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Have a Brainstorm

You’ve probably done this before: a brainstorm exercise. It can be done individually or with a group (a group is usually best).

You set a task or ask a question and everyone participating thinks of things appropriate to that subject. The only rules in brainstorming are that there are no rules. Okay, maybe a few. Set a time limit for ideas and always have some mechanism to record what you (or all the participants) come up with. Other than that, anything goes. No idea is too small, no idea is inappropriate.

This process provides you with lots of really good ideas—ideas that you would not have thought about otherwise. In group settings, people feed off of others ideas to come up with ideas they would never have thought of alone.

The result: You get a list of lots of ideas pertaining to your problem, your task, or your opportunity. Some will not be valuable, and some will not be practical. But some will be new ideas you would never have thought of to bring to the decision process.