Streamline Training & Documentation: The Truth about Brainstorming

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

The Truth about Brainstorming

In another example of how investigating conventional wisdom can pay off with fresh insight into how to get better results from employee efforts, today's Wall Street Journal reports on research concerning how best to handle brainstorming.¹

A key issue: dogmatic belief in the proposition that "there is no such thing as a bad idea." Not only are some ideas bad, as common sense suggests, but, in group brainstorming, they can crowd out good ideas.

Two other problems that can surface in group brainstorming, especially without proper prior preparation:

Self-consciousness — The people in attendance may be inhibited by fear of seeming foolish, of getting in trouble with the boss, etc.

Not-in-the-moodness — People may not be in the right frame of mind for producing out-of-the-box ideas.

As Jared Sandberg, the author of the Journal article explains, "[Great brainstorming sessions] require the planning of a state dinner, plenty of rules, and suspension of ego, ingratiation and political railroading."

That was certainly a lesson I learned when I helped a professional development director at a global healthcare company prepare for a couple of high-level planning meetings intended to elicit fresh ideas that were also sound. Meticulous, detailed planning was the name of the game.

Sandberg cites the work of Paul B. Paulus, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington. Paulus compared the quantity and quality of ideas produced by:

Four people working together

Four people working separately

By Paulus' measurements, group brainstorming was about half as productive as individual brainstorming. Since sharing ideas as a group is often important, at a minimum, for team cohesion, Paulus recommends certain steps that can help optimize the outcome:

Introduce an element of competition.

Exchange ideas on paper or via some sort of electronic messaging. Of course, ideas generated can't just be exchanged. They must also be given careful scrutiny to assess their pros and cons. This part of the process requires especially careful planning to maximize on-point discussion and to avoid groupthink.

A related suggestion comes from David Perkins of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He recommends having participants first work individually on brainstorming ideas, and then reassemble as a group to discuss them. This approach minimizes the possibility that a genuinely bad idea tossed into the pot will create a "box" around other participants' thinking. (Perkins also suggests that it is best, after the brainstorming session, to have people work individually on developing the details of ideas chosen for further exploration and implementation.)²

Another issue in group brainstorming is who handles the facilitation. In the case of the healthcare company I worked with, they elected to use their own personnel. Due to their long tradition of having earnest annual discussions of how to live up to their corporate values, they were skilled at internal facilitation. For other companies, internal political dynamics may make outside facilitators essential for obtaining frank input.

Perkins also argues for ensuring that "developmenal leaders" are sprinkled throughout the organization.

These are individuals, often in the middle of an organization rather than at the top, often without much authority in the political sense, who show through their conduct what it is to think and work well with others, and who guide and coach others informally in patterns of collaboration.

Perkins adds that developmental leaders can themselves be developed through appropriate skills training.
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¹ To learn more about the origins of brainstorming, you can read about Alex Osborn, who introduced the process, here.

² To learn more about David Perkins' views on "organizational intelligence" (how well people put their heads together in a group), you can have a look at his book, King Arthur's Round Table, published by Wiley in 2002.

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Labels: Collaboration, Innovation

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