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How To: The Perfect Storm

By Sarah Heeringa, 2005-12-12 01:00:00
Originally published in Idealog #1, page 94
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Idealog January/February 2006, page 94

Where do great ideas come from? Idealog learns how to put brains in gear

When leading UK software developer Wax Info was looking to outsource a project for a key Japanese customer, the company turned to Black Coffee Software, a little-known firm from the distant shores of Wellington. The partnership was so successful that it led to Wax Info being recently awarded the UK’s top outsourcing award.

Just one more example of how the best outsourcing contracts can be secured from anywhere? Yes. It’s also an example of the power of that oft-used and much abused problem-solving technique—brainstorming.

Craig Wilson, Black Coffee’s director of development, says brainstorming is fundamental not only to successes like the Wax job, but to all innovative Black Coffee projects. Wilson, an engineer, is not talking of the animated arm-waving, free-wheeling, let’s-think-up-the-most-wild-ideas-we-can kind of activity that often passes for brainstorming. At Black Coffee, brainstorming is a tightly controlled idea-generation process that doesn’t try and solve all a project’s problems at once. Wilson says you arrive at smart solutions to your client’s problems much the same way you drink a pot of coffee: one sip at a time.

Brainstorming is not new—Socrates used dialogue to generate interesting thoughts. In the late 1930s the ‘thinking-via-discussion’ concept was expanded, renamed and reborn as a management tool by advertising executive Alex Osborne. On the premise that it’s easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one, Osborne formulated the method of brainstorming we’re familiar with today: a facilitated, group problem-solving technique involving the spontaneous contribution of new ideas from everyone.

What’s less known is that brainstorming is not only misunderstood and misused, but when done badly it’s worse than useless. “Brainstorming is definitely over-used and over-valued,” says Roger Slater, general manager of Auckland marketing ‘engineers’ Chisel.

Bad idea

What’s so wrong with traditional brainstorming? For starters, it doesn’t catch most ideas when they happen. According to new research into entrepreneurial thinking conducted by Sony Ericsson, 81% of those surveyed had their best ideas outside the office—most often in places like the car or in bed.

Far from stimulating fresh thinking, the social rules governing groups frequently stifle it. Unless participants are chosen with care they’ll be unwilling to suggest a solution due to self-consciousness or fear of criticism. The Office-type staff relationships can mean underlings are particularly reluctant to offer up their best ideas to be criticised, stolen or ignored. Then there’s the old war of the sexes. “In some cultures men still do most of the talking, just as within certain business cultures some individuals are allowed to make comment but not others,” says Gregory Kolt, Professor of Health Science at AUT. Factoring in such nuances, Kolt sometimes separates men and women when setting up brainstormers, takes care that a range of socio-economic and education levels are represented, and at times matches the ethnicity of the facilitator to the group.

Buzzword-busting

‘Brainstorming’ has its critics. De Bono prefers the term ‘brain sailing’. Chisel’s Roger Slater prefers ‘idea-ation’. Now ‘brainstorming’ could join ‘office girl’ in the dictionary of yesteryear. Whenever the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Belfast gets together to let the creative juices flow, the staff have resolved to call it a ‘thought-shower’.

Brainstorming is counter-productive when it becomes a social challenge to get a word in edgeways, listening to others takes up time and social rules take over, says neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield. In an essay for the Space For Ideas website, Greenfield makes the point that one big problem with the triggering of ideas by other people is that they have to be “just the right sort of people”, where the niceties of social interaction can be put to one side.

“A person also has to be literally on your wavelength … so one can have the confidence to express oneself freely and use a kind of shorthand: the kind that can only come from knowing someone so well you don’t have to explain the underlying premises,” she says.

Traditional brainstorming encourages the uninhibited splurge of ideas. The approach, as originally suggested by Osborne, is to think up as many ideas as possible regardless of how ridiculous they might seem, and to get every idea out of our heads. The aim is to generate more ideas, to build on each other’s thoughts, and to encourage the wild and crazy. Brainstorming in this way requires us to defer judgement; we go back and examine the ideas later. The theory is that by releasing our minds from the analytical mode of thinking, we liberate our natural capacity to synthesise.

But does this approach really generate quality ideas that relate usefully to the particular problem we’re trying to solve? Are the ideas created insightful and workable, or is their only value that they’re new?

“Far too many people believe that creativity is just being different,” the authority on thinking about thinking, Edward de Bono, says on the Space For Ideas site. He calls this tendency ‘crazytivity’. “Wearing your hat upside down on your head may be different but has no real value unless you wanted to collect bird droppings,” he says.

How to do it

Given the pitfalls, it’s amazing that brainstorming ever succeeds. Here’s how it is done at Black Coffee.

Brainstorming works best when it’s conducted systematically, says Wilson. The first step in the process is to establish boundaries by determining exactly what the client requires. In Black Coffee’s case this means establishing factors such as budget, timeframe, the client’s technical environment and the technical architecture of the software structure.

Ten ways to kill an idea

Winston Churchill once said: “No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time steady eye.” Negative comments discourage ideas and wilt that precious moment of inspiration. Here’s a top-ten list of death-phrases to ban:

“If it ain’t broke …”

“But we’ve always done it like this.”

“Any idea of the extra work that will create?”

“It isn‘t your responsibility.”

“That would never work because …”

“Already been tried … no good.”

“It’ll be much too expensive.”

“That’s already been done overseas.”

“We‘ve already tried that before.”

“Bloody creatives! You’re all the same.” 

Next, everyone who is likely to be involved in the project is assembled. Typically this includes the developers, project manager, analysts, software testers—and a wildcard, people who won’t be involved in the implementation. A table is added (in the interests of constructive group dynamics this is ideally a round one), a facilitator (usually the project manager), the obligatory white board, blank pads … oh, and plenty of strong hot coffee.

Ideas may flow fast but all potential solutions are checked against the constraining brief for fit and pragmatism. Inappropriate models are abandoned and if necessary further research is arranged before an aspect of the project is taken to the next stage. “We tend to hold these sessions in the morning, and we don’t let them run over 90 minutes,” says Wilson.

It sounds very smooth and efficient, but all this talk of tight briefs suggests a little loosening up could be required. Surely paying so much attention to detail risks stifling the very elusive creative spark we’re after?

Not at all, say the gurus. “A person whose hands are tied can’t play the violin,” says De Bono, “but cutting the rope does not make that person a violinist”.

What works best, says Chisel’s Slater, is a clear, objective process designed to create not just any ideas, but better ideas. “It’s not about what’s right or wrong, but about what’s more right,” he says.

Like Wilson, Slater applies a systematic approach. “A worthwhile outcome requires that you have a rigorous process in place to identify, predict and access trends,” he says. “You feed this information into the framework and develop a long-term goal.”

Session participants are selected carefully according to target market. Additional contributors include extremes such as the ‘perfect’ customer and someone the client typically doesn’t want as a customer. Get the combinations right and the opposites in the group feed off each other in a really positive way, says Slater. “Guided by the right processes, contributors get into a kind of vacuum, a headspace of unbiased, pragmatic thinking.” 

Seven Brainstorming Tips

Creativity is not a “mystical gift”, says De Bono. Here are seven tips to foster clever ideas:

Know what you seek

The quality of the outcome is directly proportional to the questions you ask as facilitator. Before starting you need to establish the reason for the session and determine how and why the information will be used, says AUT’s Kolt.

One approach is to write up the objective of the session in question form, such as "How can we …?" or "What can be done to …?"

Get your timing right

Allocate time for creative thinking at times when people are sparking—not at 3pm when many of us hit an energy slump due to low blood sugar levels.

Bring your right brain (and attitude)

De Bono suggests trying to pinpoint areas that need new thinking, and drawing up a ‘Creative Hit List’ which lays out target areas. Set up an ideas file on a shared directory, or some other method for collecting and communicating new ideas. Here at Idealog this takes the form of a private blog anyone can contribute to.

Feed your ideas

Dehydration can affect concentration levels which is why water-coolers are part of the modern office architecture, but there’s much more potent brain food out there. Oily fish, for example, contains omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. One of these acids, docosahexaenoic acid, is a major constituent of the human brain and retina and has been linked with brain function. Following that logic, you might consider catering your next brainstorming session with sardine snacks or shot glasses of fish oil.

Fish breath aside, it’s easy to overlook the contribution of food as a creative aid. Neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield likes to encourage an exchange of ideas within her research team through weekly get-togethers over food. Food immediately puts people in a more social and relaxed mode, lowers their guard and helps “make the important associations that characterise creativity”, she says.

Use props and stimulants

Space matters—if you want to promote hearty intercourse don’t have your participants sitting stiffly side by side. Nor do you want them awkwardly eyeballing each other across a blank expanse of floor. Gather around a table with something in the middle for people to look at when talking, or hold brainstorming sessions where there are sofas or other furniture you can arrange in a circle.

Appoint a scribe

Free up the facilitator by giving someone else the job of capturing the group’s ideas. Interactive whiteboards are ideal since ideas are displayed on the whiteboard surface (which can stimulate additional ideas), edited and saved for future reference.

Try giving everyone clean white pads and pens. “There is still something challenging about the completely blank sheet of paper that just begs you to write on it,” says Greenfield.

Do, do, do follow-up!

Just like it’s vital to use a facilitator when brainstorming, someone also needs to be in charge of the process when the session ends. When creativity is everyone’s business the tendency is for nothing to happen, says De Bono, so designate someone as a ‘new ideas champion’.

“Nothing is more motivating to creative people than to have their ideas recognised,” he says. And nothing is more demoralising than volunteering great ideas that will never be actioned. Even if an idea is never used, it should be acknowledged.

Garry Bond, the general manager of New Zealand Tourism Online, uses a dead-simple method to achieve this end. Bond keeps a ‘Quality Improvement Book’ on or near his desk. “Anytime someone comes up with a good idea we register it in the book, entering the date, who thought of it and the action required. There are some criteria we apply to new ideas before actioning: is it core business? What resources does it require? And, is it what we are good at? Then after ideas are implemented we tick them off in the book and send out an email letting everyone know,” says Bond. At times there are two or three entries a month, other times there are six or seven. The payoff, says Bond, is a positive work environment and feedback from staff that they can see their ideas being implemented. The approach is also paying off in company terms: in September 2005, NZ Tourism Online cleaned up both the New Zealand Tourism Award and the Telecom’s People’s Choice Tourism Award—for the second time.

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