It is a candid fact that creative ideas are what keep organizations thriving even in turbulent times. It is also what helps organizations in innovating better ways of scaling up their businesses. So it would not be out of place to agree that creative ideas rule organizations. In order to be on top of your organizational game, CEOs and senior management should concern themselves with: “how can they encourage everyone to come up with the creative ideas or develop the creative capability required to solve organizational challenges, innovate new ways of delivering values, achieving results and above all, satisfying the customers”?
So, day by day CEOs and senior management are burdened by having to be constantly on the lookout for creative and innovative ideas that can transform their organizations and lead to better performances against competitors. And one of the usual ways CEOs and boards would want their people to come up with “these creative and innovative ideas” is usually through brainstorming sessions. This is why going for an offsite to brainstorm has usually been seen as something inevitable in most organizations and thus has been seen as an avenue to come up with better ideas and ways of transforming one’s business. But, does brainstorming that most organizations spend so much resources putting together deliver the desired results? My answer is no, brainstorming indeed, does not get better ideas out of your people and also does not improve their creative capabilities.
Here is why:
Let’s take a case of a bank that has identified one of their regions as the worst performing and non profitable. The CEO of that bank feels that the region in question has all it takes to be a performing region, so being deeply concerned with the poor performance called for a brainstorming sessions with the people in that region.
Now on the D-Day, either the CEO or the line Executive Director (ED) with some senior management welcomes the people and then kick starts the brainstorming session. The biggest challenge is that no matter how the CEO or the line ED encouraged people to be free and come up with creative ideas that can turn around the non performing region; you would find that most people would still be held back. So, because many people are held back, the regional manager and few other key staff in that region take centre stage, and end up dominating the discussions – thereby preventing others from coming up with their relevant ideas. At the end, the whole exercise becomes more of the same. Now, why did most people hold themselves back from contributing their own ideas? They were not comfortable speaking, they felt ideas from people with authority count more; they thought that personality is more important than the ideas themselves, and then the band wagon effect (I have to acquiesce in what my manager says, I don’t want to incur his or her wrath).
So after spending days brainstorming, the overly dominating people in that region would have their voices heard, while the usually quiet and introverted people’s voices are suppressed and their ideas (that might even turn things around) not communicated. And this is why research has shown that in an average brainstorming session; only 20% of voices are heard 60-70% of the times. How bad can it get? This is why brainstorming sessions do not get better ideas out of your people. But the good news is that there is a better alternative and proven way of getting creative ideas out of your people – and it is called “Brainwriting”.
How is “brainwriting”a better alternative?
Contrary to brainstorming where ideas are verbalised during discussions and not everyone is willing to come up with creative ideas especially the quiet and introverted people, but in Brainwriting, everyone is encouraged to write their creative ideas down anonymously first and foremost before any discussion. Now, looking at that the two, brainstorming involves verbalizing ideas, brainwriting entails writing down ideas individually – putting aside all judgment and practicality- that way everyone present in the traditional brainstorming gets a chance to write out something. Unlike brainstorming that usually has between 30 to 40% participation rate, in brainwriting the participation rate is almost 100% as everyone writes anonymously what they feel the issues are and what can be done from their own perspective – way before the discussion starts.
Brainwriting is a method that aims to avoid the pitfalls of brainstorming as titles, personality, politics and other issues in offices today can be avoided and focus on the most important thing: quality ideas. Rather than ask participants to yell out ideas (as it is done in the traditional brainstorming sessions), you ask them to write down their ideas (anonymously) about a particular question or problem being faced; then, you have each participant pass their ideas on to someone else, who reads the ideas and adds new ideas. This process repeats itself again based on the numbers of participants, numbers of creative ideas expected from each person and the time allocated. Now, when these ideas are collected, the next will be the discussion phase – based on what everyone has written. And because everyone was involved in writing down the ideas or would be solutions, they would also be glad to be involved in the discussion phase and eventually come up with what the organization can implement. This is awesome!
Here in Brainwriting session, the general principle is that idea generation should exist separate from discussion. That way few people did not dominate the issues on ground and idea generation, everyone is given a chance. That way, the openly dominating people have been neutralized and the usually quiet and introverted people are energized.
Feel free and let me know if you want to start applying brainwriting for your organization’s increased innovation, increased performance and transformation.
I would be glad to help.
All to your success!
‘Uju Onwuzulike
