My Favorite brainstorming activities

It’s no secret that a lot of the brainstorming meetings can go stale quite quickly and often don’t lead anywhere. There were many sessions that I was part of where I felt that they could be facilitated better. They would go something like this “so we are here to share ideas for ______ project and I’ve asked everyone to come to the brainstorm meeting with a few ideas, so let’s go around the room and discuss”

There should be a more focused introduction to the meeting. I think it starts off the meeting right when you establish the problem or challenge we are trying to solve. Instead of introducing the topic of discussion broadly, I think it’s really helpful to be more specific about the goals.

Brainstorming sessions can sometimes run stale and I think it’s really important to get people talking right off the bat in a more high energy way. It really gets the ball rolling and gets people to bounce ideas off of each other. I wanted to share some of my favorite brainstorming activities to use with your team. These are the ones that I feel get everyone involved and are pretty simple.

Brainwriting

This is a good one if there are some team members that don’t like to speak up in a big group. Brainwriting is where everyone in the group writes down their ideas on a piece of paper and then puts it in a pile for discussion.

This can also be used over a period of time. Say that your team is very busy and you don’t have time for a proper brainstorming session. You can post the question or challenge in a public area and ask people to leave their suggestions over the course of a week or a couple of days. It’s not the most efficient way but it is an option if you are in a pinch.

Rapid Ideation

Rapid ideation is a bit like brainwriting except you set a limited amount of time and ask everyone to write as many ideas as they can in the alloted amount of time. Even the most outrageus ideas are welcomed and I think that this can be very effective because inspiration can spark from anywhere. Something that might seem irrelivant could start a bigger conversation; you never know.

Mind mapping

This one is a more visual tool that can aid the brainstorming session. You start by writing down the goal or the challenge that you are brainstorming for and then asking everyone to come up with potential solutions, new ideas or related ideas. Each suggestion is put up on the board and you can start making connections between ideas.

Swot Analysis

Swot stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. These are the categories you are going to use to analize your topic. I like to make this one visual as well and put everything up on the board. This might be a personal preference but I like to go low tech with this one and use pieces of paper/white board for this. I find that this method is very helpful at pushing your ideas further. It makes you think about all of these different contributing factors which can help you make connections or spark new ideas.

Starbursting

This one is great for developing and generating the conversation. You start out with a 6 pointed star and write out the questions who, what, where, when, why, and how at each point. In the middle of the star write down the topic of discussion. Use each point of the star to generate quesions. Who are our repeat customers? What features do they use the most? Why do they use our service?

Change of Scenery

This is a bonus tip here but I think it really does help to get out of the office. A change of scenery refreshes the mind and sometimes we find inspiration in the smallest things.