In this chapter, we will discuss brainstorming. It’s important to remember that brainstorming is a process, and it’s a fantastic technique for generating ideas regarding improvements in processes. Once some initial ideas are generated we can build on one another’s ideas. Going into a brainstorming session, it is helpful to have some ground rules so that there’s no judgement and no self-censoring by anyone about their own, or others’ ideas. At this stage we just want to capture all those great ideas and get them down on paper so that we can work with them. Everyone should have a say, and we need to listen carefully to everybody’s thoughts and leverage individual expertise as well. You could think about brainstorming as a 7-step process. And the first couple of phases are very important. Albert Einstein once said the formulation of the problem is often more essential than the solution. Identifying the problem is the first step of brainstorming. In order to be effective, we need to be very clear about the topic of our session. We must be specific with the goal and hold each other accountable to stay on point as we generate ideas.
It is also helpful to have reference information available during the session. This may include value stream maps, studies, statistical analysis, and cause and effect analysis information. From there, we want to move on to generating a working list of ideas. The more ideas you have the more likely you are to find some excellent ideas that you can leverage going forward. We want to welcome all ideas, no matter how outrageous they may sound. We want to remain in an open frame of mind. The facilitator has a critical role to make sure everybody participates. One suggestion is that in the first round of brainstorming every team member needs to offer up at least one idea, ensuring full participation. It is critical to record all the ideas and keep those visible to the team at all times. It’s often a good idea to take a little break and let the ideas settle, then come back to them a little later and move into the next steps of the process. It’s during the next phase of evaluation, analysis, and presentation that we begin to evaluate those ideas and use more of a critical eye. Is that idea practical? Who would need to be involved? What could pose a challenge? Would it cost a lot of money to do that? Then we can rank the ideas based on various criteria. For instance, the impact from the idea, how doable it is from a political and team perspective, and maybe the cost. Once the ideas have been ranked, we can drop the low scoring ideas and narrowly focus to just those which have the greatest merit. Then we can assess top ideas based on feasibility and the impact or cost-benefit from implementing them fully. Finally, we can prepare a report to our sponsor or executive team, and seek approval to implement the solutions.