Brainstorming for breakthrough

One of the reasons that people feel that brainstorming doesn’t deliver is that, so often, when it comes to selecting which ideas to progress to the problem-solving stage, it’s the ones that seem most doable that get selected, rather than the ones that offer the potential to be breakthroughs.

It’s so natural to vote for ones you can see being implemented. But it’s the ones that have the tingle factor – if I knew how to do that, it would be amazing – these are the ones to go for.

So when I’m facilitating a brainstorming workshop, I spend a good deal of time and effort at the selection stage coaching the participants (and in particular their leader), so that they have the best possible chance of going for ideas that really intrigue them.

That’s how to get breakthroughs from brainstorms.

Brainstorming: does it really work?

Brainstorming has had a bad press recently. It seems that many have had poor experience of it.

My own belief is that this is mainly because people dive in with very limited skills, not understanding that training and experience enhance the value and effectiveness of the process greatly. I would say that untrained groups led by poor quality creative facilitation are almost invariably doomed to fail.

The term was first popularised in the 1940s by an American advertising executive, Alex Osborn, in his book, Applied Imagination. The four core principles involved in Osborn’s method are as valid today as they were then:

Focus on quantity: get a wide range of possibilities as start-ideas.
Withhold criticism: instead of identifying flaws in ideas offered, switch to “What does that make me think of?” and offer a new idea.
Welcome unusual ideas: not just the obvious ones.
Combine and improve ideas: take the most interesting parts of several start-ideas to create new ones.

Osborn’s method was extended and enhanced by George Prince and WJJ Gordon, who each wrote seminal books and together started the innovation and creativity consultancy, Synectics, whose method I still use.

On reflection, it seems to me that unless you are prepared to get a proper skill-base on board, it’s probably best to leave it alone.

Best language for brainstorming?

I have found over the years that brainstorming is best done in local language.

Quite simply, the freshest ideas seem to come into our heads most readily in whatever vernacular we learn in childhood. And they are most easily expressed verbally in that language too.

This is not so easy when, as is usually the case in workshops with multinational companies, the common tongue is second-language English.

My Lintas colleague, Eleanor Modesto, discovered this vividly when she went from Manila to be managing director of the agency in Indonesia. She quickly discovered that the language of business in Jakarta is Bahasa Indonesia, so she got down to learning it, becoming expert enough in the language to pass as a local.

Yet it remained clear to her that being able to speak a language is one thing, whereas thinking in it, having ideas in it, is another thing altogether.

“Sometimes, it’s better to think conceptually in Tagalog [the major Filipino language],” Eleanor has said. “I would ask them ‘Do you have an idiom like this?’” And instead of generating ideas from “Man of Steel,” she would throw Filipino idioms like “tibay ng loob” [loosely translated as strength of character] into the mix, enriching the whole process.

Of course, I’ve discovered over the years that the facilitation of workshops in local language(s) brings greater complexity and requires special skills…

To explore this and much more, come to my Brand Renovation Masterclass in Manila, 8 November:

http://www.yeheydigitalgroup.com/repo/adobomasterclass/masterclass_edm.html

“Terminal 5 is working”

What a tragedy it was that London Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 should have started with those highly publicised baggage-handling issues. It’s a fine building – as big as the previous four terminals put together in terms of capacity. And, speaking as a frequent traveller, it works really well.

Together with a number of wonderful colleagues – Dave Smith, Marian Moriarty and Jonne Ceserani among them – we helped BAA to envision this massive undertaking. That was all of fifteen years before the eventual opening. It was one of the pioneering projects where we carefully mixed managers from many different functions within the company together with passenger-customers in order to dream, wish and create together.

The resulting brainstorming sessions produced ideas that were many and varied, but the Big Insight that emerged was the wish for the passage through the terminal to be totally free from queuing.

In so many ways T5 has met those needs. The orbital motorway, the M25, has been expanded to twelve lanes there and the access roads are so much better than for previous terminals. The passenger’s ability to check in electronically, both online and in the terminal, has been transformed. Fast-track has helped to ease congestion on arrival.

Of course, fifteen years ago we didn’t foresee the so-called War on Terror and the damaging effect it would have on time spent navigating through security. And I feel ashamed when I see the slowly crawling lines of “aliens” going through passport control on arrival.

Both issues need to be addressed creatively. My guess is that there is much to be learned from supermarket operators, who seem to manage fluctuations in traffic density so much faster and more flexibly.

What’s your experience of T5? And more generally of working creatively with consumers?

“The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea!”

New ideas often seem to pop up serendipitously: in the shower, driving the car, falling asleep, eating breakfast, walking the dog.

But does it always have to be so? In Jeeves Takes Charge, PG Wodehouse wrote: “I pressed down on the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea!”

In other words, ideas can come – sometimes by the dozen - by purposefully switching on the power and doing one’s own brainstorm. All you need is a pad of paper, a pencil and the will.

Why do we imagine that brainstorming has to happen in groups? Or that we have to wait for lightning to strike? Press down on the mental accelerator. Just do it…