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How to Run a Successful Virtual Brainstorm in 5 Steps

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By Soren Kaplan,

Brainstorming is an art and science. Here’s how to help your virtual team generate and prioritize the best ideas.

Over the past 25 years, I have run hundreds of brainstorming workshops for high-performing teams. My sessions are often part of larger strategy and innovation initiatives. But all sessions are focused on the same thing: generate, prioritize, and develop great ideas to create a big impact. Though I’m no longer jetting off each week to lead face-to-face sessions, I’m now sitting behind my screen leading programs with teams dispersed across home offices from around the world.

Ideas aren’t innovations in themselves. Innovation happens when ideas are implemented and add real value for customers. The problem is that most brainstorming sessions stop with a big list of ideas. The most effective teams prioritize the best ideas and create action plans that move the most powerful opportunities forward. While this critical fact has always been true, it’s even more important in a virtual world, where accountability and focus can easily cease the moment people click “end meeting” and webcams turn off.

There are many collaborative tools out there for generating ideas. I’m not going to write them here. Why? Because successful brainstorms aren’t about technology at all. Sure, you need to have tools to list, theme, and prioritize ideas. Finding an online tool is the easy part. The “hard” stuff is actually the “soft” stuff — setting the right environment and tone that gives everyone the mindset, motivation, and focus to work together in new and creative ways online.

That said, here are the success factors.

1. Get focused.

In a single sentence, describe the challenge, problem, or topic of your brainstorm. Consider statements that start out like: “How can we …,” “What if we …,” and “How do we …”

2. Define idea categories.

Identify categories for your ideas before you start. Place ideas into these categories as you go. Consider categories like: products, services, processes, business models, and customer experiences.

3. Create prioritization criteria.

Once you have a bunch of ideas, get clear on the criteria you’ll use to prioritize. Share criteria and then vote on the best ideas using it. Consider criteria like:

  • feasibility (easy to hard)
  • impact (low to high)
  • customer Value (low to high)
  • return on Investment (low to high)

4. Confirm ground rules.

Be sure everyone understands the norms for the brainstorm. Consider ground rules such as deferring judgment until it’s time to prioritize ideas, or aiming for quantity or creativity of ideas. Or you could ask that participants build on one another’s ideas when they’re shared.

5. Create implementation teams.

After you generate and select your top ideas, choose a pair-team to “own” the implementation of them. Pairing people up creates a sense of shared accountability and commitment. Set a timeline and due date for results. Provide support along the way through regular check-ins.

Ideas themselves are a dime a dozen. Ideas that get implemented are worth their weight in gold. That fact doesn’t change in a virtual world.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Soren Kaplan,

Sourced from Inc.

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Why Criticism Is Good for Creativity

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By Don Norman

Roberto Verganti and I published an article in the July 2019, Harvard Business Review on the virtues of criticism (Verganti, R., & Norman, D. (2019, July 16, 2019). Why criticism is good for creativity. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/07/why-criticism-is-good-for-creativity. May require registration or payment.)

Here is the basic argument

One of the most popular mantras for innovation is “avoid criticism.” The underlying assumption is that criticism kills the flow of creativity and the enthusiasm of a team. Aversion to criticism has significantly spread in the last 20 years, especially through the advocates of design thinking. (In 1999, in the ABC Nightline video “The Deep Dive,” which ignited the design thinking movement, criticism was stigmatized as negative.) In IDEO’s online teaching platform, the first rule of brainstorming is “defer judgment.” To make this rule even more practical and straightforward, others have reworded it to say: “When a person proposes an idea, don’t say, ‘Yes, but…’ to point out flaws in the idea; instead, say, ‘Yes, and…’” — which is intended to get people to add to the original idea.

We challenge this approach. It encourages design by committee and infuses a superficial sense of collaboration that leads to compromises and weakens ideas. Our view, the product of years of studies of and participation in innovation projects, is that effective teams do not defer critical reflection; they create through criticism.

The secret of criticism in innovation lies in the joint behavior of the participants. Those offering criticism must frame their points as positive, helpful suggestions. Those who are being criticized must use critiques to learn and improve their ideas. When conducted with curiosity and respect, criticism becomes the most advanced form of creativity. It can be fascinating, passionate, fun, and always inspiring. Let us combine “Yes, and” with “Yes, but” to create the constructive and positive “Yes, but, and.”

By Don Norman

Sourced from LinkedIn

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Research Brief: Better Brainstorming

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By Jennifer Myers.

Innovative ideas often come from brainstorming with peers—but does who you brainstorm with matter?

Yes, say Assistant Professor Rembrand Koning and Duke Associate Professor Sharique Hasan in a recent working paper. Their field research shows that the highest quality ideas are generated by people open to new experiences engaging with extroverted peers.

In 2014, the researchers headed to New Delhi to study the intersection of personality theory and idea generation with 112 aspiring entrepreneurs who were taking part in a three-week startup bootcamp. Participants underwent personality evaluation to determine their level of openness (defined as having greater curiosity, questioning convention, and entertaining novel ideas) and their level of extroversion (defined as having a high verbal fluency and a willingness to share).

The budding entrepreneurs were then asked to work together to come up with new software products for the booming Indian wedding industry. The ideas generated by the teams were rated by Indian consumers based on their novelty, whether they would buy the product, and whether the product had business potential. The researchers discovered that the ideas that were rated the highest were created through interaction between those with a high openness quotient and those who are naturally extroverted.

“The people who are the loudest and the most extroverted may have the most information to share,” says Koning. “But the best ideas are generated by open and creative people who are connected to these loud mouths.”

This was not what the researchers expected to learn. “There is a strong belief in the literature that openness was enough,” says Koning. “But our experiment shows it also depends on who you are brainstorming with. In certain situations, an open individual can even generate worse ideas if they brainstorm with a particularly introverted partner.”

The practical takeaway, Koning says, is that generating the highest quality ideas is a team effort, much in the way that a basketball team’s star shooter needs a teammate adept at passing the ball. For managers, that means actively looking for employees open to new and different ideas as part of a diverse staff, and encouraging them to seek out conversations with gregarious, outgoing peers.

“Conversational Peers and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” by Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning, HBS Working Paper.

Feature Image: Assistant Professor Rembrand Koning (photo by Russ Campbell)

By Jennifer Myers

Sourced from Harvard Business School Alumni

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10 New Rules For Brainstorming Without Alienating Introverts

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By Judah Pollack and Olivia Fox Cabane.

Try this revolving-door policy for your next brainstorm, by letting introverts come and go when they please.

The brainstorm is beloved by some and dreaded by many. We live in a world that offers choice for everything from styles of coffee to TV shows to TVs themselves. But when it comes to brainstorming, we pretty much have one option: get everyone in a room and start throwing ideas out there.

This generally works well for extroverts (though some say otherwise) and not so great for everyone else.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, there’s a way to brainstorm without aggravating or alienating the introverts on your team, and it isn’t as difficult as you might think.

One Brainstorm, Different Brains

Professor Dario Nardi of UCLA has been conducting cutting-edge research on brain connectivity for years. As he recently explained it to us, “Generally, introverts spend more time processing data, have more activity and linkages in the back half of the brain, and are easily over-stimulated. Oppositely,” Nardi adds, “extroverts spend less time processing data, have more activity and linkages in the front half of the brain, and are easily under-stimulated.”

Not everyone has to be there all the time while the brainstorm is taking place.So while there’s some debate as to whether the introvert-extrovert divide is an oversimplification, brain science nonetheless points to a spectrum anchored on either end by thinking patterns that are virtual mirror images of one another.

This means many extroverts enjoy traditional shout-it-out, put-it-up-on-the-board brainstorming. They like the stimulation; they like the speed of data processing. But introverts get overwhelmed by all the noise. Because introverts process data more slowly, they tend to get exhausted trying to keep up with all the ideas flying around, one after another. There’s no time to process them all.

Not only does the traditional brainstorm disadvantage introverts, it shortchanges your whole team—which is missing out on many of the ideas, or synthesis of ideas, that introverts can offer the whole group.

The New Rules Of Brainstorming

Fortunately, all it takes is putting in place some new rules that takes brainstorming from a free-for-all only extroverts can love to a truly collaborative process.

1. Let folks come and go. Not everyone has to be there all the time while the brainstorm is taking place. Different people have different tolerance levels for the process. Don’t force introverts to stay longer than they can be of use.

2. Invite introverts to show up later . . . Don’t force them all to arrive right in the beginning. Many extroverts talk out loud to figure out what they actually think. That can be really productive for them but exhausting and frustrating for introverts. Introverts often have to keep waiting for an extrovert to get to the point, and meanwhile they can’t think about their own ideas.

3. . . . even halfway through. It doesn’t hurt to let introverts show up in the middle of the session, after up to half of the time you’ve allotted has already gone by. That may sound like a lot, but as long as they’re using the same period to mull over their own ideas independently, it’s not a waste. Just make sure the introverts know it isn’t a free pass to opt out of the process. Instead, they’ll show up later on with their own thoughts better formed. And when they do, have someone give them a recap—which will in turn help the extroverts get their own ideas in order and refocus the session.

4. Impose a moment of silence . . . After the recap, declare a three-minute period of silent reflection for everybody to write down their thoughts. This will give the introverts a chance to process what they’ve heard. Then, when the brainstorm is opened up again, the newly joined introverts share their ideas first.

5. . . . then open the door again. The introverts don’t have to stay. They can leave at this point if they want.

6. Pause every 30 minutes. If there are introverts who want to stick around, halt the brainstorm every half hour and ask directly if they have anything to share. They don’t have to, but creating the space makes it much more likely you’ll get the benefit of their insights, too.

7. Bring all the introverts back in at the end. When the brainstorm is over, invite any introverts who’ve left back into the room to look over the notes on the board. Have the extroverts explain anything that’s confusing. Then ask the introverts to think about the topic overnight. As they process data more slowly, they may have some fresh ideas a day later.

8. Leave space on the whiteboard. The next morning, leave the brainstorm board open for the introverts (or anyone else who’s had an after-the-fact epiphany) to add in anything else they might’ve thought of.

9. Regroup. Bring everyone together for a facilitated discussion—not a free-for-all, and not a second full-fledged brainstorm—where all the ideas you’ve generated in the past 24 hours can get efficiently parsed, organized, and shaped into a plan your whole team can move forward with.

10. Give everyone a stake in the action that follows. Keep in mind that not all extroverts are the same. Some can brainstorm for days on end without ever coming up with a concrete goal. Other extroverts love to brainstorm, but their patience runs out after a while; they ultimately want to arrive at a decisive plan. Just like the introverts, these extroverts should be allowed to leave the session whenever they feel it isn’t going nowhere. But when it’s time to choose a course of action, they should be called back in after the introverts have added their thoughts.

Your brainstorm can afford to loosen up and adopt a revolving-door policy, with people coming and going. But once you’ve generated enough ideas, everyone has to come together again and forge ahead as a team.

By Judah Pollack and Olivia Fox Cabane

Judah Pollack and Olivia Fox Cabane are the coauthors The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking.

Sourced from Fast Company

 

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