Brainstorm for Solutions

CREATIVITY AND innovation are absolutely essential to the survival of any organization in any business today. One of your responsibilities is to encourage each employee to function at the highest level of creativity possible for that person. One idea from one person who has been encouraged to think creatively can often make or save the company thousands of dollars and even hundreds of hours of work. But you never know what that one idea is likely to be, so you have to encourage a large number of ideas. There seems to be a direct relationship between the quantity of ideas generated and the quality of those ideas.

Perhaps the most powerful way to stimulate the creativity of the members of your team is to regularly practice brainstorming. The concept of brainstorming was developed by advertising executive Alex Osborn in 1946. It has since swept the world and is used by the most successful individuals and organizations in every field.

Here is how it works: First, decide to bring your people together once a week, or more frequently, to brainstorm on the problems facing the company, such as increasing sales, cutting costs, boosting revenues, reducing expenditures, and improving productivity. There are no limits to the problems that you can put on the table during a brainstorming session.

Second, create a brainstorming group. The ideal group size is four to seven people. If you have fewer than four people you will not get enough ideas. If you have more than seven in the group, many people will not have an opportunity to contribute fully.

Third, set a time limit. The ideal length for a brainstorming session is fifteen to forty-five minutes. It is a good idea to use a stopwatch or a clock and to start the brainstorming session as you would a race; then cut the session off sharp at the agreed minute. This knowledge of a fixed stop-and-start time triggers higher levels of creativity and a greater outpouring of ideas.

Fourth, define the problem or goal clearly. Write it on a whiteboard, flipchart, or a piece of paper so that everyone can see it, read it, and be completely clear about the question or problem that you are working on. If necessary, have a discussion beforehand where you agree that there is a problem to solve and also agree on a definition of that problem or obstacle before you begin generating ideas or solutions.

Fifth, pose a specific question demanding concrete answers. For example: How can we increase our sales by more than 20 percent over the next ninety days? How can we cut our costs in this area by 20 percent over the next ninety days? The best questions demand practical ideas. They force each person to think in concrete terms and generate workable solutions that can be implemented immediately.

Sixth, agree that everyone will suspend judgment during the session. No one will give either positive or negative comments and there will be no discussion or evaluation of ideas until after the brainstorming session. By agreeing to suspend judgment, you encourage ridiculous answers, laughter, and unorthodox approaches to solving the problem.

A Brainstorming Breakthrough

In the early days of space exploration and the moon program in the 1950s and 1960s, the dilemma faced by NASA scientists was weight. How could they send a rocket ship to the moon, get it to land and then take off from the moon, and fly back to earth? The problem was that if the rocket had enough fuel to break loose of the earth's gravity and land on the moon, it would not have enough fuel to then break loose of the moon's gravity and return to earth.

As a result of brainstorming, they came up with an idea that transformed the next fifty years of space travel. They said, “Why would we have to land the entire rocket on the moon? What if we just dropped a ‘moon module’ from the bigger spaceship that would continue in orbit around the moon, and then the smaller moon module could blast off and rejoin the larger ship for the return to earth?”

In retrospect, this sounds like a simple idea, but it was one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in modern history. And it was a result of generating idea after idea and “thinking outside the box” to find different ways to solve a major dilemma.

Get Organized

In each brainstorming session, you need both a leader and a recorder. The leader is the person who encourages everyone to contribute ideas. The leader keeps the brainstorming session going by moving from person to person. No one is allowed to dominate the conversation.

The recorder is the person who writes down the ideas that are generated. Once the brainstorming session is complete, the ideas written down by the recorder are then turned over to the manager for evaluation at a later time.

When you conduct brainstorming sessions on company time, you show people that their thinking and creative capacity are both needed and respected in the company. When you ask people to think creatively, they will astonish you with the ideas that they come up with. You will be amazed at how creative the average person is if given a chance and asked to contribute.

After the brainstorming session, people will come up to you continually with new ideas that just popped into their heads while they were working. When you make it a habit of stimulating the creativity of your staff members, they will begin to think creatively all day long. And sometimes one good idea can change the entire future of your business.