Brainstorming
Training Exercises and Resources

Suppose there is a team meeting and the group is going to discuss the issues associated with a topic, design something or a solve a problem.

For any given complex problem, there are a variety of perspectives and views that can be considered. However, habitually, everyone will only look at his own view, aiming to push his own agenda. This leads to a situation where the group may end up responding to the loudest person who talks the most and is naturally biased towards a particular perspective rather than considering overall important concerns.

This exercise helps the team to view the problem from a variety of perspectives that they usually tend to ignore in favour of their own.

This exercise helps delegates to explore the nature of a given topic. It helps generate a discussion around that topic and see how people view it differently. Through these discussions delegates can see if their views are markedly different from those of others and if so what it may suggest when they interact with others. The aim is to provide an insight into one’s own view of a given topic.

This exercise helps delegates learn how to avoid negative mentality in meetings. When confronted with a new idea, most people think of problems first. They first consider how the idea doesn’t work and how it would not be suitable rather than seeing how it can help or have potential if extended or combined with other ideas.

This exercise is a simple technique in helping to avoid this negativity. To take advantage of it however, delegates must consider using the technique back at work when attending meetings.

This exercise helps to stimulate creativity by bringing a variety of random object into consciousness. You can use this exercise during an incubation time between two sessions on problem solving. The exercise helps to make people think of unusual stuff and become conscious of a whole lot of random associations. When they return to the main problem, they end up having more ideas and can connect the new associations with the problem they were considering. This can lead them to potential novel solutions.

This is an entertaining and educational exercise. It helps to unleash people’s creativity, bring them together and get them to cooperate on a common task and solve problems.

In this exercise, the main aim is to get teams design shoes. You will provide a set of criteria as well as research materials and teams should then work on a creative solution. The designs are compared and a winning team is rewarded.

This is a decision making exercise that allows you to choose the best ideas from a set of ideas. Since each idea is considered in detail, this technique is more useful when you can focus enough on each idea. Hence, it is not suitable if you have many ideas to consider or want to use quantitative methods to reduce the number of options available.

It is best to run this exercise for a group of people who are from the same organisation so that everyone can focus on the same problem.

The ATAR acronym stands for Awareness, Trial, Availability, Repeat. It is a technique used to filter through ideas based on a number of criteria. It can be used to understand customers’ perception of a product or service. Hence, it is an ideal marketing tool. The technique can help you recognise your potential customers and to make informed decisions based on this discovery.

A particularly useful technique in brainstorming and decision making is the NAF technique. The acronym stands for New, Appeal and Feasibility. It is basically a simple way to score ideas to see if they are worth pursuing or implementing. It also helps you to see what you can do to increase the probability of success when developing or implementing an idea.

The NAF technique is not necessarily a mathematical decision making technique. It is designed to measure gut feelings about particular ideas and hence it very much relies on participant’s instincts and judgement. Since the technique relies on emotions it is a great complementary method that can be used in conjunction with logical and quantitative decision making techniques. This helps to give an overall idea on the probability of success for any given creative thought.

In short, the NAF technique allows the team to measure its enthusiasm for following up with a given idea or its implementation.

This exercise is ideal for members of a team that need to brainstorm on a specific problem. However, you can easily run the exercise for delegates that come from different organisations so long as you can get them to work on a common problem for the purpose of this exercise.

Words can sometimes limit creativity. Humans are generally very visual and have evolved to sense the world primarily thorough focused looking and observation. As a result, a large part of the brain is dedicated to visual processing.

To analyse problems we can tap into this huge potential processing power by visualising problems. There have been many studies in this area which has led to exceptionally useful tools such as mind maps which are great for creative thinking.

This exercise helps delegates to express a problem using images. It is much more free flow than mind maps as it is not restricted to any particular method. This allows people to think more visually about a problem and break through the limitations imposed by thinking primarily in words.

Pictorial problem solving is also ideal for brainstorming as it makes it easier to communicate ideas.

When confronted with a problem, sometimes it is useful to approach it from the point of view of someone else. A useful technique is to look at the problem from the point of view of a resourceful celebrity. Charismatic persona, wealth and fame can help to solve problems in novel ways that may otherwise not be considered.

This exercise serves two purposes. It helps delegates to avoid thinking about resource limitation and instead focus on problem solving. It also helps following the mentality of a role model and encourages people to think from the point of view of someone they admire.

You can run this exercise in a number of ways depending on what you want to achieve. See variations for details.