Pass the shovel
In a moment, I'll give you the right way to think as a group. First, I need to dig brainstorming's grave.
Brainstorming needs to be buried under six feet of dirt — otherwise we'll keep doing it. We're hooked, because it feels so right.
When you're shouting around a boardroom table in a brainstorming session, it feels like you're putting in effort. And it feels like you're getting results.
But science suggests you'd be better off talking to yourself.
A meta-analysis of more than 800 teams revealed that people have more original and more high quality ideas when they're left to think on their own.
Dr Chamorro-Premuzic has an explanation
He's the Chief Innovation Officer at ManpowerGroup, and also professor of business psychology at University College London. And — on top of all that — a sworn enemy of brainstorms.
Chamorro-Premuzic says brainstorms fail because of three deep-rooted behaviours:
- Social loafing (people making less of an effort, because they think the rest of the team will pick up the slack);
- Social anxiety (people worrying about looking foolish);
- Regression to the mean (talented people matching the performance of less talented peers).
And the practical limitations of a group discussion don't help. Chamorro-Premuzic describes a type of verbal traffic jam that scientists label 'production blocking':
'No matter how large the group, individuals can only express a single idea at one time if they want other group members to hear them. Studies have found that the number of suggestions plateaus with more than six or seven group members, and that the number of ideas per person declines as group size increases.'
Which brings us to our next question…
Is the scientific community against collaboration?
Not at all. Scientists are sceptical about brainstorming, but they love teamwork.
The Institute for Corporate Productivity found companies that promoted collaborative working were five times more likely to be high performing.
And that supports Dr Patrick Laughlin's work. The University of Illinois researcher argues that many brains are better than one. Small groups can beat people on their own — even if the loners are supremely talented — because of:
'… the ability of people to work together to generate and adopt correct responses, reject erroneous responses, and effectively process information.'
So, teamwork is worthwhile.
But brainstorming doesn't count. It falls short of genuine collaboration because of those quirks of human psychology: loafing, anxiety and regression to the mean.
We can do better
Our consultants have been sparking conversations in small groups for more than 20 years.
They've cracked complex wordy problems – like naming a company or defining a team's values. And they've done so in collaboration with businesspeople who wouldn't call themselves writers.
Those discussions had to be designed thoughtfully. Otherwise they would have been dripping with social anxiety. Instead, people were productive and actually having fun.
We recently gathered up everything we know about having ideas – and used the hard-won wisdom to make an agenda to take teams from a problem to a solution. (See more about our Whiteboard Sessions.)
As it turns out, the secret ingredient is variety.
Ready to do some real thinking?
Set up a day full of novelty – not depending on any particular trick or technique – but guiding people through a series of exercises that add up to brilliant ideas.
Those exercises should include a new wave of methods (from ‘question-storming’ to ‘brain-writing’). All of which stand up to research. But it’s time to wave goodbye to brainstorming 1.0.
Goodbye. And thanks for all the good feelings.
