Brainstorming for Creative Problem Solving

Brainstorming is a critical process to master if you want your project teams to foster their creativity.

Brainstorming is the beautiful phenomenon of ideas flowing from one person’s mind to the next, developing along the way and seemingly taking on a life of their own. It’s the “Ah Ha!” moment that we’re constantly chasing and that industries have been built upon.

However, productive brainstorming sessions can be as hard to produce as they are essential. Sitting in a room for a set amount of time with the pressure of “I have to have a really good idea… right now!” is a creativity killer for anyone. This gets even worse if you’re in a group of your peers because groupthink can easily take over. The self-conscious anxieties that you thought you left behind come rushing back and you’re suddenly incapable of creative problem solving. This is a regular occurrence in most organizations because of the common misconceptions that we have about brainstorming and creative problem solving. For all of the invariable factors that make it hard to produce ideas on command, there are very controllable factors that make all the difference. So, if you’ve been stalled in a high pressure brainstorm and weren’t able to produce quality ideas, don’t second guess your abilities or hang your head just yet. Most likely, the failings of that brainstorm were pre-determined and set in motion long before you set foot in the meeting room. Now here’s the good news: you can turn your past brainstorm failings into future brainstorm successes and take control of your creative process. There are a few simple, easy to follow steps that will enable you and your team to develop the skill that is brainstorming.

The first step is to recognize that good brainstorming sessions are controlled by the environment that surrounds them as much as the people that are involved in them. And this means a lot more than just sitting on yoga balls and playing with silly putty. A creative environment is about setting up a space where people know what to expect, they understand their role, and they feel comfortable enough to relax and let ideas flow. This seems like a basic concept and you may think that this will happen automatically, but, that’s simply not the case. When people are taken out of the context of their normal environments, and are not given a clear structure to operate within, confusion erupts and creativity stalls.

Ground rules have to be set before entering the brainstorming session; they need to be laid out at the beginning of a brainstorming session and they need to be followed during the session. The ground rules that are set are completely up to you, but these are good examples of the kind of rules that produce creativity:

1. All ideas must be voted on. No one person will dictate the approval or denial of an idea.
2. No vague negative statements or comments can be made (i.e. “That’s just a dumb idea”, “Who thought of that?”). If an idea is up for discussion, only constructive and reasonable assessments can be made (i.e. “I don’t believe that will solve the issue because of…”, “This will work better if…”).
3. No side bar comments or discussions. If something needs to be said, the entire group should hear it and discuss it.
4. Your tenure and seniority do not exist while the brainstorm is in progress. Everyone is an equal member of the group.

As you might have figured out by the examples, the rules are there to suppress negativity and judgmental habits that most of us have. Your chances of a successful brainstorm are all but lost the moment that someone starts being negative, bossy, or steps out of bounds and tears down an idea without offering anything of value in its place. This brings us to point number two of setting up a creative environment: appoint a referee.

The referee is there to ensure that the rules are kept and that the session stays on topic and focused. They are not there to play judge and jury of the ideas that are produced. You should select someone that is impartial and who doesn’t have a personal vested interest in the outcome of a particular direction or idea being cultivated. For example, if the session is set to discuss a poor quarter in a company and cost reduction comes into question, the referee can’t be the head of a department that is up for cuts. Inevitably they would favour ideas that would ensure funding for their own department. Likewise, they shouldn’t have a personal alliance with anyone in the session as this opens up the doors for selective rule enforcement and unfair advantages for certain members of the group. If the referee is close personal friends with a particular member of the group, can you trust that referee to enforce the rules equally to all participants if someone gets out of line?

Now that the ground rules are laid and the referee has been selected, there’s only one more component that needs to be put into place. This is the structural process that will be followed in order to foster a flow of ideas. If you’re asking yourself how someone can be creative with all of these rules, processes and structures to follow, don’t worry. The answer is that creative energy has a tendency to flow in all directions and when it’s not channelled or directed it can be wasted. By setting a framework to work within, you are ensuring that the ideas that are produced and the time spent are worth it. Also, when people have a clear direction and goal in mind, they are more capable of producing ideas. When given no structure or direction to follow, most people will get lost and not know where to start. This can cause them to be overwhelmed and panicked; at that point, you’ve lost them as a productive member of your group. So, don’t feel like you’re going to be stunting creativity when mapping out your creative process, in fact you’ll be giving it the framework it needs to build on and flourish.

So, after everyone has been briefed and is ready to start brainstorming this is the structural process that will help start the creativity off.

The first round of idea throwing needs to be done anonymously. Have everyone put their ideas on post cards or slips of paper with no names or other identifiers. These ideas will be collected and put up on a wall, read one by one and voted as a keep or throw away by the group. Do this a few times until you have strong enough ideas to start developing into solutions. This anonymous process will allow everyone to get the jitters out and start being as spontaneous and open as possible, which is when the strongest ideas tend to be thought of.

After you have a handful of different ideas that you want to develop, it’s time to go deeper. Take the number of people in your group and divide it by the number of ideas you have left. Task each group with developing that one idea into a full solution. For example, if you’re trying to develop a better slogan for your company and one idea is to highlight your cost effectiveness and the other is to highlight your high quality products, each team will develop a slogan and a concept that solely uses that one idea to solve your issue. Now, not one idea will ever be the perfect solution. But if your groups are aiming for developing a singular idea into a full solution, they will be more likely to fully develop and think through an idea to completion, instead of starting an idea and then having it fade into a vague conclusion. You want each idea to be developed to its fullest potential and for each group to be as clear as possible.

After each team develops their solution, they come back together and present their ideas. This is where the magic will start to happen. As each group presents their solution to the others, there will inevitably be an overlap and a point of cohesion with the other ideas. The members of each group will come together and start to select the best parts of each of their solutions and stitch them together to make something that will be closer to a perfect solution than if only one idea was developed and selected at the beginning. This is the best possible outcome of a brainstorming session. That the ideas that were singularly developed and looked at, can spur even more creativity within your group and lead to a solution that is better than the sum of its raw ideas.

This process is something that your team and organization has to get accustomed to. You may not have a fully successful session the first time, the second time or even the third time this is attempted. Creativity is a skill that has to be developed and fine tuned. As long as you’re consistent with the rules, processes and structure of your brainstorms, your members will get better and better at coming up with solutions and feel more comfortable with the idea of having good ideas on command.

This in and of itself is a framework and a guide. You know your team and organization best and will be able to construct a brainstorming process that will work for your organization. Be creative, constructive and flexible and you’ll be on your way to a more productive and cohesive group. Over time, your organization will be able to consistently churn out creative solutions and brainstorm like pros.