A Recipe for Remote Brainstorming
Use this recipe to guarantee enthusiastic collaboration and innovative outcomes from your next remote brainstorm
Background
Last week I shared my thoughts on why brainstorming sessions fail. I suggest reading it along with today's post - it is not necessary, but you will gain an appreciation for how this method addresses the common pitfalls of a typical brainstorming session.
The reason I have called this a "recipe" is because it resembles a food recipe in the following ways:
It is just one of many ways to achieve similar results
I provide little to no explanation, just a presentation of the ingredients and steps involved
It may be used word for word, or with tweaks based on the available ingredients and the occasion
With that in mind, if you are looking for a comprehensive guide for remote brainstorming that provides context, explanations, detailed steps, and expert tips for facilitation, then it doesn't exist yet! Please leave a comment and let me know you are interested and I will add it to my backlog :-)
Recipe for Remote Brainstorming
INGREDIENTS
Mural
Google Docs
Zoom
Paper and pen
Participants - 2 to 4
Facilitator - 1
Enthusiasm - plenty!
STEPS
Before the brainstorming session - Explore the problem area
Duration: 1 week
Each participant conducts a 15-minute interview with someone who would benefit from the solution (tip: be a reporter, ask about the problem, and refrain from suggesting any solutions at this point).
Upload a summary of interview notes to a shared Google Doc.
All participants review each other’s interview notes before brainstorming.
During the brainstorming session - Uncover creative ideas
Duration: 2 hours
Reflect (15 min) - Reflect on the pre-session interviews and develop a "How might we...?" problem statement. For more details on "How might we", check out the post The Language of Collaboration.
Warm-up exercise (10 min) - Warm up using the "Bad Ideas Brainstorm!" Facilitator prompts the group with a non-work related "How might we" question. e.g. "How might we reduce traffic during peak time in New York City?". Participants take one minute to silently write down 3+ bad solutions to this problem using pen and paper - the worse the solution, the better! Then participants take turns speaking out their solutions to the rest of the team. The purpose of this step is to get out of analytical mode and into creative mode :-)
Rules (2 min) - Facilitator reviews the 7 Rules of Brainstorming with the group.
Post-up ideas (5 min) - Back to the main "how might we" problem statement. Facilitator asks each participant to use Mural's post-it feature to silently write down as many ideas as possible. Participant use their designated areas on the Mural board (see sample mural template). One post-it per idea - one-line summaries only with no descriptions. Each participant is to come up with at least 8-10 ideas, with at least a couple that are bold, and bordering on ridiculous. There is no discussion during this step.
Present ideas (15 min) - Each participant goes over their ideas with minimal explanation - just enough to provide clarity (no details, discussions, justifications, debates!).
Dig deeper (2 min) - Participants silently add 2-3 additional ideas to the board based on what they just heard. Feel free to steal from others and improvise.
Cluster and categorize (10 min) - Facilitator clusters the ideas into 3-4 themes (see sample mural template). These themes will emerge organically. Be sure to label the themes as you go along. This is a collaborative step, and all participants help the facilitator accelerate the process.
— BREAK (8 min) —
Vote (8 min) - Use the Ideas Prioritization matrix (see sample mural template) to uncover promising ideas. The x-axis represents the ability to execute, or how difficult/complex it would be to implement the idea. The y-axis represents the value created for the target audience. Facilitator prompts the participants to bring over 2-3 ideas each from the previous Post-Up step onto the Ideas Prioritization matrix. They do this by simply moving over the idea post-its to the appropriate quadrant in the matrix.
Identify top ideas (8 min) - Discuss as a group which ideas you would like to carry forward to the 4-week experiment phase. Pick at least 1, no more than 3 ideas. You will be tempted to pick the ideas from the 'easy!' quadrant (high value, high ability to execute), however, I encourage you to pick the ones in the 'worth considering' quadrant (high value, low ability to execute). If it is easy, you will end up doing them anyway. The 4-week experiment is an opportunity to evaluate the thornier ideas at a low cost - if it works, the upside is huge, if it doesn't you will learn valuable lessons at low risk.
4-week experiment (12 min) - Design a 4-week experiment for each of the top ideas. The goal of the exercise is to develop a working ‘prototype’ for the idea to test key assumptions. Use Google Docs to write down the following for each top idea (limit to 1 page per idea): experiment title, proposal, critical assumptions, action steps, owner & key players, and success criteria.
Review experiments (15 min) - present the experiments to the group for feedback. Revise and lock the experiments.
Schedule post-4-week experiment meeting (5 min) - Schedule a meeting after four weeks to review the findings from the experiments.
Review today’s session (5 min) - how was the brainstorming? what worked? what could be improved for the next time?
After the brainstorming session - the 4-week experiment
Duration: 4 weeks
Conduct the 4-week experiment(s)
During the 3rd or 4th week, conduct feedback interviews with 2-3 test subjects from the target stakeholder group.
Summarize stakeholder feedback using the feedback quadrant on Mural (see sample mural template)
Re-group on a Zoom call to review the results of the 4-week experiment, especially stakeholder feedback. At this meeting, make some key decisions - do you stop, modify or double down on the idea? Identify the next steps and owners.
Do you have an upcoming project that could benefit from this method of brainstorming? Do you have questions about any of the steps? Write to me and I will do my best to respond.
TOOLSHED
As I mentioned last week, my remote whiteboard of choice is Mural. However, I have used Etherpad to run sessions that are more ad-hoc and don't require Mural's visual interface and finesse. Etherpad resembles a Google Doc with one very useful enhancement - it uniquely color codes each participant's text which makes it easier to identify the source.
Here is the Mural board with templates for some of today's exercises: link (I would like to make this a copy-able board, but I am unable to do that without granting edit permissions - so for now you may use this for reference, and re-create it at your end. Fortunately Mural provides numerous in-built templates and you may use them to accelerate the process).
If you have never used Mural before, watch this video for a quick overview.
AROUND THE WEB
Brainstorming is an activity that will help you generate more innovative ideas. It’s one of many methods of ideation—the process of coming up with new ideas—and it’s core to the design thinking process. It’s a skill that you can build within your team and organization to help bring new ideas to life.
Write to me via email or comments if you have any suggestions to improve this recipe. Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Rakesh