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Stop Brainstorming

by burticlies on 1/26/22, 9:06 PM with 95 comments

by codeflo on 1/26/22, 10:45 PM
I think the article’s missing an important trick: Brainstorming establishes a shared understanding (depending on the group dynamics, you might call it a fiction) that the group, not any individual, came up with the idea. That sense of ownership is psychologically important for aligning the group during the execution phase: People are usually a lot more motivated to implement a plan that they came up with, and if anyone challenges the idea, much more eager to defend it.
by ajuc on 1/26/22, 9:39 PM
Brainstorming isn't for problem-solving, especially when problems are small and well defined. Communication overhead destroys the efficiency.
I've participated in several team programming competitions. The way every team worked was - everybody read all tasks, quickly decide who works on what, and then we work solo on one problem each in parallel, when somebody finishes (s)he can help others who are stuck or take on another tasks. Talking about the problem all the way was way too slow and didn't much helped.
But problem-solving isn't the only creative thinking people do. When creating a story for table-top RPGs brainstorming works great.
by maerF0x0 on 1/27/22, 2:31 AM
> It’s hard to deny the appeal of brainstorming. To be given a judgment-free space to express yourself? What a dream! And especially appealing, imagine, to the ad men of the 1940s.
This, interestingly, aligns with some advice we received as a young couple. it was advised to periodically ask the other about their ideas and dreams without either 1) telling them it wont work or 2) asking how they'll make it work. Just to explore how the other things, feels, and dreams about the future. An example would be like "I really would love to sail a boat with my children one day, i think it would be so cool to teach them skills on the ocean and show them the world. Plus theres no internet there so we can all focus on eachother, I'd love that." --> Even if the dream is impossible look what they said, they want to deeply invest and connect with you and children, they value seeing the world, and the find beauty in it, etc.
by kerblang on 1/26/22, 10:05 PM
In my experience it is best to explain the problem today, and ask about ideas tomorrow. Most people tend to think up ideas on their own time rather than on-demand as if they're some kind of ideas slot machine you can just yank on.
I think it helps to have weekly-or-so discussions about The Problems We're Having Lately, not so much as "brainstorming" but giving people a chance to offer their latest ideas and explain problems encountered with previous ideas.
by newacct100 on 1/27/22, 12:22 AM
I worked at IDEO for a few years.
None of the brainstorms I've ran, or taken part in, ended with a, "eureka, that's it!" type of moment.
And coming up with the 'solution' was never the point. It was about doing something generative, creative, and fun together. It was about engaging folks and collaborating in a different way than they might be used to. I'd also start by offering a few very poorly drawn, completely nonsensical ideas.
Discovery work to get to a viable 'solution' takes weeks - months - years. Nobody assumes it happens during a one hour brainstorming session.
by rurp on 1/26/22, 10:37 PM
I see a lot of parallels between this article and a discussion from yesterday about how often to loop in others on your work[0]. Like most things in life, there are a lot of complicated tradeoffs between solo work and group collaboration, and rarely any straightforward answers. That said, one prevelent trend is that whatever is in vogue is probably being over used.
If group brainstorming is top of mind for a lot of executives, it's a good bet that there's way too much of it going on. If a dev team thinks they always do their best work in isolation, they're probably missing out on some major benefits to be had by mixing in more collaboration and pair programming.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30074949
by 692 on 1/26/22, 9:36 PM
I'm a divergent thinker and like to bounce ideas off other divergent thinkers, so I can work alone or with others, but/ ideally they need to be creative/ open
Once we have a list of ideas, then whittle the list down with the realist and pessimistic people of the group; until there's one obvious way forward or a couple of least worse ideas.
Generally most people are better at telling you what you can't do,
by gilbetron on 1/27/22, 3:20 AM
I've seen many, repeated brainstorming sessions generate incredibly valuable ideas, and even more importantly, resulted in people thinking of great ideas outside of the session.
This article is terrible and comes off as someone that doesn't like brainstorm sessions and feels the need to justify their (valid) preference by saying brainstorming is bad.
I wouldn't work with this person.
by milesvp on 1/26/22, 9:49 PM
>Brainstorming has become a heuristic, an attempted shortcut, a lossy substitution for psychological safety.
I'm glad this was where the author ended up. As I read this, I kept thinking that I know how to get better ideas out of people than a lot of typical brainstorming scenarios I've experienced in the past. My mind kept going back to how good some of the (Agile) retros I've had, and the one thing they all had in common was psychological safety was key. Creating a safe space allowed people to really express their issues, which made it much easier to address them. I've always understood one of the most important actions in a brainstorming session is the "turkey shoot" by one of the seniors. It's an idea so bad that even interns think, oh, my idea is better than that and so find it easier to participate. Without that, you can very much end up with a session dominated by hierarchy.
by Jtsummers on 1/26/22, 9:57 PM
There seems to be a difference of intent between what Osborn describes (at least the selected quotes) and what the researchers, Diehl and Stroebe, studied. In particular, he describes brainstorming as for developing creative ideas, while the researchers study it as a method for problem solving.
From the quotes by Osborn it seems his purpose for it was to find ideas, no matter how far out there. Whereas the researchers were directing people to use brainstorming to find (what sounds like) one or a small number of viable solutions. Those are two different activities, so an approach could be useful for one and useless (or suboptimal) for the other, but there is no way to conclude how applicable it is to the former based on studies of the latter.
by mnutt on 1/26/22, 10:24 PM
Many of the Design Sprint brainstorming sessions I've been a part of felt superficial. I can see the value in pushing people to list out lots of ideas very quickly, to force them to explore the solution space and not get stuck on a single idea. But the output is more like idea stubs than ideas, usually a few words on a sticky note.
In the brainstorming sessions I've attended, the next stage involves the facilitator taking all of the idea stubs and grouping them together, then riffing on the idea groups. The whole process (intentionally?) feels like improv comedy. And much like improv, it often seems geared more for the enjoyment of the participants than the quality of the output.
And maybe that's ok, using brainstorming purely as a tool to circulate half-ideas and get the creative juices flowing? But in a design sprint, the brainstorming outputs are often directly used for longer term planning. I've found something like a lightweight RFC process is a much better medium for refining and discussing ideas. RFCs are usually written alone, and discussed as a group.
by bmitc on 1/27/22, 6:11 AM
> At its best, a brainstorming group comes up with the same ideas as the group’s members would when working alone
That's not true. That would be brainstorming at its average. Has this person ever sat in a writer's room?
> at its worst, it perpetuates negative cultural habits, reinforces hierarchies, stunts productivity, and severely limits creativity.
Well yeah, anything at its worst is going to be counterproductive. Is that a revelation? I hate to say this phrase, but if that's the results of your brainstorming sessions, then you're doing it wrong.
The ideas of improv and the book Impro are relevant here.
Lastly, the purpose of brainstorming isn't productivity or results. It's about increasing the dimensionality of ideas. If one simply thinks alone, one may be stuck in linear or planar thinking. A brainstorming session or practice can help break out of that, where individuals can then return to solo thinking with a renewed exploration space and potentially a path through that.
by MauranKilom on 1/27/22, 12:45 AM
To me, the important parts of (what I would call) brainstorming are "everybody shares the ideas that come to their mind" and "ideas are not evaluated until later". It's happened so many times that some ridiculous-sounding (and outright wrong/unusable idea) has brought us on track to something novel and sound.
"Viability" paints you into a tiny corner of the solution space. Removing it from the equation lets you freely walk around and inspect other corners (which you can paint yourself into later).
by zwieback on 1/26/22, 9:22 PM
My experience exactly. We used to do this but gave up many years ago. Better to have individuals develop bare-bones ideas and then review with a group. Better yet, have a ranked voting system with a large but somewhat informed group to winnow down the list.
by zriha on 1/27/22, 9:52 AM
The problem isn't brainstorming, as codeflo said, it's important trick that brainstorming establishes a shared understanding that the group came up with the idea.
The problem is what is coming after brainstorming, the execution is the problem. We all have ideas, individually and as a group, but after idea is born, validation and executions are next crucial steps. Then you can conclude that you had a successful brainstorming.
by leblancfg on 1/26/22, 9:49 PM
I've had SOME great brainstorming sessions that provided great ideas for paths forward when starting new projects. I think that last part is important. Specifically, the "Discover" part of the double diamond design process.
In the cited article, sure the faster problem solvers will solve more individually. But
1) the proper grain to measure success is as the team level, and
2) it's easy to score a problem with a known answer, but it is significantly harder for a group to come to consensus as to what the best answer might be – you can't always just crunch the numbers to see who was right.
The advantages of the brainstorm at the team level can be profound: they can reach consensus as to what these better options are, as well as a shared understanding of the problem space and what the next steps are.
[1] https://www.thefountaininstitute.com/blog/what-is-the-double...
by GSGBen on 1/27/22, 12:21 AM
In a group, sure. On your own though it's an incredible technique to get over mental hurdles. Instead of letting yourself get distracted because a problem seems insurmountable or you can't see a path all the way through, try brainstorming entirely by yourself.
It can provide psychological safety for your own subconscious. Write down every idea, regardless of how ridiculous it is. Every "What if I...". I sometimes do a question and answer format in a simple text/markdown document. Write out a question that's one facet of the issue you're working on, and answer it with a bunch of different options. Then discard or select or flesh out the responses. Ask questions about what might and might not work with each option.
It's amazing what having a few different new paths to try can do for your energy levels and motivation.
by andrewstuart on 1/26/22, 10:43 PM
I can say with certainty that failure to be systematic about idea generation has led to many failed projects that otherwise could have been great successes. These projects were, in hindsight, "almost hugely successful", had we had the correct idea to pivot to. Sometimes only a tweak or an additional feature was required.
Also, a separate comment to this thread:
Edward De Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" is an alternative way of approaching innovative idea generation.
https://www.debonogroup.com/services/core-programs/six-think...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats
by etempleton on 1/26/22, 11:36 PM
The first trick to a good productive brainstorm is, counter intuitively, to make sure no one knows it is a brainstorm.
The second trick is to have only people that are comfortable with each other in the room.
by lifeisstillgood on 1/26/22, 10:44 PM
It's amazing how much I have built my career around psychological safety (one tends to admit these things a bit more as we get older)
So yes. If anything can improve your work experience, your productivity , it's psychological safetry
Taken to an extreme it would be sensible to give teams a annual bonus at the start of the year. Give them FU money and so be fairly confident they will say FU when it's needed
by vivegi on 1/27/22, 3:54 AM
While the article is making some good points, I don't agree with the overall article or its conclusions. A lot of the arguments in the article made against brainstorming are what I would consider implementation failures.
The corollary to Production Blocking occurs when a person realizes that the supposedly crazy idea that they were holding on to themselves for fear of being judged is not as crazy as they thought it is when they hear another person in the room say the same thing. It might even build allies and consensus leading to offline collaboration outside of the brainstorming context.
Evaluation Apprehension is a real concern. If a brainstorming session is run well, the facilitator would have established the ground rules (no interruptions, no judgments etc.,) and would quickly bring any conflicting behavior to an end.
The most important benefit of brainstorming, imo, is the fact that introverts are not drowned out by extroverts or junior team members being overruled on the spot by experienced people. This is not a bug, it is a feature.
In many scenarios, the person who comes up with the idea is not the same one who implements it. For eg: an end user of a system, a software engineer, a product manager etc., Having a diverse group where individuals play different roles tends to bring out differing perspectives. If you can't bring them out in the open in the early stages of idea generation, you are clearly missing out.
Edward de Bono, the person who coined the term Lateral Thinking has developed a lot of tools for creative thinking. His book, Serious Creativity changed my mindset and taught me that creativity, the kind we use every day as opposed to artistic creativity like painting/acting etc., is something that one can practice everyday and get better at. One such method / tool that he developed is Six Thinking Hats. In the book, he goes on to explain that the underlying cause of perceived lack of psychological safety is the human brain's ability to get into conflicting thinking modes for eg: when one person is in creative mode, another person is in evaluation mode or what de Bono calls as Green Hat and Black Hat respectively. Much of his work in Six Thinking Hats is around getting the entire group in the same thinking mode, what de Bono calls as Parallel Thinking. Here's a nice video of him explaining some of the thinking processes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbsKQQGwsMg
Recognizing this (different thinking modes) is key to having a productive group brainstorm and avoiding pitfalls.

by sova on 1/27/22, 1:42 AM

Osborn's words from his own book where the term was first used:

  Every day, everywhere in a democracy, juries are proving that a dozen minds can jointly judge and judge well. But that’s judicial thinking; how about creative thinking? Can a squad produce ideas? The answer is yes. Properly organized and run, a group can be a gold-mine of ideas. It was in 1939 when I first organized such group-thinking in our company. The early participants dubbed our efforts “Brainstorm Sessions”; and quite aptly so because, in this case, “brainstorm” means using the brain to storm a creative problem—and do so in commando fashion, with each stormer attacking the same objective.

So the good news is you can still brainstorm as Osborn himself intended. I suppose this once again goes to show that reading the manual is a good idea! I had no idea there was a manual for this stuff.

by elmolino89 on 1/27/22, 6:56 AM
The article does not distinguish between some badly prepared corpo rituals with power plays and gathering half-baked ideas from the members of the project.
I strongly prefer to have draft quality periodic reports/memos to be read by the team members than a tons of crappy Jira issues gathering dust and spreading confusion.
by TameAntelope on 1/26/22, 10:43 PM
I buy the ineffectiveness of brainstorming meetings.
I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as it might seem, though. You still need to get together and decide what to do with your team, it just probably should be a safe space is all. We knew that.
Hardly anything works without safety, and nearly anything works with safety. Sounds good to me.
by parentheses on 1/26/22, 11:27 PM
this article has a clickbait title and religiously abides by it when the discussion is much more nuanced. brainstorming is also not just about idea generation. it is a great way of investing the group in ideas that get picked - so it can be treated as a form of consensus seeking theater. this is why measuring the “performance” of brainstorming is largely a fool’s errand.
why does brainstorming often fail to generate new ideas? any time there is a sufficiently complex calculus involved in solving a problem, solution generation involves understanding that calculus. a brainstorm session must include people that understand the problem and solution spaces well. otherwise, the brainstorming is often useless.
almost all brainstorming sessions i have seen ignore this concept and result in no useful generation and a lot of wasted time.
by djmips on 1/27/22, 6:39 AM
What I don't like about this article is that they had a hypothesis and then they found some studies. I don't feel like this is written from their own experience and on the contrary so many of the responses are much more derived from experience. Throwing cold water on brain storming might be a good idea but I still feel there's a lot to be gained from the types of brain storming I've been involved with that really seems to amplify the brainpower in the room. For me at least, the group scenario really galvanizes some ideas that were just floating around previously.
by Kaotique on 1/27/22, 10:25 AM
I always get my best ideas in the shower. Somehow the complete lack of distraction helps a lot with free thinking, but I think suggesting showerstorming in my office would result in a quick trip to HR.
by errcorrectcode on 1/27/22, 2:19 AM
Group brainstorming is useful for creating a domain set of ideas to test and kill, especially if a simple-ish or vague problem needs to be solved immediately when optimal soon isn't required. Multiple people together can sometimes create better ideas through on-the-fly refinement. But, people who are less assertive aren't able to make their voices heard or convince others about alternative ideas.
Independent contributors have the potential of submitting better ideas privately utilizing individual creativities not biased or pressured by group dynamics.
by thrower123 on 1/27/22, 12:29 AM
I have never seen brainstorming sessions be useful, and they've been heavily in vogue since I was in pre-school.
Nobody ever actually prepares for them, so they don't have the slightest idea what the real constraints of the situation are. So huge amounts of time are wasted getting on the same page, then more as somebody bolts off on an impossible tangent that upsets the whole applecart. No one ever takes any notes, and every participant comes away with a different understanding of what was decided.
A singularly useless endeavor.
by jyriand on 1/27/22, 7:23 AM
For me brainstorming has nothing to do with generating ideas or solutions. I see it as an activation tool. You prime up your brain before doing the actual thinking.
by techer on 1/27/22, 7:18 AM
“A team meeting was hastily called and we embarked on ‘brainstorming’, an American business technique in which ideas are graded depending on how loudly they’re shouted”
Alan Partidge
by 7402 on 1/27/22, 12:10 AM
Dilbert on brainstorming: https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-12-12
by ford on 1/27/22, 3:59 AM
Related (because I do believe in brainstorming) - I've found brainstorming works best when
A) Individuals brainstorm on their own before a group session. Group sessions should be for sharing the best ideas, identifying common themes, and for providing more inspiration for others in the group.
B) Individuals should set an extremely high requirement for the number of ideas they come up with. Coming up with 10 ideas for you or your team is easy - I bet most people here could do it in the next 5 minutes. Coming up with 100 ideas is hard. You end up not only getting more conventional ideas but writing down some things that are just plain absurd. Oftentimes the absurd or stretched ideas can lead you to something you wouldn't have thought of otherwise.
by mrkramer on 1/26/22, 10:08 PM
>“Brainstorming” — the problem-solving technique of coming up with as many ideas as possible in a short period of time
I'm Longstorming-the problem-solving technique of coming up with as many ideas as possible in a long period of time
Now I have over 100 startup ideas, it's kind of hard to keep track anymore. But it is interesting how some ideas synergize with each other and can be combined in order to solve bigger problem.
by d3vmax on 1/26/22, 9:36 PM
Does this not depend on the situation / requirement? I am sure brainstorming under duress can help in certain situations.
by atmb4u on 1/26/22, 10:43 PM
Great ideas comes from individuals; But a combination of ideas as a team effort is what usually solves sizable problems.
There may be narrow use cases where the overhead of brainstorming doesn't add any value; but otherwise, I still believe brainstorming is a good way to consider alternatives for open-ended problems.
Collective >> Individuals or 1+1=3
by vlfig on 1/26/22, 9:53 PM
Mostly yes. My advice on this topic is to read up on Liberating Structures, which I think are a level up.
https://liberatingstructures.com/
by env123 on 1/28/22, 6:48 PM
Brainstorming is just a means for discussing ideas. Whether it works is irrelevant, it helps to keep projects moving, rather than being stuck in analysis paralysis
by wwilim on 1/26/22, 11:59 PM
Is the author, by any chance, selling psychological safety training?
by hoseja on 1/27/22, 7:12 AM
This sounds like a postmodern takedown of the possibility of meaningful collaboration. Sure it's hard but it's not fundamentally impossible.
by callamdelaney on 1/26/22, 10:57 PM
We're not allowed to use the word brainstorming here in the UK, it's thought to be offensive to people without brains.
by m1117 on 1/26/22, 10:45 PM
Get outta here. Is it a controversial marketing headline? Brainstorming is a fantastic tool, just use it wisely.
by gherkinnn on 1/27/22, 11:10 AM
Unrelated to brainstorming: this blog's typography is gorgeous.
by truth_seeker on 1/27/22, 7:00 AM
> Ideas are best developed by individuals
Totally agree with it. Thanks for sharing.
by bluetwo on 1/26/22, 10:03 PM
As far as solving well defined problems, I don't necessarily think brainstorming is great. That's never how I've seen it used.
But for better defined unstructured problems and then turning to novel solutions, it is great.
It bothers me that corporations don't use it that way MORE. And I dearly HATE meetings.
Also, the hip term these days is "ideation" not "brainstorming". Get with the times, boomer. (Just kidding--almost a boomer here)
by gls2ro on 1/27/22, 8:19 AM
I think this article is a good critique of the current "fast-food" like brainstorming session many people/companies are running.
I name them fast-food-like because most of the brainstorming sessions are something like "Let's have a 1-hour meeting and brainstorm some ideas". It is expecting people to go in a creative flow instantly after the meeting has started and also feel psychologically safe when entering the room/zoom call. No preparation made, no group forming, nothing to actually prepare the meeting. It is a pure form of wanting to just get ideas as fast as possible from participants' brains.
I strongly recommend anyone to read the "Applied Immagination" book by Osborn. It is where he (first) talked at large about brain storming sessions. Can be read freely on the Internet Archive Open Library.
I will just give here three important points from that book, where Osborn talk about how to organise such sessions.
First, it talks about the importance of facilitators. Here are the requirements Osborn had for facilitators:
- Should ask stimulating questions
- Should have plans for guiding the generation of ideas
- Should provide warm-up exercises
- Should teach and reinforce the guidelines
- Should do the planning and scheduling of follow-up sessions
Then, it talks about the profile of the participant: should be a self-starter and should have experience with the matter/area related to the brainstorming subject.
And then it lays out how the session should be organised:
1. Preparation of the type of the problem to be approached
2. Send a one-page background and invitation memo to participants describing the task to be solved with some example of the type of ideas desired
3. Individual ideation should be done by each participant on their own in advance before the group session
4. Group brainstorming session - with the duration between 30 and 45 minutes
5. Follow-up individual ideation should happen again after the group session
As one can notice doing such brainstorming sessions as designed by Osborn is very different that what we see normally in a company/organization where someone just sends an invite with the title "Brainstorming about new feature/solution for ..." and then expects people to come and be creative.
As a side note, I also recommend reading The Art of Thought by Graham Wallace. While the psychology of creativity has done many advanced in the last 100 years, his book has still defined the general concept for what people now call creative problem-solving.
I read both books and I managed to publish a summary of the Art of Thought on my blog, but not on the Applied Imagination by Osborn. Hope to find time for this soon.
by fxtentacle on 1/26/22, 9:31 PM
TLDR: Brainstorming has become a heuristic, an attempted shortcut, a lossy substitution for psychological safety.