Running a Great Brainstorm
Most brainstorms fail on facilitation rather than on the people in the room. This lesson covers the setup, the rules worth enforcing, and how to keep going long enough to get past the obvious first twenty ideas.
After this lesson you can
- Set a session up so the awkward second half actually happens.
- Handle a real objection without either ignoring it or letting it stop the session.
- Judge when a group has run out of the ideas it already had.
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Module Overview
Let the wild ideas in. Not because you will build them, but because weeding early leaves you with the same familiar ideas you always get, and a crazy idea is often what sparks a usable one in somebody else. Ask what would be amazing if anything were possible, and bring it back to earth later.
You need sticky notes, markers, a wall and a timer, and it helps to invite somebody from outside the project, particularly when the team is remote. The ground rules: no judgement and a yes-and mindset, wild ideas welcome, build on other people's, one speaker at a time, one How Might We question at a time, go for volume against a short timer of ten or fifteen minutes, and be visual.
On your own, Crazy 8s is the film's pick. Fold a sheet of paper in half three times to get eight boxes, set eight minutes, and fill one box a minute with at least one drawing in each. State the ground rules up front, use the timer, try boosters like random input or an idea mash-up, and run several rounds with different methods. Cluster at the end if you like, but carefully, because merging ideas can just as easily turn them into soup.
Where this usually goes wrong
- Finishing early because the energy was good and the ideas had stopped.
- Quoting the no-bad-ideas rule at somebody raising a genuine risk.
- Opening with a group discussion, so the first confident voice sets the direction.
Check it landed
3 questions, and one of them has no right answer. You get the reasoning either way.
A forty minute brainstorm produced twelve ideas and everybody left happy. What is the most likely problem?
Somebody says "that will never get past procurement". What is the facilitator's job?
Silent individual ideation first, or straight into the group?
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Put it to work
6 templates go with this lesson. Each one has its own guide on when and how to use it.
