How to Conduct Brainstorming Sessions
“Must Do”s
- Get the problem definition
(short narrowly defined question) displayed prominently
- Bring a bell that you can
ring when critiquing begins? J
· Break the ice with a quick round
of introductions and some humor from the moderator’s side
- First 15 min – moderator
insists that everyone contributes at least one stupid sounding idea
- Next half hour – everyone
contributes any ideas pertaining to the problem
- Moderator has to capture
all the ideas, preferably in large letters on flip chart paper or on PC in
projector
- Moderator has to be
careful to capture the idea in its original form and intent instead of
interpreting it wrongly
- Moderator has to encourage
audience members to build on or jump off someone else’s idea and suggest
new ideas
- Audience can add “I wish”
or “How to” to the idea that are contributed – it makes it easier to
articulate “silly-sounding” ideas
- No one in the audience can
ask questions to challenge any idea – they can only ask questions to
clarify an idea
- Everybody is equal
(maybe everyone can remove their ties) in the audience
- When someone gets an idea,
instead of interrupting, he can write the idea(s) down in a note pad and
raise his hands
- Audience has to get up and
move around to other seats half way through the session to “change the
environment” and trigger new thinking
- Ideally there should not
be a table in the middle of the participants – use comfortable chairs in
an open seating format
- Focus should be quantity
of ideas – get as many as possible up on the board – “please do not vet
the ideas for their quality – say what you think without hesitation”
- When energy falls, switch
to another topic that can generate heat J - once the audience
energy is back, switch to original topic
- Moderator can try to
rephrase ideas as newspaper headlines to capture ideas accurately and for
brevity
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