The Myth of Aha and Other Brainstorming Tales
Mar 31st, 2010 by David Svet
Do you like brainstorming sessions? Some do, others not so much. I like them. But I don’t use them to generate solutions. In fact, I can’t remember ever walking out of a brainstorming session where the ultimate solution was generated during the session. If you’re one of those folks who don’t care for brainstorming, or perhaps you’re like some folks I’ve worked with who would rather peal their own skin off with a rusty spoon than attend a brainstorming session, you may be expecting too much. I don’t look for a big aha moment — I think it’s a brainstorming myth.
Office style brainstorming sessions produce office like results. They usually involve a conference room with a conference table and office chairs. There’s a whiteboard and markers. It’s the same forum for client meetings, presentations, budget meetings and the like. As a brainstorming facility I think the best it can be expected to produce is a tepid focus group of insiders offering opinions. That’s worthwhile as a starting point, but that’s about all. Setting expectations higher than that will likely lead to disappointment all the way around. This is a left-brain environment. Need analysis? This is the place.
Creativity is a right-brain function. It works best in times of relaxation and disconnectedness from the analytical world. The environment matters, the mood matters, all inputs (or the lack thereof) matter and influence the outcome. The office style brainstorming works as an input, but it won’t likely produce the big aha. That can happen once everyone leaves the room. It may happen at the water cooler as everyone is laughing about the brainstorming session. It will happen during play or during rest and relaxation when the right-brain is free to come forward. It happens when an unlikely stimulus collides with a disparate thought. But in our always on world we are too connected and distracted to enable the process.
Here are some tips to help:
• Get out of the office. Go to the zoo, a construction site, a junk store or somewhere else that you don’t belong while you’re supposed to be working.
• Take a few friends/colleagues and maybe someone else who wouldn’t ordinarily be involved, like the HR director.
• Have fun and talk about anything. Be observant. Invite observations. Take pictures or shoot video. Don’t have an agenda, but do bring up the problem and laugh about it. Big aha’s love laughter.
• Another approach is to play games with the problem. Rapid sketching with no holds barred, going for outlandish fun can trigger aha in you or someone else.
• Play with new materials. Try new hand tools. Surround yourselves with old books, magazines and newspapers. The idea is to have everyone lose them self in play while taking in new stimuli.
• Don’t be afraid to walk away and go home.
• Don’t try to concentrate harder on the problem, it just sends you in the opposite direction of where you need to be going.
Brainstorming is fun, but it works best as an informal kind of play. Some of the best, most profitable ideas that have been developed at Spur over the years have come from moments when we are playing and laughing. Save the conference room for death by Power Point.
Image by Robert S. Donovan, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
