Brainstorming Techniques

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Guidelines: Brainstorming Techniques
What: A set of "how-to" guidelines for facilitating a Brainstorming Session.

A brainstorming session is a tool to generate ideas from a selected audience to solve a problem
or stimulate creativity. These meetings are used for solving a process problem, inventing new
products or product innovation, solving inter-group communication problems, improving
customer service, budgeting exercises, project scheduling, etc.
Using these tools can help discussion facilitators and Project Managers with alternative
approaches for creative idea generation meetings (AKA Brainstorming Sessions). They are
particularly useful when previous meetings have gone afoul, are not as effective as they could
be or productivity during these exercises is less than it should be.
Why: Not all Brainstorming sessions are effective. Many times these types of meetings suffer
due to various factors, such as:
• unclear objectives or ill-defined goals
• disorganized or less-than-enthusiastic participation
• failures in note taking
• conflicts among team members
• strong or overbearing personalities
• "class system" in a pecking-order hierarchy
• micro-management by various decision makers
• "not invented here" (NIH) syndrome
Having a defined and communicated plan or objective, having agreed-upon and enforced
"meeting guidelines," and knowing what kind of brainstorming techniques to use will make your
creativity and decision making meetings more effective.
How:
1. Follow your normal meeting processes and conventions with 1) a designated meeting time
and duration, 2) a designated meeting place and 3) early notification to the participants with
enough time for everyone to put the meeting on their schedule and get prepared.
2. A "Generic Meeting Guidelines" checklist is provided in this file. Modify this as appropriate
with your own words by adding items that are important to your team and project culture.
Delete or modify items that do not apply or are not appropriate. These are "rules" that should
be agreed upon by the participants and self-enforced or peer-enforced during the meeting.
3. Review the set of Brainstorming Session Guidelines for desired actions and behaviors
during a brainstorming session. Include the appropriate ones in your Meeting Guidelines for
the Brainstorming Session.
4. Review the list of items that should be vehemently guarded against, and be on the lookout
for any of these in your brainstorming meetings.
5. Distribute the Meeting Guidelines when the participants are invited and briefly review these
at the beginning of the Brainstorming Session.
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6. Consider the type of audience or team you are collecting for the brainstorm. Consider the
type of problem or question you are going to try to solve. Select a type of Brainstorm
Technique that will work for the particular audience and the particular problem. You may
select a couple of techniques for the meeting and combine them, or have a primary and a
backup, if the primary technique is not getting the desired results.
7. Review the ‘Things that “get in the way” of Creativity’ list. Add your own items.
8. When a team is comfortable with doing brainstorming together, sometimes it's just fun for a
change of pace to use one of the alternate techniques.

Guideline: Brainstorming Techniques

Generic Meeting Behavior Guidelines
• Be present and ready to begin on time.
• No side conversations (do not mumble to others during the meetings).
• Any member can “process check” if an issue goes too long.
• Any member can “process check” if an issue is not obviously pertinent to the immediate
agenda topic.
• Any member can “process check” if an issue is narrow and only involves a very limited
subset of the team. Request that the issue be taken offline.
• If you cannot make it, send a substitute.
• If you cannot send a substitute, let the team know in advance.
• Assign a facilitator and a recorder.
• Have an agenda and follow that agenda.
• Take breaks once an hour and reconvene ON TIME!
• Assign action items only to people present at the meeting.
• Choose action item due dates with 80% confidence levels.
• Do not let egos get in the way! Focus on the issue, not the person.
• Speak and act assertively, not aggressively.

Brainstorming Session - General Guidelines

• Explain what purpose or objective is to be achieved by having the brainstorming session.
Discuss why the selected audience was invited. Discuss who else should be involved.
Consider discussing any obvious "not invited" audience, but have a good reason for it.
• Write this question, problem or issue on a white board or post it in an obvious place in large
print.
• Explain people can verbalize any creative ideas. Reinforce that sometimes the crazy ideas
are the most successful. No idea is too loony (remember that old cliché about "outside the
box thinking"?)
• Explain that everyone is expected to participate (see individual Brainstorming Techniques if
this is a problem).
• Explain that ALL ideas are acceptable.
• Post all the ideas on white boards or flip charts while they are being generated. Make sure
to capture the idea and intent of the audience member. Have multiple people writing down
the ideas, if needed.
• Building on others ideas is acceptable. Expand different threads of thought.
• Editing, criticizing or judging is NOT acceptable. Explain that the point of the meeting is to
just generate ideas. Editing them down and refining them takes place later after all ideas
have been exhausted.
• Listen to the speaker carefully.
• Allow snowballing, where an idea generates an extension to that idea that generates
expansion of that idea, etc. and so forth.

Things that "get in the way" of Creativity during Brainstorming Sessions:
• The words "that's wrong" or "that's stupid" or "that won't work.”
• Any sentence starting with, "But we don't have…X" (budget, people, time, tools, know-how,
etc.)
• When the sentence starts with "They'll never let us…" or "That's against company
policies…" or "PersonX will never allow that because…”
• If you hear anything along the lines of "Been there, done that" or "We tried that years ago
and it didn't work.”
• An unqualified "That's too risky.” This might be legitimate if supported by facts and data.
• Global "dis-ing" like "Get a life,” "You've got to be kidding,” "No (expletive deleted) way,”
"You can't do that,” “Good Luck,” etc.
• Any form of unqualified opinion or emotional outburst, gentle or passionate, that negates a
possibility before it's been studied and bantered about. An impossible idea might be the
stimulus or seed for a new thought that would be successful.
And last, but not least (one of my favorite destroyers of creative thought):
• When someone says, "Let's form a committee (action assessment group, executive decision
making group, etc.) to look into it."

Type 1: "Flow of Consciousness" Brainstorming
This is also known as "free wheeling" brainstorming. It is the most common brainstorming
method.
• Gather the team or group for the meeting.
• Team members volunteer solutions as they think of them.
• There are no constraints on behavior. Talk when you want. Say what you want. Normal
brainstorming guidelines should be followed and editing is left to the end of the session.
• Notes should be taken on a white board or flip chart.
• At the end of brainstorming, the facilitator goes line by line and eliminates any suggestions
that are not useful. The facilitator, with group input, combines ideas and groups similar or
common ideas.
• The group then wordsmiths the solution or list of possible solutions. This is the final editing
process.
Comments:
• This works well with people who are comfortable with each other, open minded and respect
each other.
• This may not work well with people who are defensive or quiet, since they may not speak
up.
• This may not work with people who are not comfortable or familiar with the activity of
brainstorming. They may not feel they have a valuable contribution or they may just be
intimidated, confused or shy about the process.
• This may not work with members of various American or international cultures. This
behavior of “just talking when you want” may seem rude or unfamiliar to them.
• This may not work well with people who are strong willed, loud or overly assertive. They may
be the only ones making suggestions and may speak “on top of” others.
Variation Popcorn Brainstorming

• Similar to the freewheeling technique. However, team members are limited to one or two
word commentary on any suggestions.
• Technique might be used when people are good at making suggestions, but some folks are
long-winded or overly severe in their style of disapproval of others ideas.

Type 2: "Post-it Notes" Brainstorming

• The team members write down their ideas on post-it notes during the meeting
• Post-it notes are then posted on a white board or blank wall.
• The facilitator reads each one out loud and the group begins to categorize these by value,
creativity, do-ability, etc.
• As each post-it is read aloud, the group decides how to categorize it with the previously
reviewed notes. Continue until all notes are posted on the wall.
• If a note being read aloud prompts a new idea by a team member, have them write a new
note.
• Revisit the groupings one at a time for elimination of ideas or re-grouping, now that all the
ideas are categorized. This is the editing process. Allow modification, combination or
alteration of the ideas. Continue this process until consensus is reached on a solution or list
of likely solutions.
Comments:
• An alternative is to have one person read their note and put it on the wall. The next person
reads their note and the group decides if they are similar or different and how the new note
should be grouped. Continue this process until all the notes are read, categorized and the
editing process begins.
• This process is useful if people want to come prepared to the meeting with their post-it notes
written ahead of time (the notes can be generated in the meeting, too).
• This process is useful if note taking is difficult to accomplish, for some reason, since the
post-it notes serve as a basic level documentation system.

Type 3: Bouncing Ball Brainstorming
This is also known as Token-passing brainstorming. Using a ball has its advantages as
amusement, but it can be distracting with a playful group. A quieter method is to use an object
that doesn't bounce—a token.
• The person with the ball or token can share an idea. The ball is then passed to the next
person with a suggestion. Team members must wait to get the ball before they can make a
suggestion or share an idea.
• Notes should be taken on a white board or flip chart.
• At the end of brainstorming, the facilitator goes line by line and eliminates any suggestions
that are not useful. The facilitator, with group input, combines redundant ideas and groups
similar or common ideas.
• The group then wordsmiths the solution or list of possible solutions. This is the final editing
process.
Comments:
• An alternative method to requesting the ball is to have the current holder of the ball pass it to
whomever they want. This helps sometimes when there are quieter members of the team.
• The facilitator can request the ball and then pass it to others that he or she would like to
hear from.
• The facilitator can decide ahead of time if team members can "pass" the ball on without a
suggestion. Make sure this is included in the brainstorming guidelines when the meeting is
started.
Variation: Round Robin Brainstorming

• Similar to the Bouncing Ball technique except the suggestions are given by going clockwise
or counterclockwise around the team, with each member offering a suggestion when it is
their turn.
• Decide ahead of time if team members will be allowed to "pass.”


Brainstorming Techniques

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ProjectConnections.com Template Contributed by ProjectConnections.

Guidelines: Brainstorming Techniques

What: A set of "how-to" guidelines for facilitating a Brainstorming Session.

Copyright 2003 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com Page 1

Copyright 2003 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com Page 2

Guideline: Brainstorming Techniques

Copyright 2003 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com Page 3

Guideline: Brainstorming Techniques

Brainstorming Session - General Guidelines

Copyright 2003 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com Page 4

Guideline: Brainstorming Techniques

Things that "get in the way" of Creativity during Brainstorming Sessions:

• The words "that's wrong" or "that's stupid" or "that won't work.”

Copyright 2003 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com Page 5

Guideline: Brainstorming Techniques

Type 1: "Flow of Consciousness" Brainstorming

Variation Popcorn Brainstorming

Copyright 2003 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com Page 6

Guideline: Brainstorming Techniques

Type 2: "Post-it Notes" Brainstorming

Copyright 2003 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com Page 7

Guideline: Brainstorming Techniques

Type 3: Bouncing Ball Brainstorming

Variation: Round Robin Brainstorming

Copyright 2003 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com Page 8

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