Brainstorming how long

Embrace the most out-of-the-box notions. Try to keep the discussion on target. Divergence is good, but you still need to keep your eyes on the prize. This can be difficult—especially with lots of creative people in a single room—but always think about the challenge topic and how to stay on track. Find activities, how-tos, and articles on brainstorming and other ideation methods on our Brainstorming Resources page. To bring your ideation skills to the next level and start practicing the methods of design thinking, enroll in our From Ideas to Action online course.

Attaching a single person to a single idea hinders collaboration and greatness. Close search. Just added to your cart. Continue shopping. Stick your ideas on the wall so others can visualize them. And you engage others in the cause in a nonthreatening way. They will come up with surprising, compelling questions that you would not, because they have no practiced ways of thinking about the problem and no investment in the status quo.

In traditional brainstorming—the kind that focuses on generating answers—individuals perform better than groups, on average. But the question burst methodology, by design, reverses many of those destructive dynamics by prompting people to depart from their usual habits of social interaction. For one thing, it creates a safe space for anyone, including a quieter person, to offer a different perspective. The sole focus on questions also suspends the automatic rush to provide an answer—and ultimately helps expand the problem space for deeper exploration.

So just hit the highlights. Try to convey how things would change for the better if the problem were solved. This approach helped Odessa, a manager at a global financial services company, reframe what she initially viewed as a complex communications challenge: rolling out a new strategy to people performing different tasks at many levels across many geographies.

By leaving it at that, she created room for a line of questioning that radically altered her understanding. She came to see this as a leadership challenge, not just an internal marketing campaign. If she could find a way to trust others to convey the strategy, she could mobilize a small army of managers in the field to tailor messages for maximum local impact.

Before opening the floor to your group, clearly spell out two critical rules: First, people can contribute only questions. Jot down a few words that capture your own baseline mood. No need to spend more than 10 seconds on this. These checks are important because emotions affect creative energy. Here I should point out that your creative energy will ebb and flow in the coming days, weeks, and months—and preparing yourself for that is critical. Transformational ideas start out as exhilarating but turn vexing as unforeseen snags reveal themselves.

Then they settle into hard work that, with luck, produces moments of hope that will see the change through. Now set a timer and spend the next four minutes collectively generating as many questions as possible about the challenge. The more surprising and provocative the questions are, the better. When working with large enterprises, I often notice that senior leaders in particular find it excruciatingly difficult to resist offering answers—even for four minutes—when people start throwing out questions.

This impulse is understandable, and not just for senior executives. Questions, especially counterintuitive ones, make many of us feel so uncomfortable that we hasten to utter any default response that buys us time to recover.

In this exercise the emphasis is on quantity. Write every question down verbatim on paper, a laptop, or a tablet instead of on a whiteboard so that you can capture everything accurately. And ask group members to keep you honest afterward. That will often reveal patterns in how you have habitually framed a problem and might have unknowingly perpetuated it.

Is there some magic about precisely four minutes and 15 questions? Any effort spent on answers will mean less chance of hitting the goal. Even better, studies show that moderate performance pressures can enhance creative output. Moreover, perhaps because selective sustained attention places real demands on the human brain, energy often wanes in this exercise after three and a half minutes, especially for beginners.

And as a practical matter, transcribing dozens of questions can turn into an onerous task. Once the timer goes off, do a second quick emotional check. How do you feel about the challenge now? And how do others in the group feel about it? Are you more positive than you were four minutes ago? If not, and if the setting allows, maybe rerun the exercise. Or get some rest and try again tomorrow. Or try it with some different people. Research has established that creative problem solving flourishes when people work in positive emotional states.

On your own, study the questions you jotted down, looking for those that suggest new pathways. After all, some employees might feel uncomfortable sharing wild ideas with their boss in the room. If senior-level people in the room share equally ridiculous ides, it gives everyone else permission to be unconventional.

A word exercise can help get brainstorm participants out of their comfort zones and into a new, more creative mindset that will set the stage for a brainstorm. A favorite and easy!

Then, go proud the room and ask each participant to say other words that come to mind from that first word. Make sure the facilitator writes down each word that is said for the room to see, so they can continue to be inspired with new words or phrases. Let the ideas flow naturally and try not to over think it, as this is meant to be a creative exercise. And he wants to find his own place, so he can live solo and play his sax whenever he wants.

Pro-tip: The best ideas are often born from building on other ideas that are outside of your typical comfort zone. An outside facilitator can help your creative brainstorming session run smoothly. An expert will know when to push for more ideas and how to focus the discussion when people are veering offtrack. Sounds counterintuitive, right? So you want to brainstorm as many as possible.