Reason 6 – Ideas to Try

They Force You to Brainstorm

Some key questions to ask yourself and your team.

Basic, really important ones:

1. Are we ‘stuck’? Would a good brainstorming session help us out?

2. Have we been brutally honest in narrowing down the ‘big list’?

3. What’s REALLY going to work here?

4. Are there some fringe ideas out there we should keep an eye on?

Interesting ones:

1. Are we stuck and don’t know it?  How can we know?

2. Are we using multi-voting to be more efficient or to get around challenges we have in being objective or concise?

3. How can we (or should we) try to stay personally detached from our own ideas when it comes to figuring out what ideas to move forward with?

Key points of this reason to hate work teams:

1. Brainstorming is only a starting point to a larger process and it is the easy part. The tough part is narrowing down your list to the best idea(s) that can work.

2. Brainstorming is a DIVERGENT process, it opens things up. The end point of problem solving is a CONVERGENT process, narrowing things down.  Each requires a different way of thinking and interacting.

Discussion and comment points for this post:

1. Why does brainstorming sometimes feel so dopey? How can we get over that?

2. Have you ever had a disaster brainstorming session?  What created it and were you able to make it better?

3. Do you have a story about a fringe idea that ended up being very important?