Brainstorming is the best-known and most widely used technique for stimulating creative group thinking and for generating a broad range of options in response to just about any issue or challenge.
The process was developed and the name initially coined by Alex Osborne, an American, in 1939. He defined brainstorming to mean: ‘A listing of all ideas, solutions or concepts put forth by a group in response to a particular problem or question’.
According to Osborne, to brainstorm means using the brain to storm a problem and to do so in commando fashion, with each stormer audaciously attacking the same objective. Osborne noted that ‘it’s easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one’. So it was fundamental to the dynamic of his process to encourage and assist participants into ‘off-the-wall’ and creative thinking as part of the thinking and option generation processes.
Osborne’s original concept remains at the core of modern brainstorming. However, the process has been substantially enriched by the addition of tools and techniques drawn from more recent communication, negotiation and lateral thinking theory. Guided by a skilled facilitator, any group of two or more people can brainstorm most types of problem highly effectively.
Recipe for successful brainstorming
- Start with the end in mind. Set clear goals and objectives for the session, for example, ‘to develop new products, markets and processes to increase sales to at least $100M by 2030.’
- Select and invite attendees. Send out individual formal invitations to selected personnel asking them to attend the brainstorming session. Request their active contribution, stressing how much their input and opinions are valued. Invite enough people to produce a good group dynamic and a stimulating environment, but not so many that some will get lost in the melee.
- Create a special environment. Do everything possible to create a special environment where people can see and feel that something different is supposed to be happening. Non-standard, off-site locations and timing, casual clothing and other informalities can help to create and feed the illusion.
- Rules of engagement. Advise everybody of the session’s rules and guidelines (as they appear herein).
- Suspend the ‘constraints of reasonableness’ and give participants permission and encouragement to think laterally. Tell them they don’t have to justify any of their ideas and suggestions and that they can ignore the normal restrictions of apparent logic and safety, resources, best practice, received wisdom, professional regulations and work environment. For example, ‘if you could do anything at all, how would you increase our sales and profits?’
- Generate as many ideas as possible. Initially we want quantity rather than quality, to get a free flow of ideas running from all conceivable angles. Think of ideas as billiard balls – as each one is generated, another bounces off or builds on it. This can take the session out into apparently ridiculous territory, but staying with the process will generate options that would never have been thought of through normal straight line thinking – and one or some of them may be winners.
- No criticism allowed. Everybody is free to express their views and ideas without fear of criticism or attribution.
- Separate inventing from deciding. Don’t start evaluating ideas until as many as possible have been generated.
- Create a Cone of Silence and a safe environment. Encourage participants to challenge the status quo in an artificially safe and secure environment where they have no fear of failure, ridicule or retribution.
- Anonymity. De-personalise suggestions, where possible, to avoid attribution, blame or situation limitations. For example, ‘all family and non-family managers should actively seek feedback from their staff and peers about what they’re doing well, and not so well’. This neatly avoids pointing the finger at any specific manager.
- Recording – visual validation and confirmation. Ensure that all ideas are recorded and, within reason, kept in front of the group as visual confirmation of individual contribution and progress.
Electronic whiteboards and butcher’s paper are excellent tools. PCs linked to data boards and projectors, ordinary whiteboards, overhead projectors, large cue cards and ordinary writing paper are other useful options. There are many exciting new visual data technologies now in the market, some at very reasonable prices.
Always keep the technology simple and reliable, almost to the point of invisibility, to avoid the risk of constraining the creative process, or of de-railing it through technological complexity, constraints, or systems failure.
- Facilitation. Use a skilled facilitator, preferably someone independent of the group and/or the family, to guide the session. Their role is to maintain energy levels and momentum and to guide the session’s direction by constantly challenging the group’s thinking and by provoking participants to come up with options and alternatives that progressively build on, and stimulate, other ideas.
- Improvement. After the options and ideas have been generated, the group should try to improve on its original formulations. Work with as many of the seemingly better ideas as possible to make new, or more refined, ones.
- Select and ‘lock in’. Select the options/ideas that look most promising. Ensure that they are as ‘improved’ as possible. Lock them in as candidates for solutions.