criticisms, arguments, and even strong opinions, at least in the first part of the session. A brainstorming session needs to be spontaneous, open and uncritical. "Bad" or "silly" ideas can lead to helpful ones, so suggestions have to be left un-judged at first. To brainstorm effectively, you can't stifle the creative process. The leaders job, then, is to make everyone feel free to suggest any ideas. An Example Of Good Brainstorming The scenario: your business needs to cut delivery costs. The group throws out ideas and thoughts. "Let's not deliver," someone suggests, and when another starts to criticize, you remind him of the rules. "Negotiate lower rates," somebody says, "Or just find a company with lower rates," another adds. Ideas like reducing package weight and charging customers more are suggested, and lead to other ideas. You keep it civil, take notes, and eventually call a halt to this free-for-all part of the session. Now it's time to evaluate and develop the ideas for whatever usefulness they may have. To keep the creativity flowing in this stage, have participants defend or develop ideas that are not their own. This brings new insight to the idea, and prevents the problem of ego-identification that causes... |
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