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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: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 26 2023, @02:14AM (1 child)
I worked for T.B.G. once (he was about 5'5" and very Napoleonic)... we'd have weekly meetings and I'd usually have some observation or another that "needed doing" to improve the business workflow, maintainability, etc. In the meetings T.B.G. would consistently shit on my ideas - dismissed out of hand with phrases like "we don't need that here," "that's not important, focus on other things" etc. complete with looks of disgust on his face. Finally, after bringing one particularly glaring shortcoming up for the 2nd, maybe 3rd time (we were a video surveillance company responsible for about 5000 cameras live in the field, from about 8 different manufacturers and 30+ models - they had no inventory of what was out there, and our software needed to be customized to a greater or lesser degree for every different model, some of which we only had one or two, some of which we had hundreds) I finally just ignored him and started work on it anyway. In gathering the required info from the field service side of the company I eventually ran into "the guy who knows better than anyone else..." and he tells me that T.B.G. tasked him with creating and maintaining the inventory starting a couple of weeks ago - the afternoon after I first mentioned it in the morning meeting. After that, I snooped around about other things I had suggested and been shot down, and found that about 80% of them had prompted T.B.G. to assign somebody to make them happen - never acknowledging to me or my boss that these things were even happening - even the ones that directly affected our abilities to do our jobs in R&D. I connected with a MUCH better fit for my skillset after 6 months and handed in my 2 weeks notice, nobody was too shocked, for one obvious reason it was a high turnover operation, but several of the higher ups were very curious what prompted me to leave, anything they might offer to get me to stay, etc. T.B.G. just couldn't understand how I could leave when he was about to offer stock options to the employees for an up-coming I.P.O. he had been working on, in secret without telling any of us. I mentioned that for the retention incentives to work he should communicate them to the employees... T.B.G. called an all-hands meeting the next day to do just that and was shocked again that I was still leaving. While the all-hands meeting said all the usual rah-rah absolutely zero specifics like a capitalization sheet, shares outstanding, actual number of options to be granted, on what vesting schedule, etc. were offered. T.B.G. himself survived COVID, but his company didn't.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday October 26 2023, @08:58AM
"What's needed to keep you here?"
"The impossible. You'd have to fire the owner"