Wall Street Journal on brainstorming

I've spent most of last week and this working on an event I'm leading next week, two days of technology roadmapping and scenario planning. I've organized events before, but every time I do it, I'm impressed with how much work it ought to be.

You have to think about the arrangement of the room (you want people to be able to talk to each other, and see the board).

You have to anticipate how what kinds of supplies you need-- down to the level of numbers of Post-its and pens.

You have to design the processes for every session, down to the minute, and figure out how to structure the day so that each session builds upon earlier ones, and contributes to the next.

You have to think about how interactive and physical the sessions should be: having people get up, interact with stickies on a board, or doing other things takes time, but depending on the time of day, you're better off having people up and about.

You even have to think about the food (the more protein the better-- carbs make you stupid).

And unless you know someone else is responsible for it, you are.

At least, that's the way we do it here.

So, in between e-mails to workshop participants, thinking of questions to ask the venue management, and making up lists of things to send, I was gratified to see the Wall Street Journal article on brainstorming.

[G]reat brainstorming sessions are possible, but they require the planning of a state dinner, plenty of rules, and the suspension of ego, ingratiation and political railroading. Hosts have to hope that people won't expend creative energy trying to tell others their ideas are bad without actually telling them that -- admittedly a real business skill. And they have to cross their fingers that the session won't deteriorate into what some people call "blamestorming" or "coblabberation," where you get nowhere or settle on something mediocre to be done with it....

[I]f you don't carefully follow procedures, you risk wasting a lot of energy. "If you leave groups to their own devices, they're going to do a very miserable job," says Prof. [Paul] B. Paulus, [a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington]....

When the goal really is ideas, some companies resort to hiring facilitators. Outsiders don't have political dogs in the fight and can, as Bill Hall learned, make people "get back in line." The last time Mr. Hall tried to conduct a session himself on how to save his organization money, "it quickly degenerated into a worthless day," he says.

All this suggests that that time spent on Post-its and process design is worth it. Creativity-- particularly in groups-- isn't just some chaotic, let-it-hang-out, post-hippie thing. You have to build a structure and context around the chaos to have a chance at success.

The one other argument the article makes is that individual brainstorming is actually more effective a way of getting ideas.

Prof. Paulus conducted research on the number and quality of ideas of four people brainstorming together versus four people brainstorming by themselves. Typically, group brainstormers perform at about half the level they would if they brainstormed alone.... [I]f people brainstorm alone after the group brainstorming session, it can [also] be productive, he says, adding, "It's ironic: You tap the benefits of groups alone. Everyone still presumes the best brainstorming is group brainstorming."

David Perkins, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, warns that sometimes group sessions can result in one person's bad idea tainting and limiting the range of others' ideas. "The best way to get good ideas is to get people to write them down privately and then bring them in," he says.

It's an interesting idea, and I wonder: is there a literature on individual brainstorming? There are lots of books about how to be more creative, but is there something that parallels the pretty extensive literature on group processes?

Technorati Tags: collaboration, collective intelligence, work

Comments

[Mark Federman]

You could do a lot worse than checking out McLuhan for Managers (for which your colleague Paul Saffo wrote the Foreword) for ideas on a completely different thinking framework for business problems. While I don't specifically cover brainstorming in the book (I developed the technique after the manuscript went to print), I talk about it here, (and longer ago, here) and, of course, I'm (almost) always available as a facilitator! :)

[Ned Ruete]

There was some postive for facililtators in WSJ, if you look hard enough. But what I was most struck with was the complete misunderstanding of:
- what "brainstorming" is and how it has to be part of a total package of idea generation, problems solving, and decision-making strategy
- that teams aren't something you have to (or can) make happen, but may want to let happen in very particular circumstances
- how much old command-and-control management gets it the way of effective work, and how failed collaborative efforts are not because collaboration doesn't work but because nothing works in the typical American management culture. "Export anything to a friendly country except American management" - W. Edwards Deming

[Jon Jenkins]

The International Association of Facilitators has several sources about brainstorming and more generally facilitation. The "The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation: Best Practices from the
Leading Organization in Facilitation" at
http://www.iafhgf.com/. You might also check the IAF Methods Database at http://www.iaf-methods.org.

[linda ong]

i'm glad to see i wasn't the only one who was incensed by this irresponsible artlcle. here's the letter to the editor i fired off - don't know if it was ever published - but for what it's worth, i tried to make it constructive:
To the Editor,

Re: “Cubicle Culture: Brainstorming Works Best if People Scramble for Ideas on Their Own,” June 13, 2006 by Jared Sandberg

You’ve just set corporate innovation back 100 years.

Maybe my experience as a creative brand consultant for media companies is an anomaly – or perhaps my clients are naturally more inventive – but I could not disagree more with your perspective.

Saying brainstorming doesn’t work is like telling people not to drive, because cars crash. Even my 10-year old son can tell you – you have to learn how to do it properly first.

You plainly have a bias against irresponsibly run, and ill-intentioned, brainstorms – as do I. But from your piece, the average reader will take away that sitting in a cubicle cave is more productive than teaching people a valuable skill – and/or hiring people who possess it.

And while you do in fact make some valuable points – that brainstorming is overused and scapegoated – you don’t pay enough attention to the cause: people think it's easy.

Brainstorming is rocket science.

Anyone who thinks innovation is easy is not worth the salary they’re paid. Just because anybody can get ten people to sit in a room, it doesn’t mean that anyone can get ten people to sit in a room and emerge with a killer idea.

Like NASA engineers, people enter a brainstorm with a vague idea of what they want to accomplish, but they don’t know exactly how to get there. Or if they'll get there. But two things are certain: that none of them can figure it out alone, and that they'll need to generate lots of ideas to produce one really good one.

That trial-and-error implies the (correct) expectation that people will fail more than they succeed, if innovation is the true end game. If managers don't want safe ideas, they can't punish teams when ideas fail. Which leads me to my next point:

Brainstorming is not for wimps.

At most companies, true brainstorming is impossible to run from the inside. You can ask people to check their egos at the door, but as long as the Boss is running the session, be prepared to fail. Fear (with a capital F) is the biggest enemy of brainstorms – the groupthink, embarrassment, pedestrian and “obvious conclusions” you cite are a direct result of picturing that next performance review. It’s “decision by committee” at its worst. And no matter how many disclaimer the Boss makes at the top of the session, at the end of the day, the Boss is the Boss.

Having an impartial facilitator – whether it’s an outside consultant or just a experienced communicator from another department – allows someone to play the hero, and look Fear in the face. Without a personal agenda or a job at stake, this person ensures objectivity, impartiality and even someone who’ll put the Boss in his/her place. It gives the team a common focus and even a common enemy – often challenging the group’s consensus decisions to pressure-test them, or to give them the courage to take it to the next level.

It takes two (or more) to brainstorm.

The article makes the point, “The best way to get good ideas is to get people to write them down privately and bring them in.” I couldn’t agree more. But you fail to mention what happens next. Is it a popularity contest at that point?

The best brainstorms start with personal contributions at the top and leave with ideas that have everyone’s fingerprints on them. And yet they’re ideas that no single person could have come up with alone.

That doesn’t happen through osmosis. It takes a trained leader to guide a consensus decision. And in the world of innovation, consensus usually starts with conflict: You need to have a breakdown to have a breakthrough.

Invention often happens as the result of two unrelated (or opposing) ideas coming together. Unless you’re Einstein or Dali, it’s virtually impossible to think of revolutionary ideas on your own (and even Dali had his collaborators – the Surrealists were one big brainstorming case study).

Just as it took China 100 years to catch up after shutting itself out of the Industrial Revolution, people working solo are limited to their own ideas and perspective. Some of the best lessons in brainstorming come from the world of improv (that’s right, as in “What’s My Line?”).

The rules of improv are simple:
1. Establish trust through eye contact
2. Go with the flow
3. Don’t try to own the idea
To prove it, I recently enlisted an improv group to teach one of my clients – the marketing team of a top cable TV network – how to brainstorm better, and come up with more innovative solutions.

Which is the point of this note to you.

Instead of using scare tactics to steer companies away from a really valuable technique, let’s educate them. Let’s help them see that brainstorming is more than just people throwing ideas at each other, and that done properly, can produce real results.

Just as you wouldn’t let anyone sit behind the wheel without first learning how to drive and the rules of the road, we should encourage managers to “Brainstorm Responsibly.” And maybe that way, more people will avoid crashes and actually get to where they're going.

Sincerely,
Linda Ong

[Thomas]

I’m not with the prof or theotherthomasotter . How would you know or have access to know what may or may not have come from a brainstorming session ? The key thing lost in Sanberg’s column is context and the dynamics of a well designed collaborative brainstorm . One of the major benefits of a group is the variety of angles (from a variety of disiplines in many cases) and the purely objective responses to ideas generated by any one person. Most of the analysis and responses I’ve seen from the column and the reaction to it have been static and simplistic.

[Tacker]

The best brainstorms start with personal contributions at the top and leave with ideas that have everyone’s fingerprints on them. And yet they’re ideas that no single person could have come up with alone.

[Alex]

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[Rick Bryant]

The other day I ran accross a amazingly neat brainstorming utility and free of charge I might add. It works based on the mental object of permutating assorted factors of your idea into a list and then the site produces novel combinations founded on the list, which in turn stimulates facets you would seldom think of. After finding it, I apply it a great deal, because it does work conceptually darn good. Free Brainstorming Software