Brainstorming like De Bono

 By Patrick Mayoh

 Brainstorming is very much part of the Franca lingua of many organizations. Simply put it is a process where a group as a team gets to explore all available ideas, possibilities and alternatives just to name a few; pertaining to a specific issue. Brainstorming is actually quite handy when a team does not have a clear perspective of a problem and has to conceptualize and think from scratch. Also the fact that all propositions from group members are taken into consideration make brainstorming less stressing and demanding from other types meetings, as a matter of fact it is the opportunity to think out of the box and maybe for someone to come up with a proposition that creates the “waouh” effect. The fact that brainstorming is used in everyday life --like for example when you want to decide how to prepare that surprise party for your mum or when your colleagues sit around to decide on the gift to offer a colleague on his last day at the office-- makes it a very popular tool within and outside organizations. The big question is: why do we brainstorm? And what types of results can we expect to get after a brainstorming session? And most especially what does it take to do it the right way? A couple of weeks ago I read about a very interesting model called the “six thinking hats” on brainstorming by a management thinker called Edward De Bono who articulated a very structured framework meant to make brainstorming sessions in organizations more effective and probably more result oriented. I would definitely recommend to any manager for consideration. But first let us get back to those questions about brainstorming.

Why do we need to brainstorm?

Well I can think of many reasons why but I will boil them down to four.

Say your Boss leaves you an email inviting you for a brainstorming lunch about your marketing campaign in the London Art’s fair. In this case I presume the meeting would be all about what your team could do to create awareness about your organization in terms of the way you represent your organization its products and services. The idea in this sense is to come up with a plan of action, detailing all aspects your team will take into consideration for the success of your marketing campaign.

Right, let us say three days later your boss drops a voice mail on your blackberry inviting you for a meeting into his office. In this case having decided and agreed on what your group is doing, you now have to allocate tasks and responsibilities for specific parts of the projects. It is true this could be done in the first meeting but some projects might be so significant in scope that, many meeting between team members are usually required to decide who does what, why and how. So at the end of the day the project management team breaks up the assignment in sub-assignments for each member of the group and brainstorms on what part each should contribute to the overall project.

Right sometimes brainstorming is all about improving or ameliorating a product or service. This can be very effective in terms of idea generation. Say a new service launched by your customer service department has reached its decline on the life cycle curve; your manager decides to assemble a team of your department and gets you to think about things you might improve about the service and how you can make it better for the next one.

Sometimes your Research and Development Director might get your team to think about a new product or service for the market. About a new device or a gadget that could change the world. This is about your team sitting down and jotting down a few points about the new product and service and coming up with a project designed to kick start the new assignment.

In conclusion from an organizational perspective brainstorming is all about four specific points:

· Generating an action plan

· Agreeing on a course of action

· Improving existing products and services

· Creating new ones

What types of results does brainstorming yield?

Well you can actually expect a good number of results to emerge from a good and effective brainstorming session. In most cases a team will emerge with:

· A strategy

· A clearer understanding of an issue

· A new product or service

· A definite solution to a problem

Usually a brainstorming team will sit to get a focus, a strong sense of direction to arrive at specific answers at the end. The end product in many cases will look like any of the following:

A brainstorming session will usually be about finding direction. Say your manager needs to consider entry strategy for that new market in India, as a group your job will be to reflect on all the possibilities available and possibly settle for the best one or the most likely to yield positive results.

A group sitting together as part of a brainstorming session will usually perceive a problem or a situation better than individuals thinking on their own. The reason being teamwork will always deliver the best results possible than individual work. Actually synergising all the available minds to a group only increases the chances for a team to gain more solutions than when individuals have to work separately from one another.

Interestingly a team will usually use brainstorming to chip in those ideas out of the box that make great product or service. In more formal types of meetings this could be rather cumbersome. But brainstorming technically means free initiative and thinking are readily encouraged and therefore because the potential for freedom of thought is greater more ideas will be available for the group.

Having considered all the options available to a team brainstorming will help the group to look through all the alternatives and possibly decide on which one is best.

Having looked at the dynamics of brainstorming let us have a look at what Edward De Bono had to say on the topic. I must say I read it a couple of weeks ago and I was so impressed at this way of brainstorming, it was quite revolutionary for me.

Up to now I had pictured brainstorming as a time where people come and sit together and just think about anything going through their minds. This is what I have seen in a couple of cases, but then although free thinking is encouraged it did not make sense to me especially because it seems to be done so randomly without a proper focus. It even makes it difficult at the end to decide who said what and why. So the whole idea just loses its attractiveness.

So Dr Edward De Bono suggests that people make better decisions when they are forced to think out of their normal way and goes on to recommend the “six hats”. Six simply because each hat has a different colour and therefore leads the group to think in a particular fashion; the model has the merit of creating a very focussed but deliberate brainstorming session where all the members productively contribute to the exercise. The six hats where:

· The white one represents information about an issue

· The red one intuition or feelings about a case

· Black the downsides of a problem

· Yellow the advantages to a situation

· The green all the possibilities and

· The blue the summary of a particular situation

Could be summarized in the following way:

Hats	Focus	Questions
White	· Information · Facts · Data	· What do we know already about this · What information do we need · Are there secondary data on the issue · Can we collect data
Red	· Feelings · Intuition	· How do we feel about the proposed course of actions · Is it likely to fail or succeed · Are we being too optimistic or pessimistic
Black	· Downsides · Pitfalls · Inconvenient · Disadvantages · Pessimism	· What could possibly go wrong · Why could it not work · Can we really do this
Yellow	· Advantages · Potentials for success · Optimism · opportunities	· Any reason to believe it could work? · Why should we feel good about this · Why is it a fantastic plan or idea? · Will we succeed?
Green	· Possibilities · New ideas · Creative thinking	· Is there a credible alternative to this? · Can we explore any other possibility · Is there anything we have not devoted our attention to · What else could we do · What about option b?
Blue	· Summary · Breaking it down	· What have we learned? · What are the main points? · What is the final decision?

Provided a team does this in an orderly and focussed way the results could be amazing and beyond expectations. Brainstorming in this way ceases to be a meeting where every team member just throws in whatever comes through his mind to become a productive activity where the team arrives at a specific answer at the end.