Jan 28, 2010
Brainstorming, it’s bloodthirsty work
My theory on ideas is that you should have lots and kill most.
Ansel Adams, one of the most celebrated and prolific photographers once said “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.”
Its not enough to just have ideas; like photo opps you see but never shoot they don’t count. You have to press the button, commit, take the photo, record the idea, flesh it out a bit.
The process of recording always helps me, just by writing it down I can usually eliminate the weakest 95% on my own, its just like taking a bad photo, its obvious as soon as its put on paper.
The surviving five percent I like to share with a trusted people who have relevant domain knowledge. If I am lucky one idea will survive the session and advance to the next fight.
During the brainstorming session don’t always stop defending an idea when the first flaw is identified, push the exercise to squeeze every drop of critical thinking from the group. Often I find that identifying all the weaknesses helps identify dangerous assumptions in the underlying thinking
Over the years I learnt a few things about group brainstorming, more through trial and error than wisdom I am afraid to say.
- Not everyone likes brainstorming, some of the smartest people I know prefer to work a problem in private.
- Not every smart person is open minded and not ever open minded person is smart.
- Brainstorming, especially across management layers is something many are not comfortable with, politicking often gets in the way.
- If all members of the group don’t know up front that I expect most, if not all, of my ideas to be savagely killed (but not after a fight) they back off to avoid conflict and week ideas survive.. that’s very bad.
As with so much in life the harder the fight the more worthy the victor. Twelve significant ideas in any one year is a good crop; the trick is identifying the right twelve and killing the rest fast.
I LOVE THIS – “Not every smart person is open minded and not every open minded person is smart!” I need to quote you.
I think a trap that a lot of smart people fall into is that they use the combination of their knowledge and experience to make quick judgments about ideas. This doesn’t mean that they are closed minded. However, it means that if they aren’t careful they will appear that way to someone else! An air of certitude and definiteness needs to be tempered with a a curious nature. Sometimes one of the best things to do is to take a step back and ask: “well – why not?”