by Patrick J. McKenna

Getting the best from your group's collective thinking.

There will undoubtedly be times during your tenure as a practice group leader when you will be called upon to set a direction for your group, help improve your group's profitability, enhance the quality of service provided clients, or have the responsibility for solving some challenging internal problem.

As practice leader you may be tempted to just simply proceed to think through your options and take action on your own. A wise practice leader knows intuitively that the degree to which you involve other members of your group broadens the input, fosters even more ideas, and gains energy and buy-in to the solutions, from the people you are going to want to involve in helping you implement those ideas.

As Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist was known to have once said: The best way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas - and throw the bad ones away. And the best way for you to generate a lot of ideas is known as Brainstorming; a method for getting a large number of ideas from your group in a relatively short time. Brainstorming follows a process of generating as many ideas as possible without stopping to evaluate them.

The only problem with brainstorming...is that everyone thinks they already know how to do it.

I am constantly amazed at how few firms actively engage in continual brainstorming with their people and how many of those that do, think it a fairly trivial, low-level exercise. I'm becoming convinced that those who think that brainstorming is mundane have come to that conclusion largely because they either fail to generate many ideas during their brainstorming sessions (forgetting that quantity trumps quality) or have a tendency to stop the process once having heard, what they believe to be, the first good idea.

Indeed, a survey conducted by one of the top accounting firms disclosed that 70% of businesspeople claimed to use brainstorming within their organizations. However, that same survey then went on to reveal that 76% of those who used brainstorming, admitted that they engage in brainstorming rather infrequently -- less than once a month. From my experience in a wide variety of professional firms, I would be willing to bet that the frequency of brainstorming, in firms like yours, is even lower.

What many practice leaders fail to take into account is that brainstorming is an art that improves over time with constant usage. You are always learning. At IDEO, the world's leading design consultancy, general manager Tom Kelley claims that brainstorming is practically a religion, one the firm practices every day. Kelley says, Most people are familiar with the fundamentals - like sticking to one conversation at a time and building on the ideas of others -- but it takes extra effort if you want a great brainstorm with valuable results.

This paper then, is intended to serve as an aide-memoire for you on some of the substantive concepts inherent in learning how to lead a great brainstorming session with your group, as well as provide some variations and useful supplementary techniques. So book your favorite conference room, order up some Krispie Kremes, get your team together, and brainstorm up some possible solutions to that important issue that has been nagging at you.

Planning Your Session

One of the first things that you are going to want to determine is whether indeed you need to employ a brainstorming session at all. As mentioned, brainstorming should be used when you need to generate lots of new ideas and solutions. It need not be used for analysis or for decision making. You may need to analyze and judge your group's ideas but this is done afterwards and the analysis does not involve brainstorming techniques.

If you decide to proceed with brainstorming, choose a comfortable venue free from unwanted interruptions. One of your firm's meeting rooms may work for most sessions. However, if you are having the group focus on some specific strategic topic of significant importance, you may want to get out of the office altogether. Everyone should be given a notepad so that they can write down those thoughts that occur to them while in the thick of hearing ideas shouted out by other colleagues.

Again, if your topic is strategic in nature, or would benefit from having a creative flow or broader range of ideas then might be available from just the members of your practice team, you may want to consider also including people from different backgrounds. You could invite colleagues from other areas of your firm, clients who could offer some interesting insights, or even other professionals or academics who have relevant but different experiences with the area in question.

Finally, you need to decide who will facilitate your brainstorming session. This individual should introduce the session, keep an eye on time, and ensure the brainstorming guidelines are observed. Their job is to facilitate the session, see that it runs smoothly, and insure that the participants feel comfortable and join in the process. They will also be responsible for restarting the creative process if it slows down. The facilitator doesn't have to be you as the practice leader, but whoever it is needs to be well briefed in running your group's brainstorming session.

Leading Your Brainstorming Session

A brainstorming process can go a long way to tapping the imagination and creativity of your group. Those who may be concerned that such a creative process will lack substance can be assured that the process merely creates a more imaginative menu and that the subsequent ordering from that menu will be executed with wisdom and discernment.

If all agree to be highly disciplined about getting to potential action ideas and refraining from engaging in lengthy discussions and debates, you can devote about forty minutes to each topic you choose to have the group focus on.

In some professions, such as management consulting and public relations, the brainstorming process is quite comfortable. Many of these practitioners employ the process in their work with their own clients. In other professions such as law and accounting, some may have engaged in brainstorming, but it is not a common activity.

Here are the sequential steps that you need to follow:

STEP 1: INTRODUCTION:

You should commence your brainstorming exercise by addressing a few basic questions that are likely preoccupying the minds of your team members. You need only spend about ten minutes on this, but it is important that you give the members of your group a context within which to support your asking them to participate. Here are the questions you need to address:

• Why is this an important (opportunity or problem) for us to work on?

Start by composing a well-honed statement which describes the opportunity or problem that you want your group to concentrate on, and what you are trying to achieve. This statement should never suggest what a likely solution might be, as that would only serve to hinder your group's ideas. Define the problem or opportunity clearly before you start to brainstorm.

In some instances you may want to get your group's input on what is the real problem here? You may very well discover that it is part of a bigger problem and, subsequently, deserves to be broken into smaller pieces, so that each piece may be tackled incrementally.

You need to let your group know what will happen if we are able to take advantage of this opportunity or solve this problem. For example, you might say, We want as many ideas as possible from everyone on how we could develop an even stronger relationship with this client. We need to solidify our relationships now as a number of our competitors are making some aggressive moves to nurture getting this client's work. And the loss of this client would adversely impact our group significantly.

Frame the task and make sure everyone understands the goal of your brainstorming exercise.

• What, historically, is important for our group to know?

Briefly provide only the truly critical information. As a further example, I need to let all of you know that this client has already received a written proposal from one of our competitors and invitations to lunch from another. And unfortunately, you will remember that they were not over-the-top on the last project we did for them. We need some immediate remedial action.

• How will decisions be made as a result of this brainstorming?

Your group members need to know in advance, if the ideas generated from their brainstorming are simply for your consideration as practice leader, or are the ideas going to undergo review and selection by the group itself. You need to manage their expectations for the outcome of their efforts.

• What do you, as the practice leader, hope to achieve from this effort?

You need to define your hopes for the group's exercise. You might say, I'm looking for you to generate a minimum of 40 ideas from which I'm hopeful that we will have a few great ideas to further review and refine.

The intent of this introduction is to provide just enough information to stimulate the brainstorming, without overloading or constraining your team.

STEP 2: REVIEW THE BRAINSTORMING GROUND RULES

Before you even commence generating ideas, it helps to have some ground rules. With groups of highly educated professionals, our natural propensity is to enjoy engaging in lengthy intellectual discussions, while exercising our natural gift for being highly critical and analytical. This critical and analytical propensity is most often manifested within professional firms through some participant shooting a zinger at some other member's idea.

Fostering a No Zingers Allowed atmosphere requires that professionals learn to recognize the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) behaviors that impede effective brainstorming. In most situations, building this awareness is all that may be needed to significantly reduce zinger-type behavior.

The spirit of any brainstorming session can make it or break it. Here are a few of the more common zinger-type behaviors:

• Verbal Put-Downs. It is a common occurrence within professional firms to experience a meeting where shooting-down ideas is the routine behavior. The put-down can vary from a lighthearted jest that provokes group laughter to the deadly serious comment that embarrasses. The result may be completely unintentional, but even the zinger accidentally fired does significant damage. Few ideas survive in a take-no-prisoners approach to brainstorming.

Meanwhile, defending oneself against some so-called harmless remark only serves to get you labeled as overly sensitive. The consequence then becomes a revenge ploy, where at the first opportunity, we blast others' ideas in retaliation. And everyone plays along with the game. The ability to generate any meaningful ideas is now lost.

• The Unintended Idea Killer. One important objective for any practice leader is to instill enthusiasm. It becomes difficult to accomplish when we unthinkingly fall into the habit of liberally using the term but within our normal conversations. It may not be unusual to hear someone say to one of their colleagues; That's a good idea, but what I think we should do is . . . Now how enthusiastic would you feel being on the other end of that statement? You need to have your team avoid this great . . . but mode of communication. It takes a conscious effort to remove the buts, but an effort that pays dividends.

• Non-Verbal Put-Downs. We all know that words are not the only way we communicate. As one experienced facilitator expressed it, A new idea is delicate; it can be killed by a sneer or a yawn, or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow. Negative inflections and facial expressions can easily communicate criticism of any new idea. Between the victims who retreat into their shells and the ones who refocus on retaliating, it takes but minutes to move a brainstorming exercise completely off track.

The consequence of either verbal or non-verbal zingers is for wounded individuals to shut down and stop contributing ideas. (At this moment, as you read these words, somewhere in a professional firm, there is a practice group meeting happening where the most astonishing idea has occurred to someone. It started as a crazy thought but as the meeting progressed, it got more and more brilliant. But that professional chose to remain quiet and the idea is lost forever.)

It is therefore imperative that you have your group agree upon some sensible ground rules before they begin. Now fortunately, you need not come across as an ogre or concern yourself with devising those rules, as there are already some commonly accepted guidelines for brainstorming. You task then, as the facilitator, is merely to review these guidelines and ask for everyone's agreement to either modify or behave in accordance with the rules.

You might explain that the ideas your group members are being asked for are both to serve as possible solutions, but also to stimulate the ideas of others. Therefore, you need to tell them that you will be expecting bizarre, weird, strange and impossible ideas, that may not in the final analysis be so strange. And are highly likely to spark more workable solutions.

The accepted rules for this brainstorming activity are usually some variation on the following:

1 - Say everything that comes to mind.

Yes, I know that you were schooled to think before you open your mouth. This is going to take a bit of an adjustment. Ideas should be advanced both as solutions and also as a basis to spark others. Even seemingly absurd ideas can spark off better ones. It is important to emphasize to your group that the 'wilder' the idea the better. Shout out bizarre and unworkable ideas to see what they spark off. No idea is too ridiculous. Remember that your objective is to go for quantity of ideas at this point; and narrow down the list later. All activities should be geared towards extracting as many ideas as possible in a given period of time. Tom Kelley at IDEO finds that a hundred ideas per hour usually indicates a good, fluid brainstorming session.

2 - No discussion.

Many professionals have this tendency to put everything they say into a discussion sandwich: first they present the general concept, then they give you the idea, then they rationalize why that was a good idea. You need to have your group members avoid their stories, discussions, and elaboration on how the idea could be done or how great it might be.

Another variation on this same theme is the verbose energy killer. You group is gathered for a brainstorm. Everyone is being encouraged to offer up ideas. One of your members begins to offer their idea and we have all experienced the endless rambler. This professional goes on and on in presenting their idea until eventually they have sucked the energy right out of the session. Some people just seem genetically incapable of keeping it short.

As the facilitator, you need to encourage and enforce everyone keeping it succinct!

3 - Make no value-judgment comments, either positive or negative.

It is often helpful to remind your people of the three questions that successful entrepreneurs adopt when confronting a new idea: how do I make this work?, what's the worst that could happen?, and where is my back door (exit) if the worst that could happen actually happens? Then remind them of the usual response among professionals to a new idea: Not a nano-second passes before we hear thirteen reasons why that isn't going to work.

4 - Record all comments so that they can be seen and get down lots of ideas.

Keep in mind that your objective here is quantity not quality. And if Janice gives you an idea and you write it down, and then Chuck gives you an idea and you don't record it, Chuck is probably thinking either I guess my idea wasn't good enough or why kind of idiot facilitator is this!

It is also critical to capture peoples' words using exactly the phraseology that was just spoken. Changing the phrasing can change the meaning. (It can also annoy the person who offered the idea.) To assist in the accurate recording of ideas, ask participants to start with a headline that encapsulates their key thought in a single crisp sentence. They can then go on to elaborate, while the recorder writes down their idea. (This also allows others to hear the central thought, make connections of their own during the elaboration, and come up with the next headlined idea.)

If the headline goes on too long and you lose your colleagues exact words, try to paraphrase what he or she said, but be sure to go back and make sure that you've got the idea recorded correctly.

5 - Encourage participation and build on each other's ideas.

Build and expand on the ideas of others. Try and add extra thoughts to each idea. Use other people's ideas as inspiration for your own. Combine several of the suggested ideas to explore new possibilities.

One of the great myths associated with brainstorming is having people think that they will recognize a good idea when they see it. The truth is that it is extremely rare that a breakthrough new idea is recognized for its brilliance when first uttered. New ideas almost always are flawed in some way when they first appear. Or as Albert Einstein once put it, If at first a new idea doesn't seem totally absurd, there is no hope for it.

Now these are the accepted rules for brainstorming, but that should not prevent you from modifying any of these or adding further guidelines dependant upon your particular circumstances. I recently had a gathering of 42 professionals, working in groups of seven people, in various areas throughout a large conference room. One of our ground rules was that if more than one of the six groups generated the same idea, it was to be discarded. People often think that the duplication of an idea validates its brilliance. How often have you heard the old notion, great minds think alike? But if we are really intent on stimulating innovation, differentiation, and wealth-creating initiatives, then we must except the fact that great minds have different ideas. It is only lemmings who think alike. After all, if this group of only 42 professionals were largely thinking of the same ideas, aren't the chances high that their competitors were already working on those ideas?