Brainstorming sessions, when done correctly, can be one of the most powerful tools in your business. Often, a meeting held with the intention of generating groundbreaking ideas turns into an hour of wasted time and you’re left scratching your head over what went wrong. Here are 5 issues you need to address for a productive brainstorming session.
A stiff boss: Great ideas bounce best in an atmosphere of equality where the only thing on everybody’s mind is the subject to be discussed. But a stiff boss will make everybody conscious of speaking up. If you are one of those, you need to loosen up and make your team feel at ease. If you are the subordinate, then you need to get over your irrational fear of speaking up. Your boss won’t bite.
The suck-up: The suck-up’s obsequious ways of raising his hand and doing me..me..can really impede the flow of creative juices. It’s hard to think with somebody constantly sucking up to the boss when you are supposed to be brainstorming.
Team tiffs: Brainstorming works best when everybody works as a team. Rivalries and undercurrents in the team really hamper the creative process. It’s best to resolve it before you enter the conference room.
Limiting the group size: Brainstorming shows best results when done amongst a small number of people -a maximum of 7-8 persons. Beyond that, there are too many voices of dissent and too many distractions for quick results.
Veteran and rookie mix: Good ideas with a new perspective can also sometimes come from a fresh faced relative outsider. Veterans, used to thinking the same way for years may be unable to suddenly think out of the box upon demand. A good mix of the two works best for brainstorming.
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