Brainstorming Techniques

Brainstorming is not a new technique to discover new ideas.  Brainstorming has been used as long as I have been involved in management to generate new ideas and to get the whole team involved.  The bigger problem with brainstorming is that it isn't done right and then there is no followup.

One reason that brainstorming isn't done right is that there is a tendency in groups for one person or one group of people to dominate the discussion.  This creates a dynamic where not everyone participates.  Sometimes that person or group of people is the management team.  Whenever there is not max participation, then something has to change.  One technique that I use when this happens is to break the group up into teams.  This smaller group dynamic should help to generate more ideas with greater participation.

An important thing about brainstorming is for there to be some followup.  Recently, I received an email with a list of half-baked notions, with the words still misspelled.  I actually did not know what this list was about.  After some investigations, I found out that this was a brainstormed list of actions. This list needed context and some fleshing out, or at least spell check.  Follow-up is very important. Without followup and context, that meeting of some very busy people ended up being a waste of their time and a waste of my time.

Brainstorming is a great technique for idea generation if there is maximum participation and followup on the ideas to provide context or better yet recommendations.