I have a folder in my Google Reader called "Innovation" and one of my favorite blogs in that category is called The Heart of Innovation. Mitch Ditkoff recently wrote a fantastic list of the 26 Reasons Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Fail that you really need to check out if you are involved in the brainstorming process at all professionally or personally. I felt the need to expound on this list here, as a tribute to the Innovation Brainstorming process document a colleague, Trisha Finnegan, and I are working on…
I haven’t totally dropped the ball, Trish. ;)
The great thing about Mitch’s list is that he provides a corresponding list of things you can do to counteract the 26 reasons why brainstorming sessions fail, right below the list of why they fail. Extra Bonus! After having witnessed a masterful brainstorming session around the Freewheelin’ bike sharing program, here are the ones that I wanted to further explore:
Reason for Fail / What you CAN Do
#3 Unmotivated participants / Invite people who really care about the topic
It’s always important to invite key stakeholders to any kind of brainstorming session that revolves around something that will affect them. That’s called “getting buy-in,” right? I would add that you need to also invite the right kind of people as well as just people who care about the topic. Creative people who are able to look at the problem from an outsiders viewpoint, and aren’t bashful about coming up with off-the-wall solutions to common challenges can work wonders for getting the team’s creative juices flowing.
Reason for Fail / What you CAN Do
#7 Lack of clear ground rules / Ask participants to establish clear meeting ground rules
During the most successful brainstorming session I’ve ever been involved with, the meeting facilitator made the meeting ground rules abundantly clear from the get go, and held everybody accountable throughout the meeting. I think that if you’re going to let the meeting participants create the ground rules at the meeting itself, you need to allocate an appropriate amount of time for that, obviously. And that another way to go may be setting up an outline of the ground rules that meeting participants agree to up front, at the beginning of the meeting instead of making them come up with something on the fly.
Reason for Fail / What you CAN Do
#26 No follow-up plan / Identify and enroll “champions.” Explain the follow-up process
This is a real tragedy when it is allowed to happen. You just get through what you think was a great meeting, and then months go by and nothing happens. The worst part about it is that you now feel leery to give 100 percent of your effort the next time you are called on to attend one of these meetings. It’s a vicious cycle that is easily solvable if there is a real purpose for the meeting to begin with, and people are kept in the loop as time goes by. Let’s face it, not everything that comes out of a brainstorming session is going to make it, and I think that everyone can be OK with that going into the meeting. They just need to be told what is happening next, and some back story behind that decision-making process as it unfolds.
That’s what I think, but I’m interested to find out what you think. What didn’t make Mitch’s list that should have? What was your best brainstorming experience and what were the outcomes? What solutions do you use to counteract the Fail List that Mitch put together?
photo by: Jacob Botter
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