If you’re in charge of your company’s next big project, you might be wondering how to run a brainstorming session that will light a fire under your team’s creative thinking. The truth is, that effective brainstorming doesn’t happen by accident. It requires careful planning and preparation to ensure that everyone walks away with fresh ideas to bring back to their desks. Here are five steps you can take to help jumpstart the creativity of your employees or co-workers in the most positive way possible.
Table of Contents
Determine your objectives
Before you can start generating ideas, you need to know what you’re hoping to achieve with your brainstorming session. Take some time to think about your objectives and what you want to accomplish. Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can move on to the next step. Choose the best brainstorming technique for your needs: There are three types of techniques: Affinity Diagrams, Nominal Group Technique (NGT), and Delphi Techniques. The three techniques vary in terms of goal setting, idea generation, evaluation/ranking, and voting mechanisms. Choose the one that best suits your needs.
Choose a format
When it comes to brainstorming, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The format of your session will depend on the type of problem you’re trying to solve and the size and makeup of your team. But there are a few general principles that can help ensure your session is productive and successful.
Here are a few tips for running a brainstorming session that will get your team’s creative juices flowing
- Stick with the basics: Don’t try to come up with something new or different if what you have been doing has worked in the past. There is nothing wrong with using tried-and-true formats like The Giant Brain or Zones.
- Give everyone a chance: Make sure all members of your team have an opportunity to contribute during the meeting. Sometimes people need time to warm up before they start throwing out ideas, so don’t be afraid to ask everyone if they have anything they want to add when people seem hesitant.
- Put away distractions: Turn off any notifications on devices so people aren’t distracted by texts or other messages coming in during the meeting.
Solicit topics from your team members
Before the brainstorming session, send out an email or chat message asking people to come prepared with ideas. You can also ask people to submit topics anonymously, which can encourage shy team members to participate. During the session, each person should have a chance to share their ideas. Encourage wild ideas and don’t judge them.
The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible. Once you have a good list of ideas, start voting on which ones are the best. The ones with the most votes should be further explored. Finally, take some time to discuss how you can turn the winning ideas into reality. It may not be practical for everyone to work on every idea. By prioritizing your goals and deciding who will work on what, you’ll ensure that your team is working together towards your organization’s goals instead of spinning their wheels in creative chaos. also read Amazon retail marketing stratergies.
Start writing
A brainstorming session is a meeting where people come together to generate new ideas or solve problems. The key to running a successful brainstorming session is to create an environment that is conducive to creativity and open-mindedness. Here are five tips for doing just that
1) Make sure the room you’re in has enough space, as well as comfortable seating arrangements
2) Be sure there are plenty of supplies on hand, such as paper, markers, index cards, sticky notes, etc.
3) Prepare by thinking about what the goal of the session is – it might be to come up with advertising slogans or ways to increase sales. By knowing what you want to achieve before starting your brainstorming session, you’ll have a better idea of how much time you’ll need and what kind of ideas will work best.
4) Encourage participation by having everyone participate in turn
5) Have someone take notes so that every idea can be captured
Timer on, no judgment
The first step is to set a timer for the duration of the brainstorming session. This will help keep things focused. Next, make sure to explain that there are no wrong answers during this session. This will help encourage creativity. Then, it’s time to start generating ideas. Encourage your team to think outside the box and come up with as many ideas as possible. Finally, wrap up the session by going over the ideas and narrowing down the best ones. Brainstorming sessions don’t have to be long to be effective. Just 20 minutes can do wonders for your team’s creativity and get them ready for the rest of their day.
Provide guidelines
1. Define the problem or challenge you’re facing. Be as specific as possible.
2. Set a time limit for the brainstorming session. 60-90 minutes is usually plenty of time.
3. Encourage wild ideas and discourage judgment. This is the time to think outside the box.
4. Write down every idea that comes up, no matter how far-fetched it may seem.
5. Once the time is up, have each team member vote on their favourite ideas.
6. Choose the top three ideas to further develop.
7. Assign someone to be responsible for each of the chosen ideas and set a deadline for execution.
8. Schedule follow-up sessions to review progress and course corrections if necessary.
9. Establish an ongoing process for this type of meeting so everyone knows what they are doing at all times.
Add constraints
A brainstorming session is only as good as the structure and constraints you put in place. By adding constraints, you can push your team to be more creative and come up with ideas that they may not have otherwise thought of. Here are seven tips for adding constraints to your next brainstorm
First, have everyone write down their wildest idea on a piece of paper. Then reveal what those wild ideas are one by one, either through sharing or drawing them out on a whiteboard or chart paper so everyone can see them. If there’s an idea that seems too outlandish or silly, it’s perfectly acceptable to discard it right away in fact, it’s probably better than spending valuable time discussing something ridiculous. Next, go around and ask each person to share two other ideas generated by other people that weren’t initially his or her own these should be completely different from their idea.