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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, Insightful) by Opportunist on Thursday October 26 2023, @08:46AM
The key problem with meetings is the people. Some people exist to have meetings. "I meet, therefore I am" is the creed a lot of very useless people have.
We call them managers. Why, I don't know, because there are useful managers, too, but they usually work and don't start meetings, so they fly under the radar.
Those meetings always run along the same lines. The narcissist drones on for hours and hours while you sit there, mentally undressing the intern that operates the laptop he's too stupid to work himself.
This is also why productivity soared during WFH times. Now you could actually continue working while the narcissist did his droning. This had a few very important synergy effects. Your project was suddenly in time and within budget, because you could use the meeting time sensibly to work on the budget while billing it to the cost center of the narcissist, and the narcissists were incredibly happy because their valuable presentations were suddenly incredibly popular, hell, people from different departments tried to get in to listen to their valuable advice!