Who hasn't asked themselves this question after sitting through (yet another) unproductive brainstorm?
The reasons why aren't hard to figure out: excessive negativity, pessimism, a lack of energy, undefined purpose, someone talks too much, little information, no insights, poor atmosphere, no sharing of ideas, no food or beverages, and perhaps the most common, brainstorm rules are broken faster than dishes at a Greek wedding.
Still, I don't believe such widespread failure means they deserve general condemnation. I've been in lots of brainstorms which were constructive, thought provoking, challenging ... and most important, fruitful in terms of coming up with lots of potential ideas. But to make them work, there are a number of things to do in advance or during your brainstorm to make it be both profitable and effective.
Above all, the cardinal rule: do whatever is possible to make the brainstorm fun but focused.
IN ADVANCE OF THE BRAINSTORM
Have a strategy or creative brief. A brief helps ensure you have all of the critical information before the brainstorm begins. In particular, you should have the answer to the most important question: what's the exact purpose of the ideas you're trying to develop?
Determine in advance how you're going to select the idea. Give reasonable consideration to how you will determine the best idea. If you're doing a brainstorm for client, a supervisor, or a senior person in your organisation, both of you should agree on how you'll select the best ideas. Otherwise, you fall into the dark whirlpool known as creative churn. Endless brainstorms create diminishing returns, not better ideas.
Invite diverse people to your brainstorm. You want people with diverse - if not opposite - backgrounds to create different ideas. If you all have the same knowledge, experiences, expertise and interest, you'll brainstorm a lot of similar ideas, not necessarily ones which break a pattern or routine.
Give people an assignment before the brainstorm. You don't have to wait for the brainstorm to start to begin generating ideas. I give participants an assignment in advance, usually to 'live' the situation in which the target audience experiences. If nothing else, it helps to mentally prepare the people for the actual brainstorm.
DURING THE BRAINSTORM
The brainstorm sponsor should talk the least. If you have something to say, add it to the creative brief so your time together is spent on brainstorming, not adding lesser information.
Brainstorms tend to work better with less time than more. This is a personal choice, but I think brainstorm which last less than 20 minutes are perfect. Gather only 2-3 people, stand-up in the corner of a conference room or similar area, give the participants enough information to be dangerous, then start brainstorming. After 20 minutes, thank everyone, then find another 2-3 people and repeat several times.
Pit teams against each other. Big brainstorms - more than 8-10 people - aren't always feasible. Sometimes it's better to inspire some good-natured rivalry and competition between two teams or 3-4 people working toward a common goal.
Provide tools, toys, materials and resources which are conducive to creating ideas. The short list of items should include flipchart paper and an easel, coloured pens or pencils, magazines with a thick content of photographs or visuals.
Pick up the easel and leave the office behind. There's nothing like a fresh atmosphere to re-invigorate the brain cells. Find some sunshine. Sit in a coffee shop. If you can somehow add caffeine and sugar (chocolate!), even better.
Get the people to spend part of the brainstorm in the shoes of the target audience. You can gain an entirely different perspective by visiting with or pretending to me the group of people who will use the idea. Or, even more stimulating, ask participants to pretend to be someone entirely unrelated to the situation or product and therefore brainstorm ideas from this fresh perspective.
Keep the participants engaged doing things. Don't let your attendees simply sit in comfy chairs and respond every now and then to a facilitator's commands or questions. Conduct your brainstorm with people standing up. Have them flip through magazines looking for provocative photographs. Hand out paper and crayons and get them to doodle. You'll often be surprised how such simple activities stimulate people's creativity.
Encourage - if not reward - risky, adventurous and out-there ideas. Everyone knows the process of making an idea implementable often waters-down the idea into something which is safe, average or vanilla. To ensure this doesn't happen, the best ideas need to be risky because the critical evaluation steps will erase much of their uniqueness. In other words, safe ideas equal complacency, and complacent ideas have never changed business results.
BRAINSTORM RULES
And don't even bother with a brainstorm if you're not going to follow the rules:
- Defer all judgement until the end of the brainstorm.
- Focus on the problem. What do we have to impact or address? What are unusual ways to fix our problem?
- Go for quantity, not quality. Generate as many ideas as possible. Don't self-censure, just generate idea after idea. Wild ideas can often be turned into appropriate ones.
- Build on ideas. Make every idea better. Move beyond the obvious. Piggyback on ideas to generate new and unusual combinations. Combine several small ideas into one bigger idea. Steal and adapt.
- Write everything down. Put all of the ideas on flipchart pages so everyone can read them. Encourage people to re-read pages to combine earlier ideas with later ideas. I don't encourage killing trees, but fill as many flipchart pages as possible. Write quickly not perfectly. You can clean up later, if you need to
- Everyone participates. And, no one dominates. That includes you.
Have fun! Welcome unusual, different, odd, strange and provocative ideas generated in a risk- and negative-free environment. What's the point of a brainstorm if you're only generating ideas you already have?
Would love to hear your comments on ways you made your brainstorms work.
Andy Ecklund (Creative Director - Zing) Andy@zing.net.au
