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Stop Brainstorming
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Re: Stop Brainstorming
#32I think the article’s missing an important trick: Brainstorming establishes a shared understanding (depending on the group dynamics, you might call it a fiction) that the group , not any individual, came up with the idea. That sense of ownership is psychologically important for aligning the group during the execution phase: People are usually a lot more motivated to implement a plan that they came up with, and if any…
A lot of people do this very badly. They craft a brainstorming session designed to arrive at their pre-selected destination. They either design the process to steer the conversation, or shut down tangents as they go. This always feels manipulative and scummy.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#33We're not allowed to use the word brainstorming here in the UK, it's thought to be offensive to people without brains.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#34I think the article’s missing an important trick: Brainstorming establishes a shared understanding (depending on the group dynamics, you might call it a fiction) that the group , not any individual, came up with the idea. That sense of ownership is psychologically important for aligning the group during the execution phase: People are usually a lot more motivated to implement a plan that they came up with, and if any…
This works on "newbies" until they realize what's going on and then they learn to see through it and begin to resent not only this "trick" but also the people who attempt to use it, which maybe works if you keep churning through people--and this is an industry with enough new blood being injected constantly that maybe that even feels "sustainable"--but I still feel like the people who do it should be judged harshly.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain more about the 'turkey shoot' in brainstorming sessions, and the value it adds? It's not something I've heard about before.
Another term that may be more familiar is "ice breaker". The senior person offers up an idea to get the ball rolling. It shouldn't be too complex, it shouldn't sound like the way to go. It's just something to help make other people more comfortable participating, especially people junior to them. It may even be a dumb idea, getting some laughs and breaking the tension.
Ah, yeah, that’s the term I’m more familiar with. Thank you.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain more about the 'turkey shoot' in brainstorming sessions, and the value it adds? It's not something I've heard about before.
It's basically just throwing an idea out there that's so bad it's easy to shoot down (like turkeys which are notoriously easy to shoot). The value is creating space where the bar for acceptable ideas is so low that people don't self-censor.
Thank you.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#37I think the article’s missing an important trick: Brainstorming establishes a shared understanding (depending on the group dynamics, you might call it a fiction) that the group , not any individual, came up with the idea. That sense of ownership is psychologically important for aligning the group during the execution phase: People are usually a lot more motivated to implement a plan that they came up with, and if any…
A lot of people do this very badly. They craft a brainstorming session designed to arrive at their pre-selected destination. They either design the process to steer the conversation, or shut down tangents as they go. This always feels manipulative and scummy.
But that's not brainstorming, that's something else.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the opitmal number of people working on a problem is somewhere between 1 and 2. The amount of communication required obviously scales very poorly, but in principle, having to explain your process to someone else functions well. I prefer pair programming to solo work, usually. I catch more bugs, and am forced to explain things to myself as I explain them to my partner.
Pair programming works well for tasks that take a few days. For tasks that take hours it's not worth it IMHO.
I agree, and the premise of going in on a programming contest with a team is presumably that you are all capable of solving some problem on your own. I was merely arguing that there is value to be had in numbers greater than 1, but not numbers greater than 2, in my experience.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#39I think the article’s missing an important trick: Brainstorming establishes a shared understanding (depending on the group dynamics, you might call it a fiction) that the group , not any individual, came up with the idea. That sense of ownership is psychologically important for aligning the group during the execution phase: People are usually a lot more motivated to implement a plan that they came up with, and if any…
I came here to write this, and also to say that on a software team, for example, where the problem is complex, no one person may have a well rounded enough or deep enough grasp of the problem, goals, limitations, etc. to come up with an optimal solution on their own. This is why we have businesses in the first place, to organize teams in a greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts kind of way. A very basic example of this might be a UI designer coming up with a number of potential interface ideas for a particular problem users are experiencing, and an engineering choosing the design which will cost the least dev hours. Iterating on sketches of such potential solutions will almost certainly get to a better solution than the designer just making a choice their own favorite design and lobbing it over the wall to eng.
Not to dismiss the psychological safety point the article makes, which i believe is very valid.
Re: Stop Brainstorming
#40this article has a clickbait title and religiously abides by it when the discussion is much more nuanced. brainstorming is also not just about idea generation. it is a great way of investing the group in ideas that get picked - so it can be treated as a form of consensus seeking theater. this is why measuring the “performance” of brainstorming is largely a fool’s errand.
why does brainstorming often fail to generate new ideas? any time there is a sufficiently complex calculus involved in solving a problem, solution generation involves understanding that calculus. a brainstorm session must include people that understand the problem and solution spaces well. otherwise, the brainstorming is often useless.
almost all brainstorming sessions i have seen ignore this concept and result in no useful generation and a lot of wasted time.