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When we're confronting a vexing problem, we often gather a group to brainstorm. We're looking to get the best ideas as quickly as possible. I love seeing it happen—except for one tiny wrinkle. Group brainstorming usually backfires.
In brainstorming meetings, many good ideas are lost— and few are gained. Extensive evidence shows that when we generate ideas together, we fail to maximize collective intelligence. Brainstorming groups fall so far short of their potential that we get more ideas—and better ideas—if we all work alone. As the humorist Dave Barry quipped, "If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be: 'meetings.' " But the problem isn't meetings themselves—it's how we run them.
[...] Collective intelligence begins with individual creativity. But it doesn't end there. Individuals produce a greater volume and variety of novel ideas when they work alone. That means that they come up with more brilliant ideas than groups—but also more terrible ideas than groups. It takes collective judgment to find the signal in the noise and bring the best ideas to fruition.
Source: time.com
From HIDDEN POTENTIAL by Adam Grant
I am sure most of you have spent time "brain storming" ... was it productive or wasted time ?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Barenflimski on Wednesday October 25 2023, @10:08PM (5 children)
Brainstorming is great for some things. I've found over the years the group dynamics determine whether this is fruitful.
For example, if you have a group where one person tends to want to talk, end the session quickly so they can move on because they're "too busy", argues with other ideas, or otherwise disrupts the flow, you end up with a poor session. Most folks won't argue with this person. Most folks are not going to try to speak over this person. Most folks are not going to try to convince this person this session can determine whether you ultimately succeed or fail. Most folks will just go along.
I've had many successful brainstorming sessions. In the successful ones you state your end goal and then make a list of ideas. No ideas are bad. No ideas are stupid. You let everyone speak and don't argue any point no matter what you think right off of the top of your head. Do not rush these. Once you have the list, you can then address each point with regards to the goal.
What you find when you do it right is that you tend to see patterns emerge. There are always at least 2 lines of thinking. Everyone picks up on these. The ideas tend to flow once everyone can see the patterns. What I enjoy is when the "dumb ideas" that may have been shot down were really just an artifact of how someone was thinking as a step stone to a great idea.
The hardest part in most companies/groups is that everyone has different personal goals, they have different time frames, they have different experience, they have different personalities. Without patience from everyone, these are the things that screw up good brainstorming.
Of course with all of that being said, there is a lot to be said for going on a long quiet walk to clear ones head and come up with some good ideas when nothing else is working.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by coolgopher on Thursday October 26 2023, @12:54AM (4 children)
There are certainly stupid ideas. I'm grateful to be working in a team where we can happily call dumb ideas for what they are, without causing offense. More often than not, dumb ideas are prefixed with "okay, this is probably a stupid idea, but just in case...". As you said, sometimes stupid ideas lead to less stupid ones. That's no reason to not call the dumb ideas dumb however. Not calling things what they are leads to a bad culture in my experience. In my team, we're much happier with "no, but" instead of "yes, and".
(Score: 4, Informative) by tangomargarine on Thursday October 26 2023, @03:36AM (1 child)
It's always better to pitch all the simple dumb ideas out there first when troubleshooting, rather than spend 4 hours dissecting the system, only to find out you needed to powercycle the damn thing.
But yeah. History is littered with problems that could've been solved if somebody hadn't been afraid to speak up; one example that springs to mind is various airplane crashes where the copilot didn't want to contradict the pilot who had an incorrect perception of what was going on. So they changed the culture to make problem-solving in the air more cooperative.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 26 2023, @12:44PM
The whole "pilot in command, my decision is not to be questioned" is a good thing in the air, as long as the PIC is not an arrogant asshole.
There is a similar cultural challenge with M.D.s in medicine. I'm glad to hear that pilot training culture has matured. M.D. training should be too, but seems to actually be running more in the direction of selecting arrogant assholes for M.D
training and then developing and enhancing that arrogance through school, residency and practice.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday October 26 2023, @10:39AM
The "no calling ideas dumb" rule came about because the kinds of human-interest psych people who came up with the formal idea of "brainstorming" to describe these kinds of sessions thought that calling ideas dumb would convince people that had ideas to not say them. The really stupid level of this rule is the "you can't even call your own ideas stupid".
I'm not sure how right they are about the psych effect, but I do know that it can make the bad ideas last a lot longer than they should in decision processes.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 26 2023, @10:25PM
It really feels to me that a lot of these humorists have never actually worked in jobs complicated enough to actually need meetings to accomplish things.
And I say this as a person who despises meetings!