Leading a brainstorming session

You have a problem to solve at work, but you feel you can’t do it alone.
You decide to tap into your team members’ ideas by organizing a
brainstorming session. But do you really know how to do this? It seems
simple enough, but there are a few ground rules that determine how
successful the session is. So what are the rules to follow and the
pitfalls to avoid?

Main principles of brainstorming

Define the problem
• Formulate the problem you want to solve as accurately as possible.
Express it using a precise question focused on a single goal.
If the problem is complex, consider having a brainstorming session to break it down into a series of smaller problems.
• Inform the participants.
Two days before the meeting, send them a short note outlining the objective and asking them to prepare for
the session.

Deal with one idea at a time to encourage lateral thinking

Brainstorming shouldn’t just be a string of monologues. Ask people to formulate one idea at a time, and to suggest
ways of improving on ideas as they come up.
You can ask participants to snap their fingers before expressing an idea that comes to them as a response to what
someone else has suggested.

No criticism
Participants must not be allowed to criticize, judge or make negative comments about suggestions. A seemingly
worthless idea may turn out to be the best one as participants work on it and improve it by bouncing ideas back
and forth.
If someone does criticize:
• The first time, give a friendly warning.
• If they do it again, be very firm.

As many ideas as possible; no selection

A brainstorming session is not for evaluating suggestions. Its sole aim is to produce as many ideas as possible,
not to choose between them or assess their worth.

The contents of this page are the property of CrossKnowledge.

1/
Any reproduction or representation for non-private use is strictly forbidden. 2
Brainstorming step by step
Preparing the meeting
• Think about your own list of suggestions.
They’ll be useful for kick-starting the discussion if people start being less creative.
• Send out an invitation to all the participants.
Explain the aim of the session and ask them to think about a list of suggestions.

Introducing the meeting

• Remind everyone of the aim of the session.
• Go over the rules of brainstorming: one idea at a time, no criticizing, no evaluation.

Producing ideas
• Apply the principles of brainstorming.
• Kick-start the session with your own ideas if people’s creativity starts to wane.
• Post all the ideas on a board and number them – or have someone else do this for you.

Ending the session

• Assess how effective the session has been by looking at how many ideas you’ve collected.
• Thank everyone for taking part.
• Ask them to carry on thinking about the problem over the next couple of days.
• Tell them they’ll receive a report summing up the ideas produced during the session.
• Explain that they will be kept informed of how useful their ideas have been. The ideas will be evaluated in
a further session, perhaps by other people.

Collecting further ideas

In the two days following the meeting, call each of the participants to see if they’ve come up with any more ideas.

Selecting ideas
• Present each idea concisely and clearly.
• Divide the ideas into five or six main categories.
• Send the list to the people who took part.
• Arrange a further meeting to look at the list in detail and select the most interesting ideas.

The contents of this page are the property of CrossKnowledge.

2/
Any reproduction or representation for non-private use is strictly forbidden. 2