Breaking the Creativity Drought

When an organisation is getting on in years, it can be prone to some stuck thinking styles.  Add this to some national or local cultures that are somewhat conservative and you have all the ingredients for a creativity drought. 

How can the creativity drought be broken? 

Brainstorming is a technique for getting great creative ideas out of a group of people who, for one reason or another, are not known for their creativity.  

Rarely practiced at its best, even in more progressive settings, brainstorming is the first stage of an ideas generation process.  It can be the start of:   

• Finding solutions to difficult problems,
• Stretching beyond small thinking,
• Overcoming “stuckness”, and
• Getting buy-in to new approaches.

 The process in a nutshell

1.    Ideas are generated,

2.    Ideas are sorted, categorised and refined, 

3.    The relative merit of each is assessed,

4.    A viable way forward is developed. 

The psychological environment must be safe

However, many brainstorming sessions do not reach their full potential because one or more of the crucial principles are not adhered to.  For a brainstorming session to work well, the following “group rules” have to be enforced: 

1.    There are no bad ideas, 

2.    Everyone in the room is encouraged to share, regardless of age, position, level of expertise or seniority,

3.    All ideas are received with gratitude and affirmation,

4.    No one is put down for an idea that isn’t so good.

The rules of engagement

For brainstorming to work effectively, the facilitator must create the right psychological environment from the beginning.  Here’s how:

1.    Announce the group rules (as above) before the session begins and get commitment from everyone in the room. 

2.    Enforce the group rules as the meeting progresses, being ready (even seeking out the opportunity) to quickly jump on someone who breaks one of the group rules.

3.    Ask key questions to get ideas flowing.

4.    If there is a degree of “stuckness”, it is often because people cannot see beyond their immediate experience, so try an obtuse line of questioning such as placing the problem in a colony on Mars, or asking how we would sabotage our project if we were the opposition.  Once the discussion becomes fluid, draw out some principles and bring the discussion to the concrete. 

5.    If there is a greater degree of stuckness, ask obscure questions with multiple choice questions. Get members of the group to justify their answers. (Should the rocket to Mars be petrol-powered, nuclear-powered, or powered by oxygen fuel?  Why?) 

6.    Once you get going, record all the input from around the room, giving it equal value at first.  All ideas are considered worthy.  None are rejected, even if they seem unsuitable.  No rejection, criticism or ridicule of ideas is countenanced.  All ideas are written up so they are visible to all (whiteboard, butcher’s paper).

7.    Begin to focus in on those solutions that seem to be the most viable to the group. 

8.    These can be sorted, categorised, and shaped into a solution or range of possible solutions. 

Absolute stuckness requires the removal of an elephant (or person) in the room

If, after going through approaches 3 to 5 above, there is still stuckness in the room, you will probably have a good feel for what might be causing it. 

This is where a great deal of sensitivity is called for.  Whatever you do could go either way and you might end up with an outstanding failure or resounding success.  You may decide to name the elephant in the room.  (“Clearly there is a lot of reticence in the group.  May I ask what it’s about?  Is it because there is still some tension about the huge mistake that costs thousands of dollars last week?”)

Allow the group to give this some time, but not too much, then try to extract a commitment from each one to put aside their feelings on the issue for the rest of the session. 

However, by far the most frequent reason that people do not speak up is because it is counter to the organisational culture and there is someone in the room who would (they perceive) disapprove and bring about consequences.  He is usually (though not always) one of the management team. 

In this case, I call a five minute break, during which I privately explain to the manager what is going on and ask him to leave.  When the meeting reconvenes, I simply say that he had to leave and won’t be able to continue with the session.  Usually, the atmosphere in the room changes dramatically. Everyone understands that you will report to management team, but they know that it will only be about the outcome of the meeting, not what individual members said.  They are confident they cannot be picked off (as is prone to happen in some dysfunctional stuck workplaces). 

Changing the world one brainstorm at a time

If brainstorming is practised widely at frontline and middle management levels in a stuck organisation, it can be an important tool in the armoury for changing the nature of the stuck organisation from the bottom up.  In the long run, rational managers cannot resist the overwhelming force of quality ideas and grass-roots opinion based in practical experience from the frontline.    

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