As crazy as it sounds, objective of a brainstorming needs be reminded at the beginning of a meeting, it should not be overlooked. Indeed, more than an opening for the meeting, it allows to make sure that everyone is on the same page about what needs to the achieved, about the final outcome. Also, since we live in a face paced world, reminding the objective is also a stratagem to gather people’s mind, bringing focus in the room. And best, is to even write down on the physical white board or on the online infinite white board (such as miro) the objective that acts as a statement. The objective is the reason why people are in a meeting, it deserves that special attention that will pay off.

Sharing Best Practices

Over my years of experience, I’ve figured it out, that sharing best practices to the group, actually means buidling a subculture.
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Brainstorming are sometimes not effective ones. It’s surprising that some companies put so little effort on how to do it best. In one hand, a brainstorming meeting costs because employees don’t do their tasks, and in the other hand, value often comes from strategic ideas. A brainstorming, by nature can go all over the place, entropy is high because of a lack of guidance. And no guidance usually leads to chaos and bad outcomes. When it comes to brainstorming, guidance can take shape in a series of best practices. It helps to align everyone in the meeting, and contributes to avoid conflicts because people know how to behave. Best practices can be seen as a ‘moral contract’ that people agree on. Knowing what to do as much as, not what to do are important. Actually, in a brainstorming session, people can do whatever they want. It’s just a matter or timing.

Conducting the Brainstorming

Over my years of experience, I’ve learned that, so ideation needs a process, and also to some extent, a subtle dose of serendipity. As you might understood by now, magic happens when there’s a mix of control & non-control.
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Conducting a brainstorm is complex. It needs the right condition for creativity to unfold, and a space where the creative juice flows. How? Here are the answers. A meeting that takes time is rarely a good sign. To make progress, someone has to bring structure to the session. Ideas don’t come up out of the blue, it’s the result of a process. And it’s easy to get lost. So his/her role is also to act as time keeper. Conducting a brainstorming requires a combination of hard skill which can be learned by consuming content, and soft skill which is something that needs practice. Psychology is key, since we are dealing with people’s personality. At the evaluation stage, that person shares a useful external pov because (s)he’s not emotionaly connected to any ideas.

The goal of a brainstorming is to come up with outcomes, which are solutions to a given problem or challenge. But the ultimate goal of a brainstorm is to present the solutions to Stakeholders. And… beyond the presention, the “ultimate ultimate goal”, is to find solutions that convinces. Keeping that in mind allows to assess by ourselves, if the solutions we came up with, have the potential to convince Stakeholders, that they are suitable & the best. In the agency world, people use to say: “to sell an idea”. And if there’s a seller, means there’s a buyer. And that makes total sense, because at the end of the day, we want clients or Stakeholders to buy in.

disclaimer: pictures in this page are for illustration purpose only.