Generating Better Ideas and More of Them! (Facilitation Friday #29)
Seven tips for enhancing idea quantity and quality in facilitated discussions.
A brainstorming or idea generation meeting is one of the most common sessions people have to facilitate. Many are under-designed and as a result, often produce too few actionable ideas. Here are seven tips (many with links to additional background information) to increase the quantity and quality of ideas these sessions produce.
1. Specify the Job To Be Done
Open-ended blue-sky thinking has its place. But to accelerate more focused contributions in a brainstorming session or when asking for suggestions, specify the Job To Be Done.
Former Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen (now deceased) created the JTBD theory. It suggests that producing better ideas and innovations require organizations to understand what jobs end users want a product or service to do for them, the value they want to gain.
What does this mean for facilitation? Instead of asking for any random ideas about a topic or question, invite ideas that will produce specific results or value, the JTBD.
Instead of:
What are some ideas to help new members get connected to our community?
Try:
What are some ideas to help new members make at least five relevant community connections within one month of joining?
I often work with the group (either in advance via surveying or in real-time) to determine the desired results or value (JTBD) for any ideas generated. Be careful the resulting criteria determined for ideas it is not so prescriptive that it choke offs all creative thinking.
2. Rightsize the Question
IDEO’s Goldilocks Principle for questions can help facilitators avoid overly restrictive framing that impedes idea generation and is similar in spirit to the JTBD.
According to IDEO, good questions are neither too abstract and systemic or too specific and uninspiring. Instead they are just right, allowing for “enough scope for surprising, unexpected, creative exploration, and define a space that’s manageable to explore and tangible,” says Tim Brown, IDEO’s CEO.
Brown further notes that “The question should include who you want to serve, and the impact you want to make, but should never hint at a solution.” Notice how the reframed question in the JTBD tip (#1) fulfills these requirements.
3. Generate Questions, Not Answers: Q-Storming®
Sometimes the best answers are more questions. That’s one of the beliefs behind the approach known as Q-Storming®.
The concept is simple: instead of brainstorming ideas or answers, brainstorm possible questions for the area where you seek ideas. Having a more expansive list of possible questions to answer inevitably leads to a more expansive list of ideas generated than if only one question is used as a catalyst.
The list of questions generated also may broaden and diversify the sources looked to for inspiration and examples to draw on when actually generating ideas. I usually help groups prioritize the questions to explore from the more expansive list created, as well as introduce some of the additional questions when idea generation or energy lags.
4. Use Inclusive Processes
Idea generation sessions are less likely to produce a large number of higher quality ideas if participants to not perceive the conversation climate as equitable, inclusive, or safe for free expression. Your facilitation efforts will likely need to help interrupt what Edgar Schein describes as the natural status differential and deference that sometimes occurs in groups: “Most of us are so thoroughly acculturated that we are unaware of these rules and how scripted we are” (Humble Inquiry, first edition, p. 69).
Effective facilitation and the processes we utilize can help neutralize the power or status imbalances among participants—as well as their natural participation preferences—that might inhibit some individuals from freely contributing ideas.
Many facilitators have a default approach to brainstorming that heavily privileges extroverted participation: they pose a question and ask people to immediately shout out their ideas. If extroverts and/or those with status are first to share verbally, they may effectively mute others’ contributions.
At minimum, precede the verbal contributions with a brief period of silent reflection and idea generation that honors more introverted participants. Once they’ve noted ideas in writing, they are more apt to fully engage verbally.
Or skip the verbal process entirely. Have people note individual ideas on large index cards or Post-It ® notes and post them on a wall for others to review. Be sure to encourage participants to note and post additional ideas inspired by others’ contributions.
This format can be done online using virtual sticky notes from sites like Miro, Stormboard, or Cardsmith; contributing to a shared Google doc or an open Word file in a Zoom meeting; or gathered anonymously from individuals via SurveyMonkey or JotForm.
5. Leverage the Concepts Behind Ideas to Generate More Ideas
What can a facilitator do when a lull in idea generation occurs or when participants seem to have no ideas left to offer? I usually turn to the Concept Fan technique introduced by Edward de Bono is his book Serious Creativity.
The premise is simple: take a step back from any specific idea (or a question or JTBD framing) to identify the concepts behind it. Then brainstorm more ideas for those concepts. Each concept becomes a new catalyst for fresh thinking and more ideas.
Let’s look at the original framing from the JTBD example:
What are some ideas to help new members make at least five relevant community connections within one month of joining?
Taking a step back, at least three concepts in this framing are evident:
rapid onboarding of new members
new members acquiring value quickly
accelerating peer connections
Any or all three could now be used as framing to generate new ideas; i.e., How might we help members acquire value more quickly?
6. Use the How Might We Frame
It is not unusual in a brainstorming session for someone to preface an idea or question with “What if we?” Unfortunately, doing so often leads others to respond critically rather than with additional creative thinking.
Beginning a question with “How might we” implicitly presumes that you are going to create the value or engage in the activity specified in the rest of the question. What’s undetermined is how you might do so, not if you will.
It is a subtle shift in language that usually deters any critical thinking from surfacing. As a result, creative thinking can flow unimpeded and participants likely will generate more ideas.
7. Separate Idea Gathering from Idea Evaluation
It seems so obvious: focus first on the quantity of ideas (creative thinking) before evaluating them for quality (critical thinking). Yet the “there are no bad ideas” mantra of brainstorming is usually violated within the first few minutes.
Imagine participants have generated ideas silently on their own and you now want to gather those verbally.
“Gathering is the listening skill that helps participants build a list of ideas at a fast-moving pace,” according to Sam Kaner and his colleagues in the Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making (p. 47).
In this case, participants are indeed shouting out ideas to be captured on flipcharts for subsequent review. A few pointers:
If you say anything in response to the ideas shared, mirror more than paraphrase. Mirroring restates what others share almost verbatim; paraphrasing approximates others’ contributions and they may feel the need to edit or react.
Use physical gestures and/or a somewhat faster pace to impart and generate energy. If you’re going to use an extroverted process, you may as well facilitate in a more extroverted manner.
Have one (or preferably two people) flipcharting the ideas so that you can focus on drawing them out of participants without stopping to write.
Begin with (or strategically insert) a “go around” in which you collect one idea from each participant in rapid succession. Individuals either share an idea or pass if they have nothing to contribute at the moment.
Once sufficient ideas have been generated, those involved in evaluating them should all use the same rating criteria. When everyone applies the same decision-making rules or criteria, better choices usually result. This critical thinking stage of the process can occur immediately after the creative thinking/idea generation concludes or it could occur in a separate session.
Also think about who should be involved in the idea generation and evaluation stages. While organizations generally default to using the same people in both the creative and critical discussions, I often find it advantageous to think more strategically about who most needs (or is best equipped) to meaningfully contribute to the respective efforts. This sometimes leads to slightly different group compositions.
Bottom Line?
Increasing the quantity and quality of ideas a session produces requires intentional design and facilitation. Examine and refine every aspect of your gathering to make it easier to achieve this desirable goal. Think carefully about the group composition most likely to achieve the intended results and identify ways to support participants with whatever aspects of the session that might challenge or impede them making their best contributions.
Getting in Action
Reflect on effective idea generating or brainstorming sessions when you’ve been a participant or the facilitator. What lessons can be learned about what made them work? How might you adapt and apply those lessons to your current and future efforts?
You’re in the idea generating/creative thinking stage of a session and some participants keep jumping in with critical comments about proposed ideas. How would you respond? Work with the group to manage these undesirable interruptions?
Think about the in-person and online environments for meetings. How might you design each to be most conducive to a process hoping to produce a large number of high quality ideas? How might you leverage synchronous and asynchronous work to elicit people’s best thinking and make the most effective use of their time?
© Facilitate Better and Jeffrey Cufaude. All rights reserved.
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