{"id":4204,"date":"2018-12-18T07:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/?p=4204"},"modified":"2020-12-19T20:42:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T01:42:46","slug":"brainstorming-redefined-7-steps-to-questions-based-brainstorming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/brainstorming-redefined-7-steps-to-questions-based-brainstorming\/","title":{"rendered":"Brainstorming Redefined: 7 Steps to Questions-based Brainstorming"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Creative ideas\u2014such as Innovation<\/a>, Process Improvement<\/a> initiatives, or Growth Strategy<\/a> opportunities\u2014drive businesses.\u00a0 It\u2019s every executive\u2019s dream to manage a team that is creative enough to come up with innovative ideas perpetually.\u00a0 Traditional brainstorming is the conventional method utilized by teams to generate new ideas globally.<\/p>\n

The conventional brainstorming sessions, however, often falls short of generating innovative ideas.\u00a0 These stints are typically unstructured, attended passively by a group of people trying to pay attention to a moderator who requests the team to think outside the box.\u00a0 The participants, mainly, remain quiet during the workshop, while a few take control of the session with their mundane ideas.\u00a0 They believe the sessions take up their precious time, and yearn to get back to their routine work.\u00a0 The few ideas generated during the workshop are seldom put to test after the session.<\/p>\n

A more pragmatic and productive approach to idea generation commences by developing and asking intelligent questions from the participants.\u00a0 The Question-based Brainstorming<\/a> approach necessitates more planning and organization than traditional brainstorming, but delivers better ideas for effective business problem solving<\/a> and tackling various business situations.<\/p>\n

This practical, question-based approach to brainstorming entails 7 key steps:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Understand the Organization’s Decision Making Criteria<\/li>\n
  2. Ask the Right Questions<\/li>\n
  3. Pick People Who Can Answer the Questions<\/li>\n
  4. Hold Focused Idea Generation Sessions<\/li>\n
  5. Set the Brainstorming Expectations<\/li>\n
  6. Have Subgroups Determine Their Leading Ideas<\/li>\n
  7. Follow up Quickly<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Let’s take a deeper dive into the first 3 steps to brainstorming.<\/p>\n

    Understand the Organization’s Decision Making Criteria<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    The first step to effective brainstorming entails acquiring a thorough understanding of the organization’s decision making criteria.\u00a0 Most organizations are too rigid and afraid of trying out new insights and ideas.\u00a0 They trust that their existing policies and procedures must be strictly adhered to no matter what.\u00a0 Thus any creative ideas if generated go largely unimplemented.<\/p>\n

    Senior executives aiming to trigger innovative ideas in their people need to comprehend, quantitatively outline, and possibly influence the criteria their organizations utilize to make decisions about the ideas developed.\u00a0 The team needs to know the limitations that should not be surpassed before engaging into any brainstorming sessions.<\/p>\n

    Ask the Right Questions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Traditional brainstorming focuses on the quantity of ideas; the more the better.\u00a0 A more structured approach to idea generation exploits organized probing to generate insightful viewpoints.\u00a0 The senior managers generate a string of carefully constructed questions, which should then be rigorously analyzed by the participants in small groups during a series of idea generation sessions. \u00a0The probing should make the respondents think in new ways, control the thought dimensions that the team will analyze, yet it should not restrict the attendees to specific answers.<\/p>\n

    Pick People Who Can Answer the Questions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Traditional brainstorming sessions select workshop attendees based on their ranks in the hierarchy, and not because of their valuable insights.\u00a0 However, leaders aiming to inspiring creative brainstorming should choose workshop participants who possess deep \u201chands-on\u201d knowledge on the subject, and have the ability to express themselves clearly.<\/p>\n

    Interested in learning more about the other steps to Brainstorming?\u00a0 You can learn more and download an editable PowerPoint on the 7 Steps to Brainstorming<\/strong> here<\/u><\/a> on the Flevy documents marketplace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Do You Find Value in This Framework?<\/h2>\n

    You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library<\/a>. FlevyPro<\/a> is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:<\/p>\n

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    “As a small business owner, the resource material available from FlevyPro has proven to be invaluable. The ability to search for material on demand based our project events and client requirements was great for me and proved very beneficial to my clients. Importantly, being able to easily edit and tailor the material for specific purposes helped us to make presentations, knowledge sharing, and toolkit development, which formed part of the overall program collateral. While FlevyPro contains resource material that any consultancy, project or delivery firm must have, it is an essential part of a small firm or independent consultant’s toolbox.”<\/p>\n

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    “FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients. In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over! The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight \u2013 it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”<\/p>\n

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    \u2013 Omar Hern\u00e1n Montes Parra, CEO at Quantum SFE<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Creative ideas\u2014such as Innovation, Process Improvement initiatives, or Growth Strategy opportunities\u2014drive businesses.\u00a0 It\u2019s every executive\u2019s dream to manage a team that is creative enough to come up with innovative ideas perpetually.\u00a0 Traditional brainstorming is the conventional method utilized by teams to generate new ideas globally. The conventional brainstorming sessions, however, often falls short of generating… Brainstorming Redefined: 7 Steps to Questions-based Brainstorming<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":4206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[91,671,1391,657],"class_list":["post-4204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy","tag-brainstorming","tag-creative-thinking","tag-idea-generation","tag-problem-solving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4204"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7925,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4204\/revisions\/7925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}