How to get great ideas from your team
I’d like you to imagine that you’ve been asked to lead a team working on a new marketing campaign. You’re going to need their ideas to get going, so where do you start?
I’m writing this because most people will probably arrange a meeting where they introduce the objective and immediately ask people for ideas. I don’t think this will get you the best results. I think there’s a better way, so here are three easy things to consider:
Let people think
Let’s just get the whole idea of the brainstorming meeting out the way first. If you present your team with a problem and then immediately expect them to solve it, you’re likely to be disappointed. In this situation, your team is unlikely to have time to fully process the problem, or their solutions, and you’ll face a lot of problems that I’m about to highlight.
Ideally, you need to carefully outline the problem you need people to solve and the perimeters they’re working within in advance.
It helps if you can take time to consider this yourself, so you can fully articulate it to your team. I like the way Jeff Bezos from Amazon will write out six pages to fully explain new ideas and initiatives and then have his executives read it before they even start a discussion.
The most important thing about brainstorming for me is time. If you need to hold a brainstorming meeting, it’s best to communicate this in advance so your team can start thinking. I would give them at least a day, and night’s sleep, to process your instructions before you start brainstorming.
Giving your team time to think will allow them to go away and have ‘shower moments’, where great ideas just pop into their heads.
This is likely to happen when they are relaxing after work, doing simple chores or even while they are driving. I think it’s safe to say that most people forget the power of the unconscious mind when it comes to brainstorming.
It’s simple, if we put ideas and problems into our heads, our minds will often continue to work on them and connect the dots behind the scenes. This is so effective, but most people never consider it.
If you do this, members of your team are highly likely to come up with great ideas and start developing them away from times when they need to be hard at work. Writing also helps to structure our thoughts, so you could even ask your team to do something similar to Jeff Bezo’s six pages (normally a lot shorter), before they present their initial ideas to you.
You should also consider the unconscious mind when you’ve had your brainstorming session, as a lot of the ideas and conclusions will continue to develop behind the scenes. If time is on your side, make it work for you.
So, now we’ve looked at how we’re going to approach the task, let’s think about how we’re going to approach the team.
Listen to everyone
let’s start off by examining another problem with going straight into a brainstorming meeting. If you do this, the more assertive members of the group are likely to seize this opportunity to take the spotlight. In this situation, you’ll probably be presented with suggestions that are loud, confident and wrong.
A spontaneous brainstorming session is likely to be like a gameshow, with people quickly buzzing in with hastily assembled ideas and suggestions.
They’ll probably relish the chance to shine as well, and mask a lack of understanding and creativity with an Oscar-worthy performance that just goes on and on. You also face the risk of allowing less assertive, and often more creative, members of the team to be overshadowed or quickly shut down. If this happens, you’re likely to lose your best ideas early on.
If you’ve let people think about the problem in advance, they should already have a starting point. While this may seem to defeat the idea of brainstorming together, if you’ve communicated everything effectively, these should fit together and evolve into something special.
Hopefully, you’ll have set the stage for amazing things to happen, but you need to watch out for a few things.
‘Editors’ will always emerge who seem to love saying no to people and quickly cut things down. This can be an issue if they’re not contributing though, and it can get even worse if politics or personal issues rear their ugly head. You need to be the referee and moderate the whole discussion.
It’s down to you to make sure everyone gets a fair shot and quickly contain anything that’s not constructive.
I honestly believe that hierarchy pretty much has to go out the window as well. While it’s important that you assert yourself as the leader of this process, because you need to moderate it, you can’t let someone steamroll through an idea because they are in a more senior position in the organisation.
I simply refuse to accept that a manager will be right all the time, particularly when their staff are likely to be more specialised and have specific skills and knowledge relevant to the task.
Finally, you may want to do something a bit weird. To get some simple insights into how your team are likely to approach brainstorming, you can simply ask them to clasp their hands together.
If their left thumb and fingers are on top, they are likely to be a ‘right-brainer’ and be more creative and visual. If it’s the other way around, a left-brainer is likely to be more verbal and detailed. This is down to ‘brain modes’. The interesting thing is that while we all use both right-brained and left-brained modes, we naturally lean more to one than the other.
I think this is really important when it comes to brainstorming.
You also need to protect the more abstract, unfocussed and ambitious ideas that are likely presented by the ‘left-brainers’. Despite the fact that they could be exactly what you’re all looking for, right-brainers are likely to aggressively challenge them in their desire for details and hard facts. You’re the moderator, so make sure you balance these opposing forces, whatever side you may fall on.
Now we’ve looked at how we can approach this brainstorming session and the problems that can arise when we get going, let’s look at how we can approach the actual meeting.
Think about the room
Remember, we’re going to try to do things different here, so let’s look at some interesting ideas. The first thing we’ll look at is something that can save time. Researchers at the University of Missouri found that creative meetings took 34% less time if everyone stood up. From my own experience, I have to say that I usually find myself out of my chair passionately pitching my ideas when I’m in meetings like this, so I’d definitely recommend it.
If you choose to sit down, it’s worth considering that people are likely to be friendlier and more collaborative if they are sat around a circular table.
Those sat around a square or L-shaped table are likely to be less empathic and more independent, often challenging group thinking. Bearing this in mind may also help you deal with those assertive individuals we spoke about earlier.
I always like to look at how two of the best creative minds in business would brainstorm and formulate ideas. Steve Jobs and Jony Ive would often be found wandering around Steve Job’s garden in the evenings while working on monumental products like the iPhone.
If you can, why not consider going for walks with small groups of people to grow ideas.
While most of this last part may simply not be an option for you in your existing office setup, it may be worth taking your team away from it. Top executives will often be found on ‘away days’ or ‘retreats’ to develop top-level strategies, so why not do the same thing?
Another great tip if you’re developing an idea after the brainstorming is to sit with your team.
This is something former F1 team principle and engineer Ross Brawn and Tesla’s Elon Musk usually do in this situation. When you’re busy pushing through a project and collaborating, it saves time walking from the isolation of your office and really brings you all together.
So that’s it, they are my suggestions to help you effectively brainstorm and get great ideas from your team.
Next time you need to get great ideas from your team, you can do three easy things:
Let people think - Fully outline the problem and then let the brain do the work behind the scenes
Listen to everyone - Make sure the best ideas aren’t put down and everyone is given a fair shot
Think about the room - Provide a place where magic can happen
I really hope this helps and I’d love to hear from you if you put this into practice.