Another week, another set of articles proclaiming - again - that the brainstorm is dead.
Don't buy it. Instead, the next time you need your team to develop ideas, consider these steps instead.
- Determine the real goal of what your ideas need to accomplish. This goal may also be written as a problem. You may need your ideas to eliminate an issue, or fulfil a need.
- Choose your brainstorm attendees wisely. (Go here if you want some tips to do this.)
- In advance of the brainstorm, prepare some suitable research as background or thought starters for your potential attendees. Don’t overload people with information: less is (always) more. As much as possible, talk to the group of people who will interact with the ideas.
- Also in advance of the brainstorm, ask these people to consider the goal or problem – perhaps even come up with their own ideas prior to the meeting.
- Find a good facilitator to conduct your meeting. Don’t do it yourself. A qualified facilitator can help navigate some of the common problems with group dynamics, as well as inspire the group through creative exercises and techniques.
- Decide what criteria you’re going to use to select the ideas. Keep these between you and the facilitator, revealing them at the end of the group brainstorming.
- When you gather for the brainstorm, first listen to everyone’s ideas. Then, depending upon the ideas generated independently, use these ideas as a basis for more brainstorming.
- Spend a reasonable amount of time – which means pushing through the first or second waves of creativity – until the group really starts to challenging itself. (Again, a good facilitator can help.)
- Once you have a suitable amount of ideas, select the ideas – using your criteria – you want to take to the next level. Assign people to specific tasks with specific tight deadlines. And, decide if you need to schedule more meetings, perhaps with different people. If so, repeat the appropriate steps of this process.
- Finally: sell or merchandise the ideas to the “client,” and get buy-in or approval to implement ... if not go directly to the implementation stage.
