Brainstorming & collaboration
An article by Jared Sandberg (from The Wall Street Journal, reprinted in Post-Gazette.com) presents several interesting perspectives on brainstorming.
First it discusses the pitfalls of poorly planned sessions. These boil down to using the tool in isolation with little or no preparation or follow up. I particularly like the line:
In fact, great brainstorming sessions are possible, but they require the planning of a state dinner, plenty of rules, and the suspension of ego, ingratiation and political railroading.
Second, it discusses some perceived shortcomings of teams, which I’ll leave for another time.
Finally, it raises several issues around brainstorming in the larger organisational or community context. My favourite (misconception) noted here is that brainstorming is inefficient.
This is kind of like saying nature is inefficient when generating mutations which it will then test for survival fitness. The point is you need lots of variations and you can’t tell ahead of time which ones will best fit the situation.
For collaboration events to work, meeting participants need to know the importance of why they are there. Such events must have clear procedures (as Sandberg says) that take people on a journey toward shared understanding and outcomes.
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:05 am
Interesting points, David. And thanks for the link through to the Sandberg article.
I like your point about nature and selection. However, while nature may give results over time, there is nothing like selective breeding, new plant varieties are an example, to speed the process along.
This links to your point about a well planned and run brainstorming session. A badly run session is like nature in the raw, a well run session like selective breeding.