The brainstorming technique was introduced by Alex Faickney Osborn in his book Applied Imagination in 1930. It is used as a tool to create ideas about a particular topic and to find creative solutions to a problem. It is used to leverage individual expertise and allow for everybody to have a say. Careful attention should be paid to everyone’s nuances and information as you move through the brainstorming process. Ideas should be heard, captured, and entertained – they should not be judged or interrogated in terms of their practicality or implementation. At this stage, you just want to capture all those great ideas and get them down on paper so that you can work with them.
Brainstorming Procedure – The first and foremost procedure in conducting brainstorming is to review the rules and regulations of brainstorming. Some of the rules and regulations are: all the ideas should be recorded, no scope for criticism, evaluation and discussion of ideas.
The second procedure is to examine the problem that has to be discussed. Ensure that all the team members understand the theme of brainstorming. Give enough time (i.e., one or two minutes) for the team members to think about the problem. Ask the team members to think creatively to generate ideas as much as possible. Record the ideas generated by the members so that everyone can review those ideas. Proper care has to be taken to ensure that there is no criticism of any of the ideas and everyone is allowed to be creative.
Brainstorming can be listed as a process of following steps
- Identification and information – The first couple of phases are very important. Einstein is quoted as saying that the “formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution.” Be clear about what is being asked in a brainstorming session. Be specific with your goal and hold each other accountable to staying on point as you generate your ideas. Information – like value stream maps, studies, and statistical analysis – is extremely helpful in brainstorming sessions.
- Speculation and suspension – You want to generate as many ideas as possible. The more ideas you have, the more likely you are to find those good ideas that you can leverage going forward.
- Evaluation, analysis, and presentation – During the evaluation, analysis, and presentation phases, you should begin to look at those ideas in a more critical way.
Consider the factors like practicality of the idea, people involved, possible obstacles and cost. The ideas can then be ranked, based on factors such as possible impact, feasibility and cost.
From there you can order the ideas according to their ranking, scrapping the ones that don’t have a lot of merit and, as a consensual agreement, zero in on the most important ones. In this way, you can focus on the ideas that would make the most financial sense and then assess those suggestions based on the feasibility and the impact that you could get from implementing them fully. After this has been done, you can prepare a report to your sponsors, your managers, or whomever it is that needs to approve the work that you’re going to do, before moving on to implementation.
Brainstorming Rules – Rules to be followed for brainstorming are
- Ensure that all the team members participate in the brainstorming session because the more the ideas that are produced, the greater will be the effect of the solution.
- As the brainstorming session is a discussion among various people, no distinction should be made between them. The ideas generated by other people should not be condemned.
- At the time of building people’s ideas, consider each person’s ideas as the best, because the ideas generated by each individual may be superior to the other person. Combine and build on the ideas of others.
- While generating ideas, always put more trust on quantitative ideas rather than qualitative ideas. As a facilitator tally these generated ideas with the team’s performance. Quantity matters more than quality. You can pare down the list of ideas later
Ways to facilitate a brainstorming session
- Using a freewheeling approach, group members call out their ideas spontaneously and a scribe records ideas as they are suggested
- In a round robin, the leader or scribe asks each member in turn for an idea. Participants may pass on any round, and the session continues until all members have contributed at least once and passed during the final round
- In an individual or silent approach, each participant writes down his/her ideas on sticky notes and passes them to the facilitator
- If your practice finds that multiple approaches could work, use a combination. Give everyone one to two minutes to silently brainstorm followed by round robin brainstorming. This is the best way to maximize participation by the quieter members of the group
