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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: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday October 26 2023, @08:54AM
First reason: Hierarchies
This is usually the case in very hierarchical companies (obviously), but the same applies to some degree in all of them. You sit in a brainstorming meeting. Nobody dares to go first because nobody knows what the Big Shot wants. So Big Shot goes first and paints some buzzword onto the wall. Everyone now ponders how they can pile on. Nobody would want to dare suggest something that remotely strays from Big Shot's plan. Big Shot thinks now that everyone has total buy-in to his grand idea, while everyone is just paying lip service and going through the motions to suck up to Big Shot.
Second reason: Tunnel vision
This happens always. Especially when there's no hierarchy or when everyone is actually on equal footing. One should think that this only happens when nobody has a clue what to do, but take a wild guess when brainstorming sessions are called... What happens is that everyone is pondering, thinking, until someone finally throws some half-baked idea onto the floor. In general, it ain't a good one. But now that idea is in everyone's head and pretty much dictates the direction everyone is thinking now, because people start to associate. Everything else vanishes completely, not because people don't want to mention it, simply because we finally have a crystallization core that we can latch onto, and everyone's pretty happy that there is something like that because now we know what direction we could think towards.
In either case, we don't get a "marketplace of ideas" but simply a variation of a theme, the first theme thrown into the ring. And in neither case, that theme is a good one.
If you want to do it "right", have people come up with ideas by themselves, everyone presents them, and then we can discuss in the group which ones to flesh out.