Group Brainstorming: Why It Might Not Be a Good Idea
Many times throughout our careers and education, we are encouraged to work with others to come up with new ideas. However, there are some big issues with the group brainstorming process that might not make it the best exercise for your team.
- ) Someone takes over the process
We’ve all been there, that one person in the group takes over, loudly voices their opinion, and everyone else feels obligated to go along. This happens way more often than most of us would like to admit, and can completely hinder the creative process when the others in the group are afraid to share their opinions and ideas.
2.) Less creativity and ideas
When working together in groups, you tend to feed off of each other’s ideas. While this works well in some instances, it can cause groups to be less creative and cause them to get stuck on a singular idea. A Harvard Business Review article, Your Team is Brainstorming All Wrong, discusses the idea further, citing studies that found “As soon as one person throws out an idea, it affects the memory of everyone in the group and makes them think a bit more similarly about the problem than they did before.”
3.) Team members make less of an effort
When brainstorming in a group, it can be easy for some members to take a back seat and rely on others in the group who are more passionate about the project to come up with the innovative ideas. There is also less pressure for the individual team members to make an effort, since they feel that someone will step up and do the work in the end.
So how do you re-think group brainstorming?
- ) Create a dot-ocracy
Challenge everyone in the group to write down a few strong ideas that answer their problem or posed question. Use sticker dots to vote on the ideas (this can be done in secret if necessary). This method ensures that every team member has to submit at least one strong idea and encourages them to take a stance on the project by voting for their favorite ideas.
2.) Allow your imagination to run wild
Many times, especially as we get older, the crazier ideas that we come up with seem more silly and childish to us than productive. When working with groups, encourage members to come up with their wildest fantasies because you never know what one person’s crazy idea could spark for another team member in their imagination.
3.) Try to keep groups small
Another Harvard Business Review article, Why Group Brainstorming Is a Waste of Time, found that working in too large of groups can create production blocking, where the number of ideas that a person comes up with becomes less as the number of people in the group grows. To combat this, split into pairs or smaller groups to originally brainstorm ideas. Then, come back together to share ideas with the rest of the team. This way team members are still held accountable, but are free to come up with as many ideas as they can think of.
