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... Mind Maps - Brainstorming for Business Success In the business world, people often hear the term "Think outside the box", with little or no explanation as to how to actually do that. Everyone is just expected to know how, figure it out, or find another job. Brainstorming sessions often lead to a slew of ideas from a group, but with little or no structure, it's difficult to tell what ideas are worth pursuing and which are wasting space. There is a brainstorming strategy that, when used with a couple of other follow-up methods, will allow for creative thoughts to come from the group and still home in on the ideas that will actually benefit the overall goal. The three steps of the strategy are mind maps, t-analysis and action plan creation. Let's look at the first step, mind maps. This step does a couple of things for a group brainstorm: it acts as an ice breaker, it gets people's brains pointing in the right direction and it can produce ideas that might not otherwise surface during just a normal call and response brainstorm session. Break your group up into smaller groups of at most 4 or 5. With each group should be a large sheet of paper (lecture board paper will do fine) and several different colored markers. The groups should be instructed to write the focus of your brainstorm in the middle of the paper and draw a circle around it. So if you were interested in brainstorming new ways to market a particular product, you'd write the product name in the middle of the paper. If you wanted to brainstorm on ways to control costs, you'd write Costs in the middle of the paper. Once this is done, instruct the groups to draw lines branching out from the center and to write down anything that relates to the central thought. Remind them several times during the exercise that it doesn't matter how relevant or not...