After the Storm

One of the more popular exercises of the last several years is brainstorming. I have been involved in many brainstorming sessions myself, at different offices and at CSI planning meetings. I admit that I'm not a touchy-feely kind of guy, and that most team-building and group exercises leave me feeling they are a waste of time. Have you ever looked at the mission statements that have been produced in the last twenty years? They are largely interchangeable collections of buzzwords, usually including world-class, diversity, empower, celebrate, and embrace.

While it is important for any organization to know where it is going and what is important to get there, I'm not convinced that having everyone from the CEO to the night watchman get together is the best way to figure it out. And I'm even less convinced that a large group of people, some of whom don't know the difference between a noun and a verb, can wordsmith a single, fifty word sentence, with lots of commas and clauses, that makes sense.

Here's a website to remember: www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career/bin/ms.cgi. If you get dragged into a mission statement session, go there and click "regenerate" until you're suitably impressed. You'll end up with something like "Our challenge is to empower our members to dramatically engineer parallel resources and synergistically coordinate professional technology to stay competitive in tomorrow's world." Then go out for a couple of drinks, come back at the end of the day, and submit your mission statement to the boss. Odds are it will be accepted as is, with thanks for your remarkable work.

It's not that a group can't come up with good ideas, or that it isn't important for people to work together, but at some point, decisions must be based on sound reasoning. There are exceptions, of course, but the guys who came up with pet rocks and blank books jus t happened to stumble on something that was totally unpredictable and illogical - and failed for countless people you never heard of. For the vast majority of enterprises, new ideas must be considered in the context of experience and reasonable expectations.

I hoped I wasn't the only one who just didn't get it, so I did a little digging and discovered that brainstorming must be done correctly to work; it isn't just a matter of throwing out ideas. I also found that some studies show that it is less effective that other similar activities.

Doing it right

The basic rules for brainstorming vary somewhat from one source to another, but most are similar to the following:
1. Set a time limit.
2. Quantity is more important than quality.
3. Record all ideas.
4. Don't discuss the ideas.
5. Build on other ideas.

Whatever the rules, the facilitator must understand the principles to make it work.
There is some difference of opinion on what to do with the results. Some sources say the ideas should not be discussed at the same meeting, others offer a way to evaluate the ideas and reach a decision. Although all ideas are welcome while brainstorming, they are not all equal. Wisdom, experience, and common sense are required to evaluate them and decide which should be used.

Brainstorming itself is usually fun, with lots of suggestions and excitement, but it appears that the participants often express dissatisfaction afterward. The two common reasons are that there is no follow-through, and it's the same old thing time after time.

A better approach?

It was interesting to learn how brainstorming should be done, but more interesting were several articles that indicate it is less effective than advertised. I did not take the time to track down the original sources, but I found references to studies that indicate real groups and virtual groups working on the same problem had different results. The surprise - after elimination of duplicate ideas, the virtual groups produced almost twice as many ideas as the groups that worked in the same physical space. Furthermore, the number of good ideas was higher for the virtual groups.
Done correctly, brainstorming as a group can be a useful tool, but it is not the only way to decide what to do or how to solve a problem. If your planning meetings keep coming up with the same ideas year after year, and you still have the same problems, something isn't working. It's one thing to think of an idea, an entirely different thing to successfully implement it.

Sheldon Wolfe, RA, FCSI, CCS, CCCA
Institute Director, North Central Region, CSI