BRAINSTORMING: WHAT IT IS AND HOW TO USE IT

In this week’s blog I’d like to chat about the topic of brainstorming, because it’s a terrific way to generate ideas.

Brainstorming is a technique I use quite often in my job. It’s a process of trying to generate as many ideas as possible and can occur by one individual or a group of people, but is more commonly used with groups.  Interestingly, the concept of brainstorming was developed by an advertising executive (A.F. Osborn) in order to increase creativity (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008, p. 265).  The key steps in brainstorming are:

• Gather a group together.
• Review the problem you’re trying to solve.
• Ask each person to silently generate ideas to solve the problem.
• Have each person write their ideas on individual slips of paper.
• Write all the ideas on a white board, flip chart, or do what I like to do, which is tack each slip of paper on a wall board (because they can then be easily moved around and grouped into categories).
• A second session can be held in order to discuss each idea and evaluate the alternatives.

The nominal group technique is very similar to the brainstorming technique in that it’s also used to generate ideas.  The main differences are a more structured meeting approach that includes an evaluation process and voting for solution choices.  Here are the key steps in the nominal group technique:

• Gather a group together.
• Explain the nominal group technique process that will occur.
• Review the problem you’re trying to solve.
• Have each person silently generate ideas to solve the problem.
• Going around the table, ask each person to provide one idea from their list and record each on a white board or flip chart.  Do not discuss any of the ideas, just continue going around the table with each person offering one idea and capturing the idea on the white board or flip chart.
• Once all ideas are captured, discuss them.  People can ask questions and clarify ideas they proposed. 
• Allow each participant 30 seconds “to argue for or against any of the ideas under consideration” (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008, p. 266) and use the comments to generate additional discussion or ideas.
• Allow each participant to vote for their top choices.  One easy way to do this is to provide each participant with a certain number of dot stickers, say three to five, and then allow them to vote any way they want to use the dots.  For example, they could use one dot each and vote for their top 5 choices, they could use two dots for two items and one dot on another item, or they could use all five dots on their number one choice.
• The leader then counts the votes to determine the top choices. 
• What I like to do at this point is narrow it down to the top three choices, allow group discussion on those three items, and then start fresh with a new vote on the top three choices to narrow it down to the best choice.

Source:

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