Comments on: Brainstorming groups still kill ideas

By: Remko

Remko — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:22:08 +0000

Interesting discussion!
In addition to Andre’s comment regarding skillful facilitation, which I agree with entirely, we need to be aware that the majority of the brainstorming research was done by investigating unfacilitated groups of students, not trained in brainstorming techniques. This, of course, will have a huge impact on the results! If you go back to, for instance the data in the Diehl and Stroebe studies, you can see that oftentimes brainstorming groups don’t come up with more than, say, 10 ideas. While, a skilled and experienced brainstorming group generates about that number of ideas a minute!
I am not all for brainstorming. It has it’s time and place. Besides, I have come to regard these group meetings as a learning and exploration process, not necessarily as an idea production machine.
I just think that you need to give these techniques a fair chance.

Cheers
Remko

By: Andre

Andre — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:09:51 +0000

Greetings everyone!

After my comment there has been invaluable.

I agree that blaming brainstorm is premature, and some answers point in the right direction.

My thinking is that brainstorms are valuable when there’s (1) strong facilitation skills and (2) post-session accountability.

Facilitation will provide the framing people need to stay connected and follow through in producing/prioritizing ideas. Accountability will ensure things gets done.

All in all I believe that new ideas happen to single-individuals. It might get sparked by exterior elements such as environment or other enlightened individuals, but we rely on a single mind to ignite “the spark”.

Now innovation can happen when the new idea is put in practice. Others heavily collaborate here.

So ideation is focused on the individual and innovation on the group. Brainstorms usually favor the opposing trends.

I would love to hear different opinions on the subject – specially when other accomplished people could root their ideas with findings, studies and experiences. Thanks so far!

By: Markus

Markus — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:24:09 +0000

Last Friday I ran a 4 hour workshop, the week before I ran a preparation workshop both with at least 8 people.

To get the best out of individual flow and group dynamics I split people into teams and used role play, personas, storytelling, sketching and issue cards.

To blame brainstorming groups is a bit easy, it’s all in the prep and facilitation. The reason most brainstorming sessions don’t work, is because no-one prepared for the human weaknesses that occur when groups of humans get together.

By: Jean-Francois Belisle

Jean-Francois Belisle — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:47:33 +0000

I’m not an expert in brainstorming, but don’t you think that brainstorming around a blog post would be a good alternative to traditional brainstorming? It limitates physical contagion effects, and encourage to bring something new to the table.

By: gschirr

gschirr — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:48:27 +0000

Andre does raise good ideas…I am looking forward to his promised thoughts on how to improve the process.

You raise a good point — don’t blame brainstorming. Actually Osborn’s rules seem helpful and INDIVIDUAL brainstorming effective: the problem is in the face-to-face group dynamics.

Thanks!

By: Thomas Maiorana

Thomas Maiorana — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:16:53 +0000

Interesting article. I’m not necessarily surprised by the findings because so many brainstorms are poorly executed. Few people understand the discipline necessary to create a variety of ideas which may spark breakthrough solutions.

But blaming the brainstorm isn’t the way to go. It’s a bit like saying since I don’t know how to drive a Formula 1 race car, I’ll be faster on my bike.

Andre raises some great issues about why brainstorms can fail. But moving the idea generation towards more of a individual author model seems dated to me. The real magic can happen when one combines the experts with the folks who don’t have the domain knowledge.

By: gschirr

gschirr — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:12:32 +0000

Markus:

Your approach makes sense. Essentially you are “brainwriting” or doing individual brainstorming to come up with creative ideas and then using group affinity to disseminate and implement the ideas — taking advantage of the “illusion of group effectivity” in academic jargon.

Key points: (1) you are generating ideas by individual brainstorming and (2) you do not need a high paid “expert moderator” for the limited purpose group portion.

Thanks!!!

By: Markus

Markus — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:31:33 +0000

Six sigma focuses on efficiency and lacks creativity, I’m a designer, using design process and research to inspire ideas around the unexpected and unknown messy reality of people.

In practical terms, post it notes and prep, combined with individual idea generation and group affinity clustering during a session and you get the best of both worlds.

Simples.

By: gschirr

gschirr — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:54:25 +0000

Group techniques continue to be oversold by consultants and moderators who profit from conducting them. I am wary of any “simple” solutions: in fact most of the “proven” alternatives, such as NGT or online brainstorming, actually take the face-to-face groupness out of the process and are really a form of individual brainstorming. Proceed with caution!

By: Andre P

Andre P — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:21:16 +0000

From practice I learned that group brainstorm are a total disaster – despite all the efforts from Six Sigma & Project Mgmt training to convince us the opposite.

A few reasons why group brainstorm crashes from observation:
1. Less-than-prepared people have the same voice as the experts.

Poorly constructed ideas resonates amongst the low ranks.

2. People want patches and focus usually falls on quick fixes, not on long-term, enduring, preventive solutions.

3. Brainstorm is associated with “Random” and “Informal” whereas many issues required “Focus” and “Methods”.

Rarely deep insights will come out of a group of 10+ people gathered for a “random” blurbs session.

4. Impactful ideas might be killed because of prematurely viewed as “Hard” or “Difficult to Implement”

So WHY are Brainstorm groups still recommended?
1. Because it feels good.
Everyone is heard. Everyone have their say. It’s the ultimate team hug session.

2. Because it assumes documentation.
People take notes and people tend to remeber who-said-what.

3. Because it gives the appearence of transparency to others
Uper Mgmt and other peers tend not to disagree with a team resolution. The risk of being outnumbered by the masses opinion is really scary to non-experts. Proving a point is getting harder these days as information abound and people pay less attention to the critical performance elements.

*Key question: What’s the solution?*
I.e, How do we garner group constructive feedback while modelling services and processes?

I have a few ideas – would love to hear more on this blog!

great post! thanks
Andre