Stop Brainstorming
matthewstrom.com
Stop Brainstorming
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Re: Stop Brainstorming
#2My experience exactly. We used to do this but gave up many years ago. Better to have individuals develop bare-bones ideas and then review with a group. Better yet, have a ranked voting system with a large but somewhat informed group to winnow down the list.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#3TLDR: Brainstorming has become a heuristic, an attempted shortcut, a lossy substitution for psychological safety.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#4Does this not depend on the situation / requirement? I am sure brainstorming under duress can help in certain situations.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#5I'm a divergent thinker and like to bounce ideas off other divergent thinkers, so I can work alone or with others, but/ ideally they need to be creative/ open
Once we have a list of ideas, then whittle the list down with the realist and pessimistic people of the group; until there's one obvious way forward or a couple of least worse ideas.
Generally most people are better at telling you what you can't do,
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#6Brainstorming isn't for problem-solving, especially when problems are small and well defined. Communication overhead destroys the efficiency.
I've participated in several team programming competitions. The way every team worked was - everybody read all tasks, quickly decide who works on what, and then we work solo on one problem each in parallel, when somebody finishes (s)he can help others who are stuck or take on another tasks. Talking about the problem all the way was way too slow and didn't much helped.
But problem-solving isn't the only creative thinking people do. When creating a story for table-top RPGs brainstorming works great.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#7I've had SOME great brainstorming sessions that provided great ideas for paths forward when starting new projects. I think that last part is important. Specifically, the "Discover" part of the double diamond design process.
In the cited article, sure the faster problem solvers will solve more individually. But
1) the proper grain to measure success is as the team level, and
2) it's easy to score a problem with a known answer, but it is significantly harder for a group to come to consensus as to what the best answer might be – you can't always just crunch the numbers to see who was right.
The advantages of the brainstorm at the team level can be profound: they can reach consensus as to what these better options are, as well as a shared understanding of the problem space and what the next steps are.
[1] https://www.thefountaininstitute.com/blog/what-is-the-double...
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#8>Brainstorming has become a heuristic, an attempted shortcut, a lossy substitution for psychological safety.
I'm glad this was where the author ended up. As I read this, I kept thinking that I know how to get better ideas out of people than a lot of typical brainstorming scenarios I've experienced in the past. My mind kept going back to how good some of the (Agile) retros I've had, and the one thing they all had in common was psychological safety was key. Creating a safe space allowed people to really express their issues, which made it much easier to address them. I've always understood one of the most important actions in a brainstorming session is the "turkey shoot" by one of the seniors. It's an idea so bad that even interns think, oh, my idea is better than that and so find it easier to participate. Without that, you can very much end up with a session dominated by hierarchy.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#9Mostly yes. My advice on this topic is to read up on Liberating Structures, which I think are a level up.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#10I'm a divergent thinker and like to bounce ideas off other divergent thinkers, so I can work alone or with others, but/ ideally they need to be creative/ open Once we have a list of ideas, then whittle the list down with the realist and pessimistic people of the group; until there's one obvious way forward or a couple of least worse ideas. Generally most people are better at telling you what you can't do,
i am too...and i basically cant work at the same level if i'm just sitting alone by myself. so i _have_ to kick stuff aronud with people. unfortunately the longer i stay in the industry the less people are used to working this way.