Go For Volume.

October 23, 2009 - Jordan Willms

Work at Play is an amazing place. Rarely do you see such an interdisciplinary blend of strategists, designers and technologists working so well together. Part of what I believe makes us successful is our "Rules" of brainstorming". It goes without saying that before you jump into a brainstorming session, the issue to address in the session needs to be clearly articulated and communicated to all parties.

• Defer Judgment. When you are in brainstorming mood, put away your judgment and your natural and insatiable desire to critique ideas. Don't even write down notes about why an idea is good or bad. Just focus on supporting ideas and adding to them. This is true to 'ol A. F. Osborne's vision when he invented the concept of brainstorming.
• Encourage Wild Ideas. True innovation always sounds crazy and wild the first time it comes out. Bench your internal voice telling you what is and isn't possible and pitch your zaniest idea. As a side benefit, chances are, it will spawn others from the group.
• Build on the ideas of others. Start every one of your sentences with "Yes, and..." instead of "But...". Doing so will keep you building on ideas both in breadth and depth.
• Stay focused on one topic. Well it is desired to encourage wild ideas, it is not desired to encourage ideas or topics of discussion that are not even relevant to the subject at hand. A brainstorming meeting intended to determine an effective mobile strategy is not focused if you start talking about how to reduce web hosting and infrastructure costs. Mark down any off topic action item in your personal notes and get to it later.
• One conversation at a time. Conversation is fantastic and should be encouraged. However, only one conversation can be happening in the brainstorm at any given time. Keep the group together.
• Be Visual. Conversation is great, but people are naturally visual thinkers. Try drawing the group's concepts to see if everyone is on the same page. Drawing may also "connect some dots" in peoples' minds, allowing them to add onto the idea. Whiteboards are worth their weight in gold.
• Go for quantity. Go for volume people! The more ideas the better, no matter how crazy, unachievable or complex. Doing this without thinking about the restrictions of technology, money or organizational readiness. Show some "Blue Sky" thinking during this stage of divergent thinking.
• Remember to document. There is nothing worse that having a great brainstorming session, and then not remembering all those great ideas one week later. The best solution is to pick a scribe or a "recorder", who is responsible for documenting the results of the brainstorm. They should also take digital photos on any whiteboard material. The notes and photos should then be distributed to the other attendees, who can add, or clarify the notes. Evernote is a great place to organize and archive notes and photos as it makes them text searchable. If you do not do this, your great ideas are certain to vanish.

Only after the session has ended should you look to evaluate the ideas generated. Instead, at the end of a session classify ideas into three buckets:

• Ideas of immediate usefulness
• Areas for further exploration
• New approaches to the problem