That phrase seems to be reverberating a lot these days through the media-scape and halls of business schools. I first heard—read it—it about two years ago in a long article in one of those only-for-smart-people-East-coast magazines. My latest book was just completed and headed for the printing presses—HATCH!: Brainstorming Secrets of a Theme Park Designer.
My first reaction was, “HUH? What art they talking about?” Brainstorming doesn’t work? I did not have to read many paragraphs to uncover their bias, they had done a study ...at a university. Ergo, they must be correct, “studies show …“ Don’t even think about contradicting them. Do you have a study?
Except I had thirty years of my own experience, teaching and facilitating my “7 Agreements of Brainstorming” with a wide array of corporate, non-profit, and faith-based groups that showed me that their study was ...what’s the word I’m looking for ...ah, yes, wrong.
I have seen brainstorming work at Apple, IBM, the Salvation army, the staff of the largest church in America, successful restaurant chains, publishers, movie studies, camping professionals, a small radio station, and organizations who make objects that are currently orbiting this planet. And for the next two weeks we will make it work in day-long workshops all over the Philippines. (More about that in a minute.)
As sales for HATCH! remains solid, and growing, the “brainstorming doesn’t work” meme keeps popping up across the media-scape. When it does I knock it down like a former Whack-A-Mole champ of the county fair.
So, when a friend sent me the link to yet another online video with yet-another-professorial-postilation against brainstorming, I figured now may be as good a time as any to weigh in. The fellow in the video (we never see him, only too many minutes of not-very-interesting graphics as his dry narrative drones on. He believes that an individual, sitting alone in their cubicle, can do better than a group of boisterous extroverts yammering on. But what about the poor, patient introverts, he moans. “How do they get a word in edgewise?” (Read my book, Dr. Silly.) “No studies exist to show that brainstorming works.” He proclaims.
I don’t need an academic (“pencils-down-when-you-finish”) study to tell me that what I’ve been doing for more thanthirty year is effective. (And all that is after ten years of doing it Disney: as an Imagineer, designing theme parks and coaching executives from thirty-two Disney divisions. My “study” is the hundreds of teams and thousands of hours I have done this, post-Disney.
The "sitting alone thinking about a problem" cannot possibly produce as many ideas as a creative thinking group. I have done both, effectively. But by far the best outcomes I’ve been involved in are the product of a team of intro & extra “verts” bouncing hundreds of ideas off of each other and growing them into concepts and solutions far grander and more elegant that anything any one of us might have hatched, alone, in our thinking tower.
The online professor says extraverts overwhelm introverts. But in HATCH!— Agreement No.1— I address that head on: “Start a Fire.” I always contact everyone (but especially the introverts) to start thinking before team creative thinking begins. In fact, at Imagineering I’d meet, one-on-one, with each team member and encourage them to come prepared with lots and lots of ideas. Introverts love that and arrive full of energy and creative participation.
In HATCH! I outline the role of the facilitator in any brainstorming session to notice who is not participating verbally, stop the “talkers” long enough to ask the “thinkers,” “What are you thinking?” IT WORKS. No one is overwhelmed.
With every speaker, expert, author I have heard who says “brainstorming doesn’t work” upon further examination they are NOT describing actual brainstorming. They are talking about BAD brainstorming. Of course BAD anything is worse and less effective than the GOOD, effective, and more powerful versions. I call it “playful arguing with snacks on the table.
These guys make me crazy …they need a study to prove ...anything. Whatever happened to common sense and trusting your own experiences.
When I hear about any study on any subject my first thought is “Does this align with common sense and my own experience?” If it doesn’t, the study is usually flawed in some way.
You and I do not need a graph, a book, or a video (with uninspiring graphics) by a Harvard Business School professor to give us their brainiac alternative to a team of people looking at a problem and imagining hundreds …thousands …of possible solutions.
If you have not-yetread HATCH!, you can download a FREE PDF of the opening pages (including the complete first chapter) in the “What’s Brewing” section at the top of this blog, just under the photo of me and few friends having tea.
Then think about inviting me to teach your team, organization, non-profit on how they can go not just from good to great, butbeyond. whatever is next, why not make it the best you can imagine, together?
• • • • •
Last September I was contacted by someone who had been in one of my full-day “CURIOSITY TOUR” workshops at a big convention, fifteen year ago. She was contacting me to ask if I was still doing that work and ...would I be interested in coming to the Philippines to present workshops? Before I finished reading her DM on Facebook I hit the reply button and wrote “So far the answer is YES!”
I leave this Friday, 2 May, for a twenty hour series of flights through Japan (to change planes.) I will be in Manilla, Iloilo, and Batac—including a full day with the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Manila. If you are a believer, please pray for my safety, health, and that I will present just what everyone can use in their organization. If you are not a “believer” ...think of me and smile very loud.
I am excited, nervous (in all the best ways), and very grateful for the fortune that comes my way ...daily.
I will be posting up dates from the “Treasure Islands of the Pacific” here in the Tea Blog with links on my Facebook pages and Twitter (@mcnairwilson.)
