Storming Brains, Playing Games
Posted on Mon, Feb 14, 2011
By Katie
Once a month we hold a summit of the minds – a formal brainstorm session on a topic of interest to the industry and to our clients – in order to get the undivided attention of our team. I say “formal” because we are constantly brainstorming together informally via e-mail, phone calls, instant messaging, etc. But we take these formal sessions quite seriously.
Brainstorming should always have clear goals, guidelines, rules and expectations for collaboration to be as effective as possible. Below are just a few of the guidelines we follow (and we suggest you do, too):
- Choose a brainstorm game from GameStorming. It’s our brainstorm bible. Using a game engages participants in different and unique ways and puts structure around how a session is run – rather than just a blind “brain-dump.”
- Be in control of the session. Pass around a prop to indicate who is speaking and when. And please, for the sake of the flow, do not allow overtalking.
- Record everything on a white board or have a note taker. This will help to accurately retain valuable ideas and results when you recap the session.
- Forecast roadblocks. Do you have new team members? Use ice breakers to make them feel comfortable. Or, grease the wheel a bit with fillers if it takes a while to get the brainstorm juices flowing.
- Be punctual and keep the team on track. A recap of who got kicked off last night’s “American Idol” or “The Bachelor” is probably not a goal of your brainstorm.
What’s our favorite BrainStorming game, you ask? Pre-Mortem, of course. What’s yours?