How to Make Your Creative Brainstorming Session Effective?

Businesses face problems all the time. That’s why so many companies are keen on hiring creative thinkers who can solve problems innovatively and set a culture of creative thinking in the process. 

One of the most effective ways to foster this culture is by conducting creative brainstorming sessions that involve employees from all over the organization. But not all creative brainstorming sessions are as effective as managers might hope. 

That’s because when it comes to spontaneous ideation, it’s easy to get sidetracked and end up wasting time on things that don’t really matter. In fact, one study found that creative brainstorming is a huge waste of time, but only because it doesn’t inspire any true solutions to the problem at hand.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to navigate a creative brainstorming session so that it doesn’t end up wasting time for everyone involved and actually leads to creative ideation for the problem at hand. 

But first, let’s take a closer look at what creative brainstorming is and why it’s not only important, but also necessary for businesses today.

What is Creative Brainstorming?

Creative brainstorming is simply a group activity of coming up with spontaneous and creative ideas to solve a particular problem. The whole concept behind creative brainstorming is that participants can offer any sort of creative solution. Thinking outside the box is encouraged and the more ideas participants can come up with, the better. 

However, a common criticism of this method is that it leads to time wasting and the group often gets distracted from the main objective. While that may be true in some cases, the real reason creative brainstorming sessions become ineffective is because there is no facilitator in the group. 

Additionally, if there is no set structure for the discussion or clarity regarding the main objectives then it’s much easier for the group to get distracted and the activity to go to waste.

To ensure that doesn’t happen to you or your team the next time you guys gather for a creative brainstorming session, here are some tips and tricks to make your session more effective.

How to Make a Creative Brainstorming Session Effective?

Here are some of the steps you can follow to make your next creative brainstorm session effective for the entire team.

• Ensure Diversity in the Group

The most important part of a creative brainstorming session is the participants. As a manager, you need to ensure that there is a sufficiently diverse group of employees who take part in the brainstorming session. 

This is especially necessary if your organization has a diverse workforce so that different points of views are incorporated into the problem solving process. Although organizations nowadays do make an effort to include employees from all backgrounds into the company, it is businesses owned by minority groups that are better at diversity inclusion.

Many LGBT owned businesses offer employment opportunities to the LGBT community as well as other minorities to ensure diversity. As such, creative brainstorming is more productive in such organizations.

• Give a Heads Up for the Session

The ideas in the creative brainstorming session are supposed to be spontaneous, not the session itself. It’s important to give the participants a heads up before convening a creative brainstorming session. This notice also provides the participants with the opportunity to come up with some preliminary ideas before coming to the meeting.

And although ‘spontaneous’ is synonymous with ‘brainstorming’, it doesn’t mean that ideas thought up before the meeting are a bad thing. In fact, providing sufficient notice for the session may allow for things to start off smoothly and, as a result, finish in time as well.

• Set a Clear Agenda

Participants also need to be aware of what problem is going to be tackled in the creative brainstorming session. It’s better to email the date, time and agenda for the session to all participants at least 24 hours in advance. 

Setting an agenda for the creative brainstorming session also helps to focus the discussion. It provides a chance for the participants to come up with relevant ideas before the meeting. An agenda also prevents the group from deviating from the main objective of the session. As such, more time is spent considering ideas relevant to solving the problem.

• Establish a Facilitator

A facilitator plays a key role in the creative brainstorming process. That’s because if your creative brainstorming session is like a car, then the facilitator is the steering wheel. 

The main responsibility of the facilitator is to nudge the session into the right direction, ensure that everyone gets a chance to participate equally, keep track of the best ideas and prevent time from being wasted. That’s why a facilitator needs to be someone who is impartial as well as competent. 

Without an effective facilitator, it is improbable that the creative brainstorming session will follow a productive direction. Since the facilitator outlines, clarifies and enforces the rules, therefore it’s necessary to have one who is clear about what the group needs to achieve during the session.

• Start with Ice Breakers

Getting started with creative brainstorming can be a little difficult. That’s why an effective way to get the participants’ ideas flowing is through icebreakers. There’s a whole array of icebreaker activities that you can choose from. 

A common one is to ask participants questions such as “What uses can you think of for a chair?”. The weirder the answers, the better. Because it shows that the participants are thinking creatively and out of the box, which is the whole point.

• Develop a Receptive Environment

Once the group is warmed up and ready to fire off ideas, make sure that you maintain a receptive environment for both good and bad ideas. Often, people are scared to provide their opinion or ideas because of fear of what others might think or say.

An easy way to mitigate this fear is by presenting bad ideas yourself and calling yourself out on them. Once employees see managers being comfortable with bad ideas, they will automatically begin to open up. If facilitators are successful in developing a receptive environment, it would yield to better ideation among participants.

• Document Good Ideas, Discard Bad Ones

It’s easy to lose track of who says what during a creative brainstorming session. That’s why it’s important to document good ideas whenever they come along. It’s also rare for the creative brainstorming session to yield fully formed ideas. In fact, it’s more common for ideas to be in the initial stages.

That’s why documenting these ideas is essential so that they can be expanded upon in the future. In addition, documenting bad ideas will also allow them to be discarded when the team reviews the session notes later on.

• Organize and Categorize the Best Ideas

Once the session is over, the facilitator should organize all of the best possible ideas. They can then categorize the ideas based on the input of the entire team. When all of the best ideas are laid out at the end of the session, it instantly becomes easier to understand which one would be most suitable to solve the problem at hand. 

It’s also important to remember that not all creative brainstorming sessions yield the best results. You have to be prepared to come away with nothing from the session as well, because that’s just the risk they carry. If or when that happens, it’s time to regroup and adopt another approach to solve the problem.

Conclusion

Creative brainstorming can either be a huge waste of time or a way to find an innovative solution to a problem. The outcome depends on how well the session is conducted. Following the steps described in this blog will allow you to get the most out of your creative brainstorming session.