High Road Communications

Don’t start a boardroom brainstorm in the boardroom. It is important to manage the process (if you are the organizer) and show up prepared (if you are a participant):

1) Management starts days ahead of the brainstorm. It only works if you apply discipline to your process. To think outside the box you first have to know what’s inside the box.

2) Prepare and send out a brainstorm briefing. If you take care of the preparation and anticipate the biggest questions, you make it a lot easier for everyone else to free up their minds and focus on creative ideas.

3) Choose your participants. Not everybody in the company needs to come to every brainstorm. Everybody has a different background and a different way of thinking. Put together a good mix of people.

4) Ask everyone to come prepared with a few ideas based on your briefing.

5) Facilitating the brainstorm meeting is critical. Just like a good moderator improves a talk show or press conference, you need somebody to be leading the meeting and keeping it focused.

6) The biggest mistake made in brainstorms, and meetings in general, is keeping the participants thinking in the same direction. Brainstorms are made up of two essential elements: a) diverging out to search for new ideas; and b) picking an idea you want to converge on and exploring the possibilities and scope of that idea. If everyone in the room is converging and diverging separately then they’re not working toward the same end goal at the same time. You need to know how to run a good session.

7) There are a number of different brainstorm techniques. Apply them. It works. I found the techniques that sounded the worst on paper actually helped me come up with some of the best stuff.

Keep in mind that a boardroom brainstorm is just a productivity tool. You don’t need a team brainstorm for everything. Choose wisely!

But we have used this approach for internal meetings and for joint brainstorms with our clients, and it has been quite a success. Not only does it help us to come up with new ideas, it also allows us to do it without wasting time or resources. And it makes it more fun for everyone.

Brainstorming techniques are just part of a service that my colleagues Natasha Compton and Hugh Scholey have started. Take a look at our Innovation Strategy Sessions or contact High Road for more information.

[This is an edited and shortened version of an earlier post on Martin’s personal blog]