Better brainstorming
Brainstorming is a default tool for generating ideas in a group, but is deceptively hard to do well, particularly in the military. Here are some tips.
We have all experienced brainstorming: everyone gets in a room and starts spouting ideas, while one person records them on a whiteboard or flipchart. The goal of this exercise is to get as many ideas on the table as possible. The emphasis is firmly on quantity, and not quality. But if the quality is really poor, then it’s questionable whether the exercise has any value at all.
One drawback of traditional (oral) brainstorming is the risk of groupthink, or early convergence on a particular answer. A closely related problem is uneven communication, when a minority of people do a majority of speaking. For instance, in meeting of six people, two people will often do two thirds of the speaking. These individuals often lack self-awareness or self-control.
Even this would be a lot less serious if the final answer was a good one, but there is a lot of research suggesting that the answer will probably lack creativity: the structure and context of traditional brainstorming is likely to lead to a predictable output. Perhaps this is why many argue that, contrary to accepted wisdom, the best ideas don’t come from collaboration at all.
Fortunately, there is a better way to brainstorm.
Here are some tips for better brainstorming:
1. Get people thinking about the topic well before the meeting. Fresh ideas often come when your brain is relaxed and doing something unrelated to the topic itself. For instance, bed (sleeping), bath (doing something relaxing) and bus (travelling) — the three Bs — are often regarded as good opportunities for creative thinking. They also give ideas room to grow before being subjected to groupthink and pressure to conform. Of course the military has a culture of doing as little preparatory work in advance as possible, not least due to the risk of wasted effort (“plan early, plan twice”). This is a shame, because several people doing detailed thinking in different directions can be immensely powerful.
2. Pick a good space and be clear about objectives. Just as the environment matters for thinking, it matters for brainstorming, so try to find a quiet and comfortable room, with visible materials like whiteboards. In the civilian world, it is accepted that the normal office environment is not great for creative thinking, and this has led to the somewhat-maligned “off-site meeting” (and all manner of unique workspaces in the Silicon Valley, of course). The military badly needs to catch up, because few of its facilities are truly fit for this purpose. In many cases, renting a private dining room in the local pub would be an improvement.
To prevent the meeting from meandering, make sure the objectives are clear, and there is plan for using the outputs.
3. Get the ground rules right. The key to brainstorming, as with managing a team, is creating psychological safety. Psychological safety is a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up. This primarily involves two things: “conversational turn-taking” and “average social sensitivity”. The latter is difficult (especially in the short term), but the former can be shaped by creating ground rules. Should people raise their hands? Should they interrupt? Should the facilitator call on quiet people? Should criticism be suspended until the end?
In the military, the elephant in the room is always rank. Psychological safety is clearly undermined by fear of judgment, whether legitimately held or not. The flow of debate can be stilted by the “leadership megaphone”. Even just the presence of rank slides can have this effect. Senior leaders — particularly those suffering from a surfeit of vision — have to work especially hard to relax, shut up and show humility. Having them remove uniforms, share a beer, and not give any kind of introduction at all can be a good start.
4. Separate ideas from people. Innovation requires establishing a meritocracy of ideas. Separating ideas from people is vital because it enables challenge without upsetting people. Even good ideas may fail or need to be shelved, because innovation is risky and organisations have limited bandwidth; this is much easier if people are able to separate themselves from their ideas. This point can be emphasised in the ground rules section.
5. Try an icebreaker. They’re pretty hackneyed, but can be useful for people that are unfamiliar with each other. For instance: everyone shares a little-known fact about them, or everyone shares three or four facts and the group decides which is false.
6. Try brainwriting. Brainwriting is often described as an alternative to brainstorming, but for most people it’s actually just a subset: instead of calling out answers, write them down. This can encourage divergent thinking and help quiet people contribute more. Brainwriting can be done with Post-It notes: tell everyone to write down their answers to a question, and then either stick all the Post-Its on the board at once, or as part of a “voice over”. Index cards is another method, and it increases anonymity: the moderator collects and shuffles the cards before reading them out. In this format, an important ground rule is that no one tries to guess who wrote what, and that writers don’t confess either.
7. Put ideas together in different ways. The most basic way to drive convergence is to cluster ideas (possibly recorded on Post-Its) into groups to simplify the cognitive task of synthesising many inputs. An alternative is to try grouping them creatively. Innovation is often driven by combining concepts that are individually well known.
8. Respect the way different brains work, but maintain momentum. We’ve all had the experience of people challenging the way a meeting is being held, or going into so much detail it’s not helpful, or proposing ideas that are so out of scope as to be impractical. Different brains work in different ways, and cognitive diversity can be powerful but it can also be a hindrance. A good facilitator must thread this needle. To start with, it can help to explicitly label things. Cover the ground rules in an introductory session called “process”, and press the group to voice any process issues at that point (after which the facilitator will only accept comments on “content”). Use terms like “granular” or “abstract” to help the group calibrate to the level that is needed. For instance, “That’s a really interesting comment, but can you abstract it up a level?” It can be very important to have a “parking lot”, a place to write ideas that don’t fit into the scope of the brainstorm. This shows respect for people and keeps the meeting moving, but also makes sure no “diamond in the rough” ideas get lost.
9. Wrap it up. No one is expecting a finished solution to tumble out of a brainstorm, but equally no one wants to waste their time. It can be good practice to thank the group for their inputs (the divergent phase), describe how the ideas will be focused and triaged later (the convergent phase), possibly in a follow up session, and outline the current plan for execution (which may change). A well-structured summary email shows you’ve been listening.
Have any thoughts on how to brainstorm better? Fire them our way: def_uk@defenseentrepreneurs.org
