If you want to set up brainstorming sessions that lead to more interesting and creative proposals, you must take into account the exact number of participants who will attend the meeting.
My first tip is to follow the “pizza rule.” In case you're unfamiliar, this rule states that if there are more participants in a meeting than you can feed a pizza, then that number is too high for that meeting to be productive.
The same applies to brainstorming sessions. If there are 12 employees at your meeting table, you can expect an endless list of relatively mediocre ideas. But what else can you do, other than bribe a group of 2-6 employees with pizza, to come up with good ideas? Since you ask yourself, I invite you to continue reading.
What is brainstorming
Brainstorming is an unstructured technique for work groups, where solutions are sought to various situations through the generation of spontaneous, relaxed and horizontal ideas.
It was Alex F. Osborn who created the concept of brainstorming, which is useful for both specialized teams and more informal settings. These are some of its principles:
– Allow ideas to emerge spontaneously.
– Moderate judgments so as not to interrupt this spontaneity.
– Prioritize collaboration, instead of striving to give the most applauded idea
What is brainstorming for?
Brainstorming will allow you to meet new points of view from colleagues you see every day, but who you may not always recognize as your allies in creativity.
In addition, it is one of the best tools to unlock inventiveness, be it yours or that of your team members. Since its principle is to achieve a collaborative and more relaxed atmosphere than usual, it can give you surprising results. Once you establish that atmosphere of trust, even the shyest person may speak up on an issue.
The best thing is that you can give it different approaches, both in the subject to be addressed and its limitation (do you want to talk about what ideas they have for the marketing department in general, or about the tactics to follow with your newest client?) how to do sessions of approach to this technique or for an urgent project.
Let's look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of brainstorming with your collaborators.
Advantages
– It puts at your disposal various ideas, where some will be very valuable for your projects.
– It promotes criticism, which is necessary even when the activities of a team or department are going well.
– It helps you eliminate obstacles in the creativity of a team regarding a more or less specific matter.
– It allows the barriers between its participants to be reduced, either by their work group or by their hierarchy.
– It positively influences work dynamics by being an extraordinary moment in the day to day.
Disadvantages
– As well as showing valuable ideas, most are likely not relevant to the project you have in mind.
– It can encourage clutter if the ideas are not focused on the required topic.
– Some people, for fear of speaking in public or making mistakes, may not express their comments.
– It often happens that only some collaborators actively participate, while others will only say “yes” or “no” to your proposals out of laziness to get involved.
– If you don't make a proper selection, you could follow an idea that is not so convenient.
– Remember that even innovation requires certain rules.
You will see that if you use the following four tips to organize your brainstorming session, you will enhance the positive effects of this technique.
1. Promote diversity in the group
If your team members collaborate on the same projects, attend the same meetings, work in the same office, and are together all day, I don't have to tell you that the ideas they will produce will be fairly homogeneous.
Invite employees from other teams to your brainstorming sessions. Try that they have different skills and experiences, as this will help you get out of the routine and see everything from another angle. You will have an excellent combination of new perspectives and contextual insights that will lead you to original and actionable ideas.
2. Hold meetings of 22 minutes (approximately)
Nicole Steinbok promotes this technique and, in my case, it has had positive results. My meetings are usually about 30 minutes, but what is a few more minutes between colleagues? Having a time limit is effective, especially for those who work best under pressure.
However, in my experience, having a stipulated time frame to produce ideas only works well if all participants are prepared for the meeting (I will return to this later). Two other principles Steinbok insists on are: don't carry laptops and avoid digressions. While some disagree, I have found that having aggressive time limits helps keep you focused on the task and, as a result, produce better ideas.
3. Integrate everyone and avoid dominant behaviors
We know that there are members in your team whose personalities are captivating and who also share their opinions often. Although their presence helps liven up the atmosphere, don't let them dominate the situation. Quieter collaborators are likely to have very good ideas, especially if they are observant, so you must achieve balance through a very simple technique, where you only need to choose an object that will function as a signal to speak. Pass it on to all team members in disarray, but making sure everyone has a voice for a moment. Set a time of 1-2 minutes for each participant. This way you will help everyone to integrate and no one goes unnoticed.
4. Set the context and goals ahead of time
“In time” does not mean the morning of the meeting. Provide the relevant information at least two business days in advance so that the team has a chance to prepare.
In addition to providing contextual information or reading material that helps define the reason for the brainstorming session (and explicitly asking the team to read it), describe the ideal outcome of the meeting. In this way, employees will know in advance the objectives that they are trying to achieve with it. You will see that you spend less time giving instructions and you can start the session immediately.
If necessary, do what Amazon's Jeff Bezos does and spend 30 minutes exclusively reading the information in a group to get everyone on the same page, especially if they don't have time to read before the meeting.
Hopefully this post can be useful to help you understand brainstorming and its influence in generating business ideas.
