Tools@work: Two ways to better brainstorming

Journal for Quality and Participation, The, Jan/Feb 1999 by Campbell, Sheila

MOST OF US HAVE PARTICIPATED IN brainstorming sessions-getting a lot of people in a room to come up with as many ideas as they can. But brainstorming as a way to develop truly new ideas often seems...well...disappointing. Surprisingly fresh ideas just don't seem to hit the easel chart. But new research in cognitive science, such as presented in The Creative Cognition Approach (MIT Press, 1995) edited by Steven M. Smith, may help explain why traditional brainstorming doesn't push the limits of our group creative thinking far enough.

1. The Role of Silence in Stimulating Creativity

The National Institutes of Mental Health conducted verbalization and silence research in 1993 on the impact of talking while working on both analytical and creative problems. They found thatwhile talking has no effect on logical problem-solvingit does inhibit the quality and quantity of new ideas when creativity is critical. In other words, you're more creative when you're silent. It's no coincidence that most people report getting their best ideas in the shower or while driving.

Remember that analytical thinking and language are anchored in the left side of the brain, while creativity, emotion, and intuition are right-side activities. The very design of traditional brainstorming, with its emphasis on constant verbalization, means that you won't do your most original work.

2. Breaking Out of Patterned Thinking

Try this with your team. Ask each person to draw a living creature that would live on another planet far away, out of our galaxy. When all the critters are drawn, ask for a show of hands: "How many people drew something with two eyes? With four legs or two arms and two legs? With bilateral symmetry? So if you drew a line down the middle it would be the same on both sides?"

If your group is typical (and I haven't found one that's not), about 70 percent will have drawn a creature with two eyes, four legs, and bilateral symmetry because those are common characteristics of living creatures on earth.

What you've just done replicates research from Texas A&M University. The human brain is a powerful pattern-making and pattern-recognizing mechanism. That's great for helping us make sense of the world around us, but it's not so handy when we're trying to find new solutions to business issues. Our brains do the efficient thing and recycle our old ideas.

What you need is a "kicker" to push your brain out of its patterns and into some mental off-road driving.

Suppose I asked you for some ideas on how to serve tuna salad at a luncheon. You might suggest serving it in a hollowed tomato, on lettuce leaves, or in half a cantaloupe. But if I asked you what Martha Stewart, the doyenne of home decor, would recommend, your ideas would take another tack: perhaps I should strew rose petals over the plates, or put the tuna salad in wine goblets, or serve it in clay garden pots with mint leaves and nasturtiums. Thinking like Martha Stewart opens up new possibilities. It's still your brain doing the work, but Martha Stewart is the kicker.

The next time your team wants to explore some dramatically new ideas, first ask each person to make a list of five organizations that have distinctive personalities. Their lists might include corporations such as Disney or Microsoft; political groups such as the African National Congress; government entities such as the FBI, the CIA, or the U.S. Army; and nonprofits such as the Girl Scouts, the Red Cross, and the AIDS quilt group. People might list entertainment groups such as the Rolling Stones or the Spice Girls. Organizations may come from history: the Spanish Armada; Attila and his Huns; or even from fiction, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. Put the lists aside for a moment.

Now, after discussing the problem, hand each person a pad of Post-It notes (I like to use wildly colored notes and bright markers.) Explain that during initial idea generation, each person will work in silence, not only not speaking but not even making eye contact with anyone else in the room.

Each person will write as many ideas as possibleone per sticky sheet-on their pads. Ask each person to come up with at least 30 ideas. (Most people won't hit that number, but it will keep them working.) Note that I said "30 ideas," not 30 "good ideas." Just as in brainstorming, we're going for quantity first, so any idea, no matter how foolish, impractical, impossible, or illegal, is a candidate for a sticky sheet.

Now ask everyone to retrieve their organization lists and trade with someone else. These lists are our kickers. We're not going to approach the problem from our own viewpoints; we've undoubtedly covered that ground before. Instead, each person is going to generate ideas as each of her or his five organizations would go about it. So the group works in silence, each person taking an organization off the list and asking her- or himself, "How would the CIA solve this problem? What ideas does the CIA give me?"

If you were thinking about ways to get people to fill in forms correctly, for example, some of the CIA ideas might be pretty silly: put a gun to their heads; handcuff them to their chairs; spy on them with tiny cameras. But you might also come up with ideas like: investigate why people don't comply; give out medals or awards for people who do it right; offer an amnesty for past offenses to those who comply starting now. With everyone working alone on a different list of kickers, you'll get an enormous range of ideas in as few as seven or eight minutes of silence.