Brainstorming Methods

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Author:
Steven Gillman

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 people to get "stuck in a rut" with their own ideas.

For example, ask the man who was critical of the idea of not delivering to work with that idea. "We have to deliver," he might start with. Then he thinks for a second and says, "I suppose we could deliver to central distribution points instead of to the individual customer. The customer could drive a short distance to pick up their order. That might save us on shipping."

Someone else suggests that the customers may like the arrangement. They would be able to return the product immediately if they were dissatisfied, with no need to pack and ship it. You assign a couple people to look into it, and move on to the other ideas.

Good leadership keeps the whole process working. In the last example, you've even used a "bad" idea to come to a possible solution. That's good brainstorming.

Steve Gillman has been studying brainpower enhancement, creative problem solving, and related topics for years. You can visit his website, and subscribe to his free Mind Power Course, at: http://www.IncreaseBrainPower.com/mind-power.html

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... Why Late Night Brainstorming Could Be E.S.P. I’m sure at some point in your life; you have awaken from a dead sleep, scurried to your office or kitchen to grab a notepad and pen, and wrote down something inspirational. You spent all day trying to come up with ideas, but nothing worth keeping. Yet, at the moment when you are not thinking about anything and your mind is clear, it hits you like a ton of bricks! Is this just by chance? Or does it go a little deeper, to the point of phenomenon? One theory I have is that when the day is done, you have finally started to wind down, and are no longer thinking about problems at work or with your family. At this point, perhaps when you are lying in bed about to fall asleep, your mind is perceptive to all things in the universe. You no longer have bias, or bad past experiences to cloud your thought process. Your mind is completely clear and ready to take in information. This is usually when some of your best ideas occur. Another theory is that you could be experiencing E.S.P.(extra sensory perception). This theory to me is very realistic; you can easily have a hyper-sensitivity or pick up on something in your environment that other people don’t see or hear. Because your mind is free to any and all information, you are able to see and experience things around you from a different view point. This type of “sixth sense” is obviously not something that everyone has. That’s not to say that we all, to some degree couldn’t develop this natural ability that we all possess. Some people like to call this “intuition”. Have you ever suddenly had a thought that your phone was going to ring? Somehow, you knew someone was about to call you? This has happened to me on many occasions, but not just about my phone ringing. I once had a powerful thought come...