Brainstorming: Where Did It Go Wrong, and How Do We Fix It?

 

Last week I was invited to guest-lecture at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.  The topic dealt largely with media’s First Amendment rights in the digital age, an understandably heady topic that, for most undergraduate students, is difficult to comprehend.  Having taught more accessible classes in the past (public relations, interpersonal communication, public speaking, etc.), I went in knowing the dichotomy would be drastic. 

 

In those classes, students participate fairly often.  With information access for youth at seemingly unlimited levels, that fact makes sense.  People feel comfortable talking about things with which they have experience.  So, you would naturally think that the inverse would be true as well—people don’t feel comfortable talking about things with which they don’t have any experience.  I went in to the lecture expecting this.

 

The first few minutes were tough.  I laid the groundwork for the discussion.  I introduced a slew of concepts that even I struggle with, and I’ve been intimately familiar with them for years.  I started to go in to lecture-mode.  Then, something strange happened. 

 

The room exploded with questions.  Students were throwing out hypothetical situations and asking how the law might apply.  They were responding to one another with how they think it should—or even how public policy could drive critical journalistic decisions.  Most of their ideas were dead-on and closely corresponded to case-law.  Considering they had almost no experience with those cases, though, I was shocked.  It transformed from a lecture into a conversation, and it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in about four years of doing this. 

 

I drove back to Axiom and sat in my office.  I had recently this article from the Kellogg Business School about how broken the process of industry brainstorming is, and in that moment at my desk, I couldn’t get it out of my head.  If it’s gone so terribly wrong, how come I just experienced one of the best communal collaborations I’d ever seen—among sophomore and junior college students, no less?

 

The answer lies in a product we administer at Axiom, called Creative Burst Sessions.  I won’t go into specifics, because this isn’t a pitch.  I’ll just say this.  As a firm that’s helped develop some of North America’s most influential products, Axiom has witnessed far too many corporate environments that champion innovation in their philosophy, but completely stifle it in their implementation.  Creative Burst Sessions utilize a shared understanding of the opportunity, cross sections of participants, ideas to build on, and effective facilitation.  The idea is this: innovation is 99% preparation, and 1% inspiration (Edison, of course, says it’s 99% perspiration, but we believe our alteration is more accessible).  And what do these sessions do?  They allow everyone in the room—yes, everyone—to feel comfortable expressing their ideas. 

 

But, how, you ask?

 

Brainstorming is about building up, not breaking down.  One of the reasons that so many big businesses struggle with innovation isn’t because there are too many proverbial cooks in the kitchen—it’s that all those cooks don’t want to step on each other’s toes, so none of them actually cooks anything.  Remember when you were in school, and you had a great idea or comment in a class, but it was one of those huge lecture halls with 250 kids, and you didn’t want to be the person that said something you thought was great—only to find out it wasn’t—and then be embarrassed in front of everyone?  That same mentality carries over into the workplace. 

 

To fix it, we have to make people feel like their opinions are valued.  And the lecture I gave last week made me realize something on a psychological level—people feel valued when they understand the problem they’re tackling isn’t an easy one.  In other words, if you have an idea for something that ends up being “wrong,” you won’t feel nearly as embarrassed if the problem you were tasked to solve is extremely complicated.  Enter my media law lecture.  Those students all went in to the lecture knowing very little about the topic.  That made them feel comfortable talking about it.  That made them feel great about opening up about it.  That made them talk more.  In the business world, this same process would lead to great ideas and great inventions.  Each student built upon what previous ones said, and that’s what we have to do in the corporate world as well.

 

That’s how we fix brainstorming.  At Axiom, we’re implementing it every day.  But what sets us apart is that, much like the process of ideation in general, we understand our theories of brainstorming are themselves never complete.  They can always be improved.  We can always get better.  That’s our commitment to product development, and that’s our commitment to our clients.