We have all been there. You’re in a room with a large group and everyone is shouting out ideas. Some are talking over each other. Others seem to have no idea why they’re there or what they should be doing. You’re feverishly taking page after page of notes, trying to capture it all. But when you leave the room, you realize – you didn’t really get anything useful from it.
Let’s just say that this is a brainstorm gone wrong.
When done right, brainstorming – when a group comes together to develop ideas or solve a problem – can be extremely effective. But when done incorrectly, it often can be a waste of time.
So, how do you make the best use of your brainstorming session? Let’s find out.
Benefits of brainstorming for teams, individuals
Before we dive in, you may be asking … what is the purpose of brainstorming, and what good does it do?
Brainstorming has numerous benefits, including enhancing collaboration and teamwork, quickly generating solutions to problems and breaking out of the status quo to find an array of new, diverse ideas. It’s a great tool for when you’re facing a challenge, want to develop a fresh concept – like an updated marketing campaign – or need multiple perspectives to help address a problem. It’s useful for facilitating conversation and garnering an array of perspectives, as well as helping teams feel heard and valued by proactively asking for their input.
How to run an effective brainstorming session
There are several essential best practices to follow for the brainstorming process to be effective. While creative thinking is the goal of any brainstorming session, generating ideas is best facilitated through structure, however counterintuitive it may seem. Without a clear plan, strategy, and objective, brainstorms often go off-topic or fail to meet the desired outcome of the session.
To prevent these issues, start by making a plan for the brainstorming meeting. Carefully consider the location, time limit and attendees, choosing a mix of voices who are most likely to have relevant ideas on the topic. Don’t let the group get too large – keep it to 12-15 people max, to prevent too many opinions from making the session less effective.
Once the meeting is scheduled, send prep materials in advance, asking all participants to review them and come ready with ideas.
Next, set your objective carefully – and share it at the start of the session so everyone is aligned. Cover any other ground rules for brainstorming and try out a variety of activities to keep the ideas flowing.
Importantly, don’t forget to take notes throughout (or assign a notetaker). At the end of the session, once idea generation is complete, take 10 minutes to have everyone rank their top five ideas from the session. If you’ve written them on a white board or large pieces of paper, ask the group to star their top choices, or give out small sticky notes or stickers to have people mark their favorites in real time. If you don’t have them projected visually in some manner, consider emailing out the notes and asking participants to send you their top choices by a certain date. Ranking the results of the session will help you focus as you determine the next steps and which ideas to further pursue.
Key brainstorming rules to keep ideas flowing
An essential part of generating ideas in a brainstorm is setting the right ground rules. Clarity around how the session will function is critical to ensure everyone knows the expectations and guidelines.
A few key ground rules include:
- Quantity over quality: Brainstorms should focus on generating multiple ideas, rather than focusing on the quality of each one. In the session, encourage participants to share their ideas quickly and offer up as many as possible.
- Stay on topic: To get useful results, facilitators need to keep participants on topic. You want to encourage creative, even over-the-top thinking – BUT it still needs to be relevant to the objective at hand. If the group starts veering off course, it’s the facilitator’s job to pull them back into focus.
- All ideas are welcome: Nothing is too outlandish in a brainstorm. While it’s important to share ideas relevant to the session’s objective, we don’t want participants to feel intimidated or nervous to share an idea because they’re worried it’s silly or strange. Just share, share, share!
- No evaluating ideas: Along the same lines, time shouldn’t be wasted evaluating ideas in the meeting. Critiques or spending too much time assessing whether or not something will work dampens creativity. The reality check can come later – as long as the idea relates to the objective and topic, don’t waste time determining if it’s the perfect solution.
- Think BIG: Brainstorms are all about creativity. Encourage participants to think beyond the obvious.
- Build on each other: In a group brainstorm session, often the best solutions come from teamwork. Encourage the group to find ways to build on each other’s ideas and even transform them into something new. At the same time – stop participants from interrupting others mid-thought. Let all voices be heard!
Brainstorm examples and techniques
There isn’t one right way to brainstorm, and experimenting with different approaches is a helpful way to generate creative ideas.
Often, kicking things off with a few minutes of individual brainstorming – such as brainwriting, where you write down as many ideas as you can in a specific timeframe – helps to get the momentum going. Give participants 5-10 minutes to jot down thoughts individually, then ask them to share and build on each other’s ideas. It can be smart for the facilitator to share his or her ideas first, to help break the ice. And it’s even better to share your craziest concept, so no one is afraid to share their own out-of-the-box thoughts!
Visual techniques, like a mind map, also can be useful. Draw a circle with the topic in the middle, then create branches off that idea and continue to build on them. Seeing everything visually helps make connections and spurs further creativity.
What are brainstorming tools and why do they matter?
When picturing a brainstorm session, most imagine a group of people sitting in a room together, often huddled around a whiteboard. While that might be the most common scenario, virtual brainstorms are becoming more common with the growth of remote and hybrid work.
To help facilitate brainstorms in a virtual environment, some organizations may choose to invest in a digital brainstorming tool. Taking the brainstorm beyond just a simple video chat session, brainstorming tools can help team members collaborate in a more meaningful way, from organizing ideas visually to fostering collaboration through interactive dashboards to leveraging AI to inspire or flesh out concepts. A quick online search will pull up a plethora of options to consider.
When done thoughtfully, brainstorming can be one of the best tools in your toolbox to help generate useful, creative ideas to meet your goals. Interested in learning more about brainstorming or other organizational communication topics? Give Falls & Co. a call today.
