Is brainstorming its own bad idea?

Follow the science from a safe distance

Saved by the storm?

Late one afternoon two lawyers rushed into my office with bad news. As I was the deputy attorney general at the time, late in the day bad news lawyers was not unusual but they had come from a particularly important hearing that was being closely followed in the media so I thought I’d better pay attention. An adverse witness had ambushed them with a report on case processing times in our youth courts. Our lawyers had one night to prepare their cross examination. The report was factually correct accurate – it was based on our statistics – the simplistic conclusions were not. But how to prove it convincingly?

We rounded up two other lawyers and the senior researcher who analyzed our stats and crowded into her office. Forty minutes later our lawyers had the basis of the strong cross-examination they conducted the next day.

Obviously, the point of this vignette is not case processing times. It is that six people could quickly turn a situation from bleak to brilliant. Was it my inspiring leadership? No, having “convened” the meeting, I contributed next to nothing to the discussion. My contribution was ten years of insisting on the first and second rules of good brainstorming:

1. no analysis until all the ideas are in, and

2. silly ideas are second only to plagiarism as the best source of great ideas.

We were all so practiced in brainstorming that we just did it. If I had asked if we’d just brainstormed, they would have said no, ideas just tumbled out, fast. According to Lao Tzu successful leadership is when the people say we did this ourselves. So, chalk one up for brainstorming and me…

At least that’s what I thought.

…or snowed by the storm?

I was surprised to read that brainstorming doesn’t work. That’s what some scientists are saying according to Jonah Lehrer in the New Yorker¹ I like to think I am one who follows the science, as we say, but I had somehow missed this until I confidently sat down to write about brainstorming.

The article made me re-examine my assumptions and it’s hard to argue with science, but here are 10 reasons why – with some concessions - I’m standing by brainstorming (which, for convenience, I’ve shortened to BS.). You don’t need to have read the article to follow my reasoning but you should.

UNREALISTIC CLAIMS: NOT ALL BRAINSTORMS ARE CAT 4 HURRICANES

The key to success is setting low expectations more often than management writers care to admit. Some of the failures of BS described in the article are failures to meet the extravagant claims made on its behalf. Coming to work sober enhances your performance if you normally show up drunk but sobriety does not appear in articles like “5 Sure Fire Ways to Win That Promotion” and “7 Things Great Leaders Do Every Day”. BS will not import Apollo 13’s – neither movie nor mission – frenzied creativity into your factory. It won’t supersize your brain or even shampoo it. But, properly managed, it can lower barriers to new ideas and analysis.

BS WORKS BETTER FOR SOME THAN OTHERS BUT THERE ARE WAYS TO ALLAY THAT

It is true that some people think more creatively alone in a quiet room than in front of a flip chart with twenty other people shouting and waving their arms. There are BS techniques that accommodate diverse ways of creative thought – sometimes called ideation (though not by me). More about BS techniques later.

GROUPTHINK

Yes, BS tends to promote groupthink. But groupthink is only a problem when you jump to conclusions. It’s great after all the options have been considered and a collective decision made. Then we call it unity of purpose.

It is also true that group discussion can be a form of introvert suppression. Solitary thinkers are less likely to fall prey to groupthink – thinking aloud in groups is their idea of hell - but they aren’t immune to tunnel vision. If anything, they are more prone to it because there is no one to challenge them. Groupthink is just shared tunnel vision. The best antidote to tunnel vision is a well-managed discussion so that everyone – introverts included – contributes fully and challenges implicit assumptions. Again, this goes the need for a variety of BS techniques.

BS GETS BETTER WITH PRACTICE

I can’t play piano but neither pianos nor piano technique are to blame. When I owned a piano I didn’t practice.

As the opening story illustrates, BS gets better with practice and enhances all deliberations.

THINKING DOESN’T STOP WHEN BS STOPS

Don’t be too quick to conclude BS doesn’t work for some people just because they don’t contribute during the session. I had a senior manager who seldom said much during brainstorming. But a day or two later he would say “I’ve been thinking about that idea, and I think this might work better…” and generally it was better. So it wasn’t that brainstorming didn’t work for him; quite the opposite it worked for days after it ended for the rest of us. He was one of my most highly valued senior staff because his careful sifting of ideas was a perfect complement to my approach to problems which is very like a machine gunner’s approach to enemy infantry. I need a flywheel. The managers who worried me most were the ones who wanted to run off and immediately implement whatever popped out of my mouth. People like me.

BS HAS NO MONOPOLY

There is no universal innovation tool. BS is a meeting with custom rules of order. There are lots of ways to come up with new ideas. And BS isn’t always best. Different methods may work best in combination. The fellow I mentioned in the preceding paragraph is a good example of BS and solitary reflection working in tandem to produce exceptional results.

SET THE TABLE AND DON’T WASH UP IMMEDIATELY AFTER

BS doesn’t have to be formally invoked. This post opened with a story where BS worked because it wasn’t invoked but that was because good BS practice was part of the culture.

BS works best as part of a continuum of processes for informed decision making. I like Eight Rules to Brilliant Brainstorming because it reminds us to think outside the session. Here is rule 3 for example:

3. DO INDIVIDUAL BRAINSTORMING BEFORE AND AFTER GROUP SESSIONS

Alex F. Osborn's 1950s classic, Applied Imagination, which popularized brainstorming, gave sound advice: Creativity comes from a blend of individual and collective ``ideation.'' This means building in time for people to think and learn about the topic before the group brainstorm, as well as time to reflect about what happened after the meetings.

BS HAS OTHER BENEFITS

Measuring BS solely by the number of new ideas generated in the session – which admittedly is what it claims to excel at – overlooks other benefits such as:

• Team building,

• Appreciation of diversity,

• Improved deliberations even when not formally brainstorming,

• Openness to novel ideas as worthy of consideration and as building blocks,

• Assumptions challenged by a variety of perspectives,

• People are more likely to accept decisions they don’t agree with if they have participated and heard the reasons.

Of all these reasons I came to appreciate the last one most. It is nice to think that everyone will agree with all decisions all the time, but they won’t. There is a vast difference between having people in your organization who don’t agree with a decision and don’t understand it, and people who don’t agree but do understand. Just as there is a vast difference between the level of commitment of a person who feels heard and one who feels ignored. That’s why the previous post Facilitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery ended with Lord Chesterfield’s insight that “Many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.”

THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE RIGHT JOB

The most important thing to remember is that brainstorming is a specialized tool. That isn’t an argument against brainstorming, it’s an argument for careful tool selection. If you want a debate followed by a recorded vote use Robert’s Rules of Order. Robert’s is not group decision making. It is a process for aggregating individual decisions. It is not much interested in “ideation” or the long-term functioning of the group.

So what?

I like brainstorming because it is democratic as far as ideas are concerned, and authoritarian when it comes to participant behaviours. The problems start when it is promoted as a lively and fun auction in which ideas bid each other up to tremendous heights of creativity. That is bound to disappoint.

There are three principles when considering brainstorming:

• there are lots of ways to do it,

• if you don’t observe a few simple rules don’t blame brainstorming,

• the “rules” are good techniques for any discussion.

Failure to follow good practice – allowing one or two people to dominate the conversation or allowing analysis or ridicule – is not a failure of BS. It’s a failure to implement BS. Brainstorming doesn’t need to be formally invoked. I used some of the techniques so often that I slipped in and out of them, only later realizing it when I wondered why an exchange had gone well. And, when exchanges hadn’t gone well, I often found it was because I hadn’t followed the “rules”.

Science has ostensibly refuted the inflated claims for brainstorming but treat the Lear article as cautionary not determinative. If brainstorming doesn’t work for your team, don’t use it. But don’t discard it until you’ve tried and practiced different techniques. That’s the next:

Write drunk, edit sober: brainstorming techniques

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1. Groupthink, The brainstorming myth, by Jonah Lehrer. Annals of Ideas January 30, 2012. Unfortunately, trouble was brewing for Mr. Lehrer. Behind the Scenes of the Jonah Lehrer’s Scandal