Guided Brainstorming

This approach is one of my personal favorites. Although it is very simple and straightforward, it produces tangible results in record time.

Most of us know what brainstorming is. Suppose you are the facilitator of a brainstorming session. For a limited time, say 10 minutes or so, a modera-tor asks a group of people to say out loud anything that comes to their minds when thinking about a certain topic or question, regardless of whether it might make sense to somebody else. For example, the question posed may be, “What can we do to improve team morale?” Any answer counts. You do not allow attendants to comment on or criticize any other responses, thus eliminating the block of analyzing a new idea in its every detail and consequences. The idea is that every expressed input may trigger a new thought process in someone else, generating a new idea that, once expressed out loud, may stimulate another idea by someone else. As the facilitator, you record all responses on a whiteboard or flip chart. At the end of the brainstorming session you sort and discuss the collected input.

Brainstorming has obvious advantages. It helps produce new ideas in a very short time. It stimulates thought processes, almost forcing creative, outside-the-box thinking. In addition, it is a very interactive exercise and can be lots of fun. On the other hand, brainstorming sessions face a number of challenges. Their interactive nature can turn into chaos quickly. As the moderator, you may have a hard time capturing every idea, simply because too many people are talking at the same time and you cannot write fast enough.

A “guided brainstorming” session can overcome these challenges while still uti-lizing the stated advantages of regular brainstorming sessions.

Similar to a normal brainstorming session, in guided brainstorming a topic or question is presented for discussion. For example, “What can we do to improve team morale?” However, the guided brainstorming approach differs from regu-lar brainstorming in that you do not ask every attendant to shout out his or her thoughts. Instead, you hand out cards and ask the attendants to write down their ideas or thoughts. The trick in this exercise is that you limit the number of cards;

that is, one card is good for only one idea. For example, if you give out five cards to each participant, each participant can provide a maximum of five responses.

Naturally, this limits the choices. On the other hand, if you conduct a guided brainstorming session with five people you will have 25 responses, which can be a good start for a group discussion.

There are a few things to consider when you give out response cards to the atten-dants. First, ask everyone to write down what they think is most important. This forces them to prioritize their ideas prior to submitting their responses. Second, limit the time for filling out the cards. Sometimes just 5 to 10 minutes can be enough for this exercise. A good rule to work with is that you want to allow 1 min-ute for each response card. So, if you have given out five response cards to each

participant, give everyone 5 minutes to write down and submit their responses.

If they are responding to more than one question or topic, lengthen the duration accordingly. The key is to limit the response time, forcing the participants to focus on their most prominent ideas.

Once everyone has written down his or her feedback, you or the facilitator collect the cards and present them to the whole group. Alternatively, you can ask each individual to present his or her feedback. Beware, though, that this is usually more time consuming. Also, not everyone likes to stand in front of an audience and present his or her opinions. Thus, the preferred choice may be to have a facilitator collect the cards and present the ideas expressed.

Once the facilitator has read the response cards out loud, he or she pins them onto a whiteboard or wall. The group then sorts and categorizes them. You can do this in various ways. First, you can set up categories prior to the brainstorming ses-sion and prepare flip charts for each category onto which you can put the response cards. You, the moderator, or the group can do this. Second, the moderator may ask the participants to sort and categorize the cards after the brainstorming. Either way, once you have agreed on the categories, sort the cards accordingly.

My own experience is that it is helpful to plan categories before the brainstorm-ing session and suggest these categories to the participants after they have written down their responses. Whether or not the flip chart or whiteboard is prepared prior to the session depends on the specific situation. If the time for the overall brainstorming session is limited, you definitely need to have everything prepared before the session. If there is sufficient time and you want to have an even higher level of interaction, you may choose to let the participants decide how to sort and categorize their responses.

The idea behind brainstorming is that every response counts. Still, it is impracti-cal to discuss each response. Instead, you want to determine which of the responses is most valuable for the purpose of the topic up for discussion. This is why you, or rather the participants, need to prioritize the cards. For this purpose, each indi-vidual has a limited number of votes to cast, say ten votes. Participants can choose to place all their votes on a single card or distribute them, marking the cards with a pen stroke or a sticker for each vote cast. Allow 5 to 10 minutes for this exercise.

Once everyone has cast his or her vote, determine which response cards got the most votes. For example, identify the top three cards and elaborate on each of these responses within the team. Before you open the floor for discussion you must make sure everyone in the group has the same understanding of the responses and their meanings. If this is not the case, you may ask the person who submitted the idea to explain its motivation and purpose or facilitate a group discussion about it.

Personally, I like the guided brainstorming approach a lot and have successfully applied it in many situations. There are obvious advantages to the guided brain-storming approach. Within a relatively short time you collect a lot of input about a given topic, which can be categorized and prioritized with the help of the partici-pants. A guided brainstorming session is highly interactive. Everyone in the group

witnesses the process and has a chance to contribute to the final outcome. Chances for consensus on the outcome are very high. Note, however, that the highly interac-tive character of guided brainstorming sessions can also be a challenge, especially if participants are not used to this format, working in a group. It is especially impor-tant to prepare the participants for this kind of exercise before the actual session.

My own experience is that skepticism is quickly replaced by astonishment regard-ing the results, from at least two perspectives: (1) the results on the content level may be surprising and unexpected, and (2) people are oftentimes amazed about the amount of input and how quickly it is categorized and prioritized.

Be aware of other challenges of the guided brainstorming approach. For exam-ple, you may not have a meeting room big enough to hang flip charts or wall paper.

You may need to limit the number of response cards, use smaller cards, or limit the number of people attending the session. You may also just try to reserve a bigger room. If all else fails, consider recording the input electronically and displaying it on a screen for everyone to see. In other words, use the available space wisely.

I once conducted a guided brainstorming session with a group of about 20 people. In addition to the large group size, the other challenge was that the group was not in the same room but distributed across three locations: Germany, India, and Canada. The meeting room in Germany, where most group members and I attended, was big enough, but this did not necessarily help the other team members.

Our solution was to copy the information from all the response cards in Germany onto an electronic whiteboard that the whole team in all three locations could see.

The two other teams, in India and Canada, did the same. Together, we compiled the complete list of ideas, which we then categorized and prioritized on a big screen.

Although you may not have the electronic ways and means to set up such a vir-tual meeting room, the example shows that there is no limit to your creativity. The size of the meeting room is not so important compared to the ability to exchange ideas. There should always be one way or another to capture the ideas in a guided brainstorming session and share them with everyone in the meeting.

Another challenge you may face in a guided brainstorming session is running out of time. This can take shape in different forms. For example, participants may ask for more time to think of and write their ideas on the response cards. There are various ways to respond to this challenge. First, the time allowed to complete the response cards may indeed be too short. In this case, extend it by a few minutes and set a new time limit giving the participants extra time without losing focus.

You may also consider collecting the finished response cards and having someone presort them. This may help save time later.

Another reason participants may request additional time is that they simply do not understand the question or the approach. They may find the approach overwhelming. They may not be used to prioritizing their thoughts and ideas. If this happens during a guided brainstorming session it may pose a serious prob-lem. To prevent this from happening, explain the approach before you give out the response cards, ensuring that everyone understands what to do and in what time.

Alternatively, send preparatory material about the agenda and the approach prior to the session.

If you run out of time in the middle of a group discussion following the initial brainstorming round, your response will depend on the value of the discussion. If the discussion is heading in a positive direction, you may want to extend the allot-ted time. If, however, the discussion is veering off course, you may want to consider interrupting it, capturing the raised issues at hand, and coming back to them at a later time.

Last but not least, running out of time can be a sign that you are trying to accomplish too much in one session. Maybe the topic is too broad or complex to cover in one workshop. If you are caught midstream in a brainstorming session, you must decide quickly whether to (1) adjourn the meeting, (2) continue it and see how far you can get, then cover the remaining agenda points in a follow-up meeting, or (3) agree to cut the scope of the meeting. Again, the best thing to do is to prevent such a scenario from happening in the first place. If you are not sure whether you can cover all planned agenda points, ask your team what they think can be accom-plished in the available time slot.

The list of challenges shows us that guided brainstorming sessions, as powerful as they are, require thorough preparation. As with every session, you first need to know the purpose or reason for holding the meeting. Second, you should have a list of objectives you want to achieve in the meeting. Finally, have an idea of the outcome you can expect. Do not send out invitations to a brainstorming session or any other formal meeting without having answers to these three questions. In fact, communicate the answers in your invitation. It would be a pity to have to forgo the potential benefits of a guided brainstorming session because of lack of preparation on your part.