Better brainstorming sessions

Have you ever done something over and over again only to see that oversized cloud of ugliness fly in and lay claim to what you once saw as a beautiful thing?Well, that is what happened to me as I started to attend more and more brainstorming sessions over the years. In the beginning it felt like a great first date, but after awhile the ‘idea cellulite’ started to show and I noticed my enthusiasm being replaced with the daydream de jour. If you are in the same situation or you want to avoid slipping into it, here are a few tips I would recommend:

• To ‘seed’ or not to ‘seed’? Is it best to send out the design brief a day or so before the actual brainstorming session so the team has a chance to work on it, or do you hold back and let the assignment be known right there in the meeting? I don’t think there is a right answer to this question. I have seen both ways work and it depends on the employees you have, what the assignment is, etc. The important thing is to learn how your group works and what gets their creative honey dripping. Over the past three years I would say I have had more success with sending out the brief before the meeting, but I have gotten some amazing results with no lead time.

• Similar is evil. We work for similar companies, we share similar job titles, we use similar software, we have similar clients, and we read similar articles. In a nutshell there is way too much sameness. Break the routine! If the industry is going left, try your hardest to go right. For an automotive micro site, I once asked the team to dress up as their favorite vehicle and bring in a food item that related to that automobile. Some great outfits and lots to eat opened up the conversation and led to some great ideation before anyone even knew what the project was.

• Get out of the conference room! There was that one small group that I took to the bar for a game of ‘idea quarters’ (just like the classic game, but in addition to drinking you need to generate an idea as well). If that is not an option, think of simply going outside to a nearby park, visiting a restaurant, or at the very least move over to your office lounge area.

• Turn it into a game. Speaking of lounge area…if you are working at a large agency, that area most likely has a plethora of different games. Bring the group down and turn ping-pong, pool, or darts into an idea generator. At Deutsch we had a basketball shooting game, and that was fun! The rules were simple – miss the shot and you had to throw out an idea. The ‘idea game’ works better if you have smaller groups and the game moves quickly. For example, billiards might not work as well as a game of rotating ping-pong or high-speed lawn darts. Rapid-fire ideas help pull people away from the similar and into a more unique realm of thinking. If your game can facilitate this way of thinking, you will have better results.

• Read the room. If the ideas are slowing down and the group is looking preoccupied or tired, it’s time to shake things up. It is never about people running out of ideas. Instead, it is usually about exhausting the given method of generation. A game of ‘Speaker Telephone’ is a fun way of introducing a new method. It’s like the classic game ‘Telephone’, but you have everyone contribute to a story and you speak out loud instead of whispering. Sometimes an idea gets exhausted, so encourage the group to move on to something new if the story has hit a dead end. Another idea is to grab an object and start throwing it across the room. Whoever catches the object provides an idea and then tosses it to the next unsuspecting person. Finally, projection techniques are also great for ideation. If you are discussing a new site for an Adobe product, start asking questions like ‘If this product was an animal, which kind would it be?’ You can substitute ‘animal’ for any number of items (magazine, car, celebrity, tv show, cartoon character, city, food, color, etc.)

• No bad ideas. Nothing new about this one…it is a golden rule and should be made very clear to the group. The brainstorming session is not a place for judging the ideas…that will be done later. At this stage the crazier the idea the better. If judging takes place, people will rely on ‘the similar’ and in the end, you leave the room with a page full of vanilla. At Genex, I once taped up a $20 bill and told the group that the money would go to the person with the most outlandish idea. We had a few people that said crazy stuff for the sake of trying to get the money, but in the end we had a lot of great ideas that were far from the norm.

• Get the quiet people involved. You will always have those who dominate the conversation and those who sit with a closed zipper on their lips. Encourage everyone to participate, and incorporate tools that allow for even input across the group. Brainstorming works on the principle of suspended judgment, and if you let that be known to the group, zippers will open

• Back to the rapid-fire. Whether you are playing an ‘idea-game’ or not, the old rapid-fire approach to gathering ideas in a brainstorming session is best. The less you think and analyze the better. At this stage it is all about quantity over quality.