steering your brainstorming sessions from failure to success
Post on 22-Oct-2014
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5-step strategy for achieving better results from your creative thinking sessions. Increase the quality of outcomes and improve the engagement levels of participants.TRANSCRIPT
Steering Your Brainstorming Sessions from Failure to Success
December 2012
Do your organisation’s brainstorming sessions result in little more than brain drain?
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Traditional Brainstorming is ‘Anything Goes’
• People turn up, throw out ideas and go back to work...or maybe not, if the event has gone way over time.
• These sessions can result in little more than unusable ideas on paper.
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Traditional Brainstorming Sessions = Unproductive,
Waste of Time!
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Maybe it’s time to steer your brainstorming session in a
new direction.
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WiserChange™ would like to introduce you to brainsteering# -
a strategy for getting better results from your
creative thinking sessions.
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# A term introduced in the March 2011 McKinsey Quarterly
The following 5-step process will improve participants’ engagement levels and their perception of these
sessions.
More importantly, it will increase the
quality of outcomes.
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Are You Ready?
Let’s Learn to Brainsteer!
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Step 1: Draft Ideas and Set an Agenda
• Pick a theme or subject.
• Choose who should be involved.
• Request ideas in advance from those attending.
• Convert key ideas into an agenda with time limits.
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Step 2: Create Thought-Provoking Questions Related to Key Ideas from Step 1
• Questions should be open-ended and encourage your people to look at the given topic from a different or unfamiliar perspective.
• Apply real-life limitations to refine creative ideas and steer them into viable, realistic options.
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Step 3: Begin the Brainsteering Session and Stick to the Schedule
• Aim for the goal of capturing a few viable ideas.
• Stick to the agenda to ensure time doesn’t run over.
• Break participants into small groups when there are a number of ideas per topic.
• Have these groups explore 2 ideas and then report their results to the larger group.
• Provide participants a summary sheet to document their discussions. This formalises the creative process.
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Step 4: Agree on Actions and Socialise Them
• Have subgroups set the actions required for their allocated topic(s).
• After the session, socialise those agreed actions with key decision-makers and report back to the group.
• Allocate roles, responsibilities and actions to ideas that will be investigated further or implemented.
• Set a schedule for reporting back on progress and hold people accountable to their allocated actions.
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Step 5: Report Back
• Report back to the session stakeholders on outcomes of actions.
• This serves multiple purposes. You show that participants’ input was valued no
matter the outcome of those ideas. Participants gain a sense of pride when their
idea(s) are implemented. Organisational perceptions of “brainstorming
sessions” are improved. Organisational resistance to future creative
events is reduced.
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To read a more in-depth, detailed look at how to improve your brainstorming sessions…
• Visit the WiserChange™ blog and read, “How to run a half day workshop that will deliver some truly workable ideas.”
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Questions? Contact WiserChange™
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If you have questions about brainsteering, innovation or change management, please contact
the WiserChange™ team.
Phone - 612 9955 1212
www.wiserchange.comfacebook.com/WiserChangeConsultinglinkedin.com/company/wiserchange
@WiserChange
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