The Journal for Quality and Participation
by Sheila Campbell

What’s Missing from Team Brainstorming Efforts? Silence and Kickers.

Most of us have participated in brainstorming sessions -- getting a lot of people in a room to come up with as many ideas as they can. But brainstorming as a way to develop truly new ideas often seems...well...disappointing. Surprisingly fresh ideas just don’t seem to hit the easel chart.

Brainstorming was developed in the 1950s by Alex Osborn to develop ideas in his New York advertising agency. It worked better than anything else, and companies have been using brainstorming for nearly 50 years.

But new research in cognitive science helps explain why traditional brainstorming doesn’t push the limits of our group creative thinking far enough.

1. The Role of Silence in Stimulating Creativity.
The National Institutes of Mental Health has conducted research on the impact of talking while working on both analytical and creative problems. They found that -- while talking has no effect on logical problem-solving -- it does inhibit the quality and quantity of new ideas when creativity is critical.

In other words, you’re more creative when you’re silent. It’s no coincidence that most people report getting their best ideas in the shower and while driving.

This finding makes sense when we remember that analytical thinking and language are anchored in the left side of the brain, while creativity, emotion and intuition are right-side activities. So the very design of traditional brainstorming, with its emphasis on constant verbalization, means that you won’t do your most original work.

2. Breaking Out of Patterned Thinking.
Try this with your team: Ask each person to draw a living creature that would live on another planet far away, out of our galaxy.

When all the critters are drawn, ask, "How many people drew something with two eyes? [Show of hands.] With four legs or two arms and two legs? With bilateral symmetry, so if you drew a line down the middle it would be the same on both sides?"

If your group is typical (and I haven’t found one that’s not), about 70% will have drawn a creature with two eyes, four legs and bilateral symmetry. Why? Because those are common characteristics of living creatures on earth.

What you’ve just done replicates research from Texas A&M University. The human brain is a powerful pattern-making and pattern-recognizing mechanism. That’s great for helping us make sense of the world around us, but it’s not so handy when we’re trying to find new solutions to business issues. Our brains do the efficient thing and recycle our old ideas.

What you need is a "kicker" to push your brain out of its patterns and into some mental off-road driving.

Suppose I asked you for some ideas on how to serve tuna salad at a luncheon. You might suggest serving it in a hollowed tomato, on lettuce leaves, in half a cantaloupe. But if I asked you what Martha Stewart, the doyenne of home decor, would recommend, your ideas would take another tack: perhaps I should strew rose petals over the plates, or put the tuna salad in wine goblets, or serve it in clay garden pots with mint leaves and nasturtiums. Thinking like Martha Stewart opens up new possibilities. It’s still your brain doing the work, but Martha Stewart is the kicker.

Replace Brainstorming with a New Group Creative Thinking Model
Next time your team wants to explore some dramatically new ideas, first ask each person to make a list of five organizations that have distinctive personalities. Their lists might include, for instance, corporations like Disney or Microsoft. Political groups like the African National Congress. Government entities such as the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. Army. Nonprofits come to mind: the Girl Scouts, the Red Cross, the AIDS quilt group. People might list entertainment groups like the Rolling Stones or the Spice Girls. Organizations can come from history: the Spanish Armada, Attila and his Huns; or even from fiction: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. Put the lists aside for a moment.

Now, after discussing the problem, hand each person a pad of Post-It® notes (I like to use wildly colored notes and bright markers.) Explain that during initial idea generation, each person will work in silence, not only not speaking but not even making eye contact with anyone else in the room.

Each person will write as many ideas as possible -- one per sticky sheet -- on their pads. Ask each person to come up with at least 30 ideas. (Most people won’t hit that number, but it will keep them working.)

Note that I said "30 ideas," not "30 good ideas." Just as in brainstorming, we’re going for quantity first, so any idea, no matter how foolish, impractical, impossible or illegal, is a candidate for a sticky sheet.

Now ask everyone to retrieve their organization lists and trade with someone else. These lists are our kickers. We’re not going to approach the problem from our own viewpoints; we’ve undoubtedly covered that ground before. Instead, each person is going to generate ideas as each of her five organizations would go about it.

So the group works in silence, each person taking an organization off the list and asking himself, "How would the CIA solve this problem? What ideas does the CIA give me?"

For example, if you were thinking about ways to get people to fill in forms correctly, some of the CIA ideas might be pretty silly: put a gun to their heads; handcuff them to their chairs; spy on them with tiny cameras. But you might also come up with ideas like: investigate why people don’t comply; give out medals or awards for people who do it right; offer an amnesty for past offenses to those who comply starting now.

With everyone working alone on a different list of kickers, you’ll get an enormous range of ideas in as few as seven or eight minutes of silence.

After the silence, one by one team members read all their ideas to the group and post them on the easel chart. People can ask questions, but don’t start discussing or choosing ideas till everything’s on the chart. (This insures that all the introverts get heard, too.) Working with the sticky notes lets you move the ideas around and group them by themes later.

One last point: if you want people to freely contribute all their ideas, including the "bad" ones, you’ll have to celebrate the "Stoopid Ideas." Ask people to pick the four or five most ridiculous ideas. Now, in 90 seconds, have the team use the bad ideas as kickers to come up with great new ideas. So, in the CIA example, instead of handcuffing people to their chairs, we might think of freeing people from the forms by having them design new, easier-to-fill out versions.

Out of this process you can expect more ideas, bigger and more challenging ideas, more true participation and more productive creative thinking sessions.

Return to Top | Return to Previous Page | Return to Home