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Stop Brainstorming

matthewstrom.com

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Re: Stop Brainstorming

#71

Post by Nathanael_M »

daniel_reetz wrote: post #54
newacct100 wrote: post #47

I worked at IDEO for a few years. None of the brainstorms I've ran, or taken part in, ended with a, "eureka, that's it!" type of moment. And coming up with the 'solution' was never the point. It was about doing something generative, creative, and fun together. It was about engaging folks and collaborating in a different way than they might be used to. I'd also start by offering a few very poorly drawn, completely non…

I was a Disney Imagineer (they have their own braingstorming concept, which has psychological safety built in). This person's article is indeed missing the point, or at least arguing with a straw man. I would encourage folks to check out the Walt Disney method. It's not hard to get right, and (in my experience) it works well.

I'd be very curious to hear more about the Walt Disney method and particularly that concept of psychological safety, if you don't mind expounding.

Was being a Disney Imagineer as awesome as it sounds, haha!

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#72

Post by AdamJMarsh »

codeflo wrote: post #29

I 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 would argue that ideation aside, the person responsible for executing said idea needs to have a clear motivation & reward for taking up ownership of actioning it.

Brainstorming might be a throwback term, but it works.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#73

Post by keithnz »

theIntuitionist wrote: post #39
codeflo wrote: post #29

I 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 mi…

I think we use the term "brain storming" in different ways, engineering teams coming together to flesh out an idea is often nothing like a "brainstorming" session. Engineering often tends to do "cooperative brain leveraging" :)

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#74

Post by quickthrower2 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #27

It's amazing how much I have built my career around psychological safety (one tends to admit these things a bit more as we get older) So yes. If anything can improve your work experience, your productivity , it's psychological safetry Taken to an extreme it would be sensible to give teams a annual bonus at the start of the year. Give them FU money and so be fairly confident they will say FU when it's needed

I take FU money to mean you no longer need a job. For many that means millions. Even with that you may not have psychological safety: being able to say FU and saying FU are 2 different things. You could instead just get someone leave and say “yeah wanna go travelling” while actually thinking “fuck that”.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#75

Post by kortilla »

vagabund wrote: post #61
borski wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty cynical view. It's not actually a bad thing to make folks feel like they have a sense of ownership over an idea; human nature is human nature and motivating people to work hard and feel ownership is its own challenge.

I think manipulating people into believing something that's not true is a bad thing, even if it improves the bottom line. To think otherwise, I submit, is the truly cynical view.

But it doesn’t matter. If two people think they came to the same design together it doesn’t matter if someone else already did ahead of time.

The important thing is that they have convinced themselves that it makes sense.

You don’t even have to lie. You can go into a meeting as a lead and say that you have an idea of how something might look but you want the group to come up with a design anyway.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#76

Post by bmitc »

> At its best, a brainstorming group comes up with the same ideas as the group’s members would when working alone

That's not true. That would be brainstorming at its average. Has this person ever sat in a writer's room?

> at its worst, it perpetuates negative cultural habits, reinforces hierarchies, stunts productivity, and severely limits creativity.

Well yeah, anything at its worst is going to be counterproductive. Is that a revelation? I hate to say this phrase, but if that's the results of your brainstorming sessions, then you're doing it wrong.

The ideas of improv and the book Impro are relevant here.

Lastly, the purpose of brainstorming isn't productivity or results. It's about increasing the dimensionality of ideas. If one simply thinks alone, one may be stuck in linear or planar thinking. A brainstorming session or practice can help break out of that, where individuals can then return to solo thinking with a renewed exploration space and potentially a path through that.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#77

Post by theIntuitionist »

keithnz wrote: post #73
theIntuitionist wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

I think we use the term "brain storming" in different ways, engineering teams coming together to flesh out an idea is often nothing like a "brainstorming" session. Engineering often tends to do "cooperative brain leveraging" :)

I’ve been building software for 20 years, and in my experience good ideas come from anywhere, especially on a high functioning teams where everyone is bought in. Engineers in particular often come up with great leftfield solutions, as they know what’s going on behind the scenes and can find way to leverage that knowledge.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#78

Post by djmips »

Nathanael_M wrote: post #71
daniel_reetz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a Disney Imagineer (they have their own braingstorming concept, which has psychological safety built in). This person's article is indeed missing the point, or at least arguing with a straw man. I would encourage folks to check out the Walt Disney method. It's not hard to get right, and (in my experience) it works well.

I'd be very curious to hear more about the Walt Disney method and particularly that concept of psychological safety, if you don't mind expounding. Was being a Disney Imagineer as awesome as it sounds, haha!

I guess this is a start? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_method

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#79

Post by theIntuitionist »

keithnz wrote: post #73
theIntuitionist wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

I think we use the term "brain storming" in different ways, engineering teams coming together to flesh out an idea is often nothing like a "brainstorming" session. Engineering often tends to do "cooperative brain leveraging" :)

I think this article might be something a litmus test for determining if you believe in such a thing as a functional software (not just engineering) _team_ or not.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#80

Post by SecurityLagoon »

bmitc wrote: post #76

> At its best, a brainstorming group comes up with the same ideas as the group’s members would when working alone That's not true. That would be brainstorming at its average. Has this person ever sat in a writer's room? > at its worst, it perpetuates negative cultural habits, reinforces hierarchies, stunts productivity, and severely limits creativity. Well yeah, anything at its worst is going to be counterproductive.…

Your second point was what I was primarily thinking. If brainstorming highlights your cultural problems then maybe its time to fix your cultural problems rather than cover it up with less group work.
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