We've all been in that brainstorming meeting: the ane where you could hear a pivot drib, and the white lath of "great ideas" remains bare. Information technology's awkward for participants and downright excruciating for the person leading the meeting.

Psychologist Art Markman helps united states figure out how to go people talking.

Hullo,

I manage around 50 employees in a artistic manufacture. The people I piece of work with are very hardworking, smart, and artistic. Yet whenever I try to get them to brainstorm in meetings: crickets. Whatever suggestions for methods to get the conversation and ideas flowing?

Tired of Crickets

Dear Tired.

I sympathize. Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to get your group to generate great ideas and ending up with a room total of people staring at their shoes.

I want to address this question in 2 parts. First, allow'southward try to effigy out some of the things that might go on people from speaking upward. Once yous figure that out, you can try some methods to get people talking.

How Are You lot Defining The Trouble? Generating ideas is all about allowing the statement of the problem to remind you of things you know about that might help you lot to solve that problem.

Your problem argument might be as well general. You lot might say, "Nosotros demand to find a mode to set up brainstorming." Without identifying what is wrong with brainstorming, though, it is hard to detect artistic solutions.

There might also be a lot of disagreement about what the problem really is. At a general level, people might agree that brainstorming needs to be stock-still, for example, but they might disagree about why there is a problem in the first identify.


That means that before you tin can even begin to generate ideas, yous need to make sure that you have a specific problem argument, and that there is general understanding well-nigh what problem you are trying to solve.

People Are Afraid Of Criticism. One of the reasons why it is hard to generate new ideas is that there is a general mistrust of anything new. We adopt the devil known to the devil unknown. At some point, of course, information technology is important to explore potential creative solutions carefully to ensure that they volition be of value. Only if the criticism of new ideas starts too early, people starting time to clam up. If by brainstorming sessions accept attacked every new idea, people eventually give up.

If your grouping tends to be hypercritical (or if a few individuals tend to criticize every new idea), information technology is important to remind anybody to think about new ideas and build on them before vehement them down.

Lack Of By Follow-Through. Some other problem with brainstorming is that generating ideas for solving a problem is frequently the easy part. Taking the all-time idea or ideas and implementing them takes time, free energy, and resources. In many situations, a grouping spends time generating ideas, and then those ideas are not implemented. When that happens often enough, groups terminate putting much free energy into generating new creative solutions, because they know those ideas will not be pushed frontward.

If the creative ideas you generate tend not to survive until they are implemented, information technology is important to finish brainstorming sessions with a clear assignment of responsibilities and resource to make sure that the ideas ultimately meet the light of mean solar day.

Lack Of Credit. Another problem with group idea generation is that the group'southward ideas are often presented more widely in an organisation past the group'southward leader. The grouping leader may and so get about of the credit for that idea, even though it was a grouping endeavour. People reply to the rewards around them, then if they experience similar yous accept taken credit for their ideas in the past, they will be reluctant to share new ideas with you lot in the future. That means that it is of import for the entire grouping to get credit and reward for successful solutions to problems that the grouping generates.

Fixing Brainstorming

I should point out that the typical method for brainstorming is actually a lousy way to generate ideas. The term "brainstorming" was coined by Alex Osborn in the 1950s and refers to a gear up of rules he suggested in which people in groups should generate as many ideas every bit possible without constraints or criticism, and that people should build on each other's ideas. Unfortunately, decades of research demonstrates that groups that brainstorm come with fewer ideas (and fewer good ideas) than the individuals would have come up with had they worked alone.

To understand why this happens, it is first of import to draw the 2 phases of artistic thought generation. First, there is a divergent phase in which you endeavor to come up with as many different approaches to a problem as possible. And so, there is a convergent stage in which you endeavour to settle on one (or a small number) of solutions you are going to pursue. A given idea generation session may accept many divergent and convergent phases.

The problem with brainstorming is that when groups work together, they tend to promote convergent thinking. The first person in the grouping who says something contaminates the memories of everyone else in the room, and makes anybody think nigh the problem more similarly.

That means that whenever you want divergent thinking, you lot need to get the people in the group to work alone. The individuals working by themselves will generate a wider range of ideas than they would if they worked together. When yous are ready for the group to build on ideas and to evaluate them, then yous want the grouping working together. The group dynamic will ultimately settle on one or a few expert candidates.

A simple manner to structure an idea generation session is to have the grouping work individually to depict the problem to be solved, and then get the group together to agree on what the problem really is. Then, have the group piece of work lone again to generate ideas and have people gather to talk nigh the ideas that people came up with. Finally, finish every idea generation session with a plan for who carries the idea forward, and a commitment of the resource to make certain the idea tin exist implemented.

In that location are more elaborate ways of tweaking the idea generation procedure to make information technology even more than effective, but this should get you started.

Good luck.

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