brainstorming

If you and your team are looking for a technique that’s pretty well guaranteed to solve all your problems, and come up with ideas you’d never think of on your own, then you can’t do better than good old-fashioned Brainstorming.

When done correctly, Brainstorming is all of the following: simple, quick, productive, effective, developmental, teambuilding, and, perhaps most of all, fun.

The technique has been around for a long time. It was first used by Alex Osborn, an advertising executive of the 1950’s, who laid down the following 5 rules when performing a brainstorming session:

1. no evaluation of ideas
2. wild ideas to be encouraged (in fact, the more, the better)
3. quantity of ideas all-important
4. participants should build on each others’ ideas
5. apart from these 4, no other rules were needed.

A brainstorming session can be used for all sorts of problems. It works for little problems where there is a solution waiting to be identified, such as a machine fault, to situations where there is no known solution, such as “How do we improve customer service?”

So, how should you brainstorm?

Based on Osborn’s 5 principles, the following method is one of the best:

First create a good group climate. Warm them up with a mini icebreaker or fun game. Don’t brainstorm in a group that isn’t already laughing, joking and chatting.

Select as many scribes as you can find with as many flipchart stands as you can find. Check these people are your quickest writers. Their job is to hear and record every idea.

Now write up your problem clearly and precisely. Make sure everyone can see it and understand it.

Then you’re ready to go. Encourage a constant flow of ideas while keeping some kind of order. Don’t put a time limit on the session as this adds pressure and will cut off the flow.

The most common brainstorming technique is known as Sparking. That’s because in Sparking, all ideas are welcome and should spark off each other a bit like flashes of electricity.

For more ways to brainstorm, here are 3 other techniques:

Paradoxical Intention, which turns the brainstorming session on its head by asking how you can make the problem worse. For example, if you had the following problem: “How do we improve the paperwork systems in the office?”, you might get: mix the files up; collect other people’s paper as well; leave them in untidy piles.

Wording, which takes each word in your problem statement in turn and develops ideas around it. So, in the same example, the word “paperwork” might produce: Put files on film; put files on computer; have a paperwork purge.

Seeding, which randomly selects a totally unrelated word and sees what ideas this will set off. So, in the same example, the word “breakfast” might produce: keep all the papers in empty cornflakes packets; have a daily breakfast-time clear-out of files; and have a deadline on all incoming paperwork by breakfast time each day.

If your brainstorming sessions are chaotic and out of control, that’s good. They should be. Remember, you’re looking for a pile of ideas, not the one that instantly fits, and your team are producing them intuitively and spontaneously without any check on the flow from their subconscious.

When you’ve filled up a large number of flipcharts and the ideas stop coming, then it’s time to take a break. You can then declare the brainstorming at an end and the evaluation can start.

Even after 50 years of use, Brainstorming is still top of the creative thinking charts. Try it whenever you need lots of original ideas, and you’ll have one of the most powerful thinking techniques you could ever hope to use.

© 2005, Eric Garner, ManageTrainLearn.com

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It seems like this week a ton of people have been asking me how they can
become more creative. I even had one client jokingly accuse me of being in
cahoots with the Devil in trade for my creativity. “Where do you get all of your
ideas?” he asked. Well, I have decided to share my secret with you in this issue.

In the following paragraphs you will learn my creativity secret weapon. I use it
all the time. It will work for you just as it works for me. It has served me well
and it is this technique that got me into the buyers meeting of a major drug
store when I was just 15 years old. Yup! You read that right. At age 15 my
creativity strategy got me an appointment with a major drug store buyer where
I sold my “Idea’s” to them. I didn’t even have a clue what I was doing and I
walked right past the suit and tie businessmen right into the office of the guy
they were trying to get an appointment with. This happened simply because I
was more creative. I know you will have fun with this weeks issue. Enjoy!

It’s not rocket science! :
Creativity doesn’t have to be rocket science. We all have fountains of creative
energy flowing within us. Our problem is that the world teaches us, in the
interest of our own security, to use our heads far too much. In the process, we
shift from the habit of spontaneous imaginary expression to intense self-
censorship in service to our security conscious ego-minds. We become so
concerned with the image we project that we lose touch with our inner “wizard
behind the curtain.”

I’ve learned that when I feel stuck, confused, and frustrated, and my intellect
can’t seem to find its way out of the cage, that it’s this same mind that created
the prison in the first place. Fortunately I’ve found a very simple way out. I’ve
taken up the mantra during times such as these to simply “Just Make Stuff Up.”

Experts became experts by studying other experts:
Now our culture typically doesn’t give a lot of credence to stuff that’s just made
up. Particularly if it’s yours and you’re a nobody (a non-expert with
questionable credentials). But I think you’ll find that in most cases, the experts
became experts by studying other experts. And if you follow the line of experts
to the very heart of their lineage, you’ll most likely find that the originator of
their expertise actually “just made stuff up” that hadn’t been seen before and
that happened to work, at least for the time being.

So the next time you or your group is stuck in a problem-solving or creative
venture, please, encourage them to try “just making stuff up,” and see what
comes forward. There’s something about this approach that frees us of our
need to be right and invites our inner creative children out to play. Try it. You
may be pleasantly surprised!

Example:
I’ve been personally challenged with just about all of my major projects for the
past few weeks. I’ve felt a change of course was not only needed, but the path I
was taking with these projects seemed to be reaching an impasse. Now I’m a
pretty creative guy, but I felt really stumped, to the point of giving up on some
of them. But being open-minded and self-reflective, I realized that the
frustration and confusion I was feeling was energy that I could use to evolve
these projects to the next level. This process could be effortless if I simply
surrendered to the timing of the project in lieu of my ego-mind.

I discovered that I could view these projects as living beings with intelligence
and a natural impulse to unfold in a way they are “intended.” Like seeds that
know fully what they are to become if nurtured properly and patiently. I made
all of that up and you can do the same thing. Make stuff up that makes your
life easier, more free, happier, etc.

We make up everything:
So I began to actually listen to what each project had to tell me. I also started
“just making stuff up” around each project. I found that the openness and
freedom brought by the attitude of “just making stuff up” combined with the
act of doing something, got me moving again into creative new arenas, with a
sense of childlike lightness, fun, and adventure.

My Coach Steve Davis was discussing this with his partner Anna Dargitz. She
decided to consult the wisdom of her seven year old daughter on this subject.
When asked what she thought about the nature of “making stuff up,” she
replied with something like this. “Well, I make stuff up when I want something
real.” It took me awhile to decipher this sage advice. But then it hit me that we
make up everything, including what we call real, and that admitting that we
make it up, is the closest thing to real we can get…she’s now our new guru.

How to practice this…
This week, try just making stuff up or if you find your group, friends, clients, or
colleagues stuck or confused, give them permission to try just making stuff up
to see what happens. I’d love to hear you’re perspectives and experiences on
this. Please email them to me.

Before Ricky Brandon was a life coach, he was a professional Magician. He
dedicated his entire life to learning and understanding how to tweak people’s
perception of reality. By by his early 20’s, he was consulting and working with
the worlds top Illusionists as well as training tigers for large production shows.
Ricky now combines his skills as a Magician with Personal Coaching to teach
people how to see through life’s illusions so they can focus on what really
matters. email him at: ricky@mymomentum.com

Visit Ricky’s website at: http://www.mymomentum.com

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When I was first exposed to this method, I was somewhat skeptical. The occasion was a brainstorming evening to generate new ideas for my book’s title. As our group gathered, A hypnotherapist colleague of mine, suggested this innovative brainstorming approach.

With the topic identified beforehand, the process began with a member of the group being asked to open a dictionary to any page. He then randomly selected a common noun, which was written on a flip chart. Each person was asked for a single word that he or she associated with that noun. The group was then asked to suggest associations between each of these words and the topic, accelerated learning. The words flowed in amazing quantity. We repeated this process a few times.

Why did this technique work so well?
It’s really quite simple. In a typical brainstorming session, when members of a group are asked to come up with ideas or solutions to a problem, their minds access their memory banks and download what is already known about the issue. Introducing the random word method forces the mind to find a link between dissimilar things. Because of the gap between the random word and the topic, ideas may be quite unusual, or even off-the-wall. As the group members build on each other’s ideas, they generate more creative solutions.

This method is fast and simple, and usually leads to ideas that are more creative than those generated from the classic brainstorming format.

International speaker, Dr. Brian E. Walsh, is the bestselling author of Unleashing Your Brilliance. For much of his 30-year corporate career he was involved in human resources, specifically training.

While living in the arctic, Brian studied anthropology and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), which prepared him for working with other cultures. He was then transferred to China where he served as his company’s GM.

After his return to Canada, he elected early retirement to further his earlier interest in NLP and hypnotherapy. He returned to formal study, and within four years had achieved his Ph.D. His dissertation, which focused on accelerated learning techniques, inspired his passion and his book, “Unleashing Your Brilliance”. Information is available at http://www.UnleashingBook.com

Dr. Walsh regularly conducts workshops on accelerated learning. He is a master practitioner of NLP, an acupuncture detoxification specialist, an EFT practitioner, and a clinical hypnotherapist.

Subscribe to his monthly eZine, “Enriched Learning” at http://www.UnleashingBook.com

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