On effective collaborations and better brainstorming
Some months ago, in the startup where I currently work, we decided to rebuild a major project from scratch. Rebuilding can be exciting and exhaustive depending on the size and complexity of a project. We had to do a better job this time, and it made sense for everyone to be involved in the decision making from the get-go.
Involving everyone on the team, both designers, and non-designers can help to understand and see things from different perspectives. But how do we collaborate and come together in such a way that is really productive and helpful?
I remember how we had always moved from reasoning to heated arguments in previous brainstorming sessions. After such arguments, I’d go home exhausted, get to work the next day and the same thing happens again. I wasn’t productive and I couldn’t achieve much after work personally, so I set out to change this.
I started by talking to one of the engineers, his opinion was simple, “If we’d end up arguing like in the past, then there may not be any reason for us to come together”. Coming together helps us make more informed decisions about the products we build, but if we’d end up arguing and not achieving much, do we keep working in silos and building products the wrong way?
A few days to the set day we’d start the redesign, we had a meeting with the Chief Legal Officer, to discuss on the legal aspects of the product and she starts by introducing a framework (I can’t remember the exact name), and at the core of this framework is collaboration, where we come together to build as against working in silos. It resonated with me. It’s what I’ve always wanted, and somehow it was a validation that we had to come together and this time for good — the meeting came at the right time.
At this point, I’m the lead designer at the company, the onus was on me to set the lead for how things had to be done. I decide that we have to come together to make the right decisions but we must deal with the arguments and unproductive brainstorming sessions. I went home to think about this deeply, and after lots of thoughts I came up with two answers. Whenever we come together to brainstorm and make decisions on certain parts of the product and we end up arguing and achieving little, its either of these two things;
- There’s ‘ego’ in the room, or
- Everyone’s individual knowledge and understanding of the topic discussed is limited.
So if there’s no ego in the room, then everybody’s individual knowledge or understanding of the topic being discussed is limited, it’s why there’s no deep insight, and no one can bring enlightenment to the topic being discussed.
“Creativity and ego cannot go together. If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens up endlessly. Just as water springs from a fountain, creativity springs from every moment.
You must not be your own obstacle. You must not be owned by the environment you are in. You must own the environment, the phenomenal world around you. You must be able to freely move in and out of your mind.
This is being free. There is no way you can’t open up your creativity. There is no ego to speak of. That is my belief.” — Jeong Kwan
I don’t have direct control over every others, so I decided to work on myself before going off to work on others. How do I deal with ego whenever we get together to brainstorm, reason, and make joint decisions?
- I want to make sure I’m not trying to be overly smart. I don’t want to always have an answer to every question, I don’t want to show false confidence. If I’m being asked a question and I don’t have an answer, or I don’t fully understand the question being asked, It’s totally okay for me to say “ I don’t know”, or “hey, I don’t understand this”, “ I don’t have an idea of this topic”.
- Also, it’s important that I’m very open-minded. I don’t want to be defensive about my idea, opinion, or perspective. If I think ‘this is this’ and someone else gives reasons or insights as to why my opinion or idea or perspective is maybe wrong, flawed or inaccurate, I should be receptive to such and reason alongside, “oh…okay that’s true” “I somehow didn’t think of this before” “thanks for pointing it out”. I should not be too attached or defensive about my opinion, idea or perspective. I want to leave a discussion smarter and with validated learning. Being closed-minded and defensive doesn’t help me get smarter, I don’t get to see far, and understand deeply. When you are defensive, you begin to dig up unhealthy reasons to justify why what is wrong is right.
When you are defensive, you begin to dig up unhealthy reasons to justify why what is wrong is right.
- I don’t want to be definitive about what I’m not sure of. If I don’t understand this topic much, but I still want to share my opinion and what I think, I want to make sure that what I’m saying is a reflection of my thoughts, I’m not definitive about it. When I’ve set the ground that what I’m saying is a reflection of my thoughts, it tells the others that I’m very open to listening to why it may be wrong and any other perspective that brings more insights to such.
- I want to make sure that I listen deeply, not just to be picky and find a fault in what someone is saying then attack that point. I want to listen more than just to respond, to understand the message being conveyed, to understand why someone is saying what he/she is saying. When you listen more than just to respond, you try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and reason beyond the words coming out of their mouth and to understand their framework of thinking, then you can effectively communicate on the same level.
As for the limited knowledge, it’s simple, get more knowledge! Know and understand beyond the basics. So I make sure to go back home, study and research more on the particular topic we plan to discuss the next day, so when we come together, I have more knowledge and understanding of this topic, if possible than everyone else. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where the insight comes from, so long everybody leaves smarter and we make more informed decision about the product we are building.
What I did next was to discuss these findings with the team and make everyone understand that our ego and in some cases limited knowledge doesn’t help us reason aright. I explain how we might solve this and how it’s totally okay to leave the ego at the door and say “I don’t know a thing”.
Then I set off to influence one person directly. I can’t influence everybody at the same time, but I can do it one person at a time. I choose the person I’m closest to at work who is an engineer, I explain to him my findings and how we might work on ourselves and put these learning into practice.
What I noticed was, whenever someone sees more than once that I and a few others can confidently say “ hey, I don’t know this” “ I need help with this” or “I don’t understand this” it rubs off on others, almost everybody does the same, and the change began to happen.
Also when we come together to talk about a certain topic, and more than one person goes to the whiteboard and writes a things and maybe says, “ Hey guys, while researching about this yesterday, I found out this data, metric or insights and I think it is right for us to start at this”, when this happens more than once and all the time, then the others notice a change and go back home knowing they shouldn’t return the next day without having something more informative to say, when everyone comes together knowing more than just the basics, we spend shorter and more quality time together. I remember at one instance, after one of such sessions, someone said: “who noticed how smart today was?”.
Over time the effect of these is, we began to do things with intentionality. We have solid reasons for doing what we do or taking the decisions we take. We don’t just do a thing because it’s cool. When anyone asks, we can confidently tell you “we did this because of this, and although this isn’t the best way to implement this, because of these constraints, it was okay for us to go this way with an eye towards improvements”.
Also, what we design is a product of how we design, and so when we are able to come together as a team of designers and non-designers, we make more informed decisions about what we build and this reflects in the final output. We end up building a better product, more productive and everyone is happy.
What we design is a product of how we design.
So whenever someone else asks me how to bring everyone together in a way that’s helpful and productive, I always say the same thing, deal with the ego, deploy empathy and get more knowledge. Although I don’t consider these as a one-size-fits-all solution, it truly works.
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