14 ms·

Group brainstorming is a waste of time (2015)

96 points by sciurus 6y ago

hirundo 6y ago
> In fact, a great deal of evidence indicates that brainstorming actually harms creative performance, resulting in a collective performance loss that is the very opposite of synergy. This is my experience. It's difficult to get under the surface of a problem in a committee. Better to take the same group, state the issue, then ask everyone to separately go on a long walk and think about it. Then come back and perform group memetic meiosis on the solutions.
- noneeeed 6y ago
  I seem to remember reading about some studies that came to a similar conclusion. The optimum approach to generating new ideas was to ask everyone to presubmit suggestions, which were then put to the group unattributed (at least initially) and the group then riffed on those ideas. People tended to come up with a wider variety of options on their own, and presenting them all equally made personal/power relationships in the group less of an impediment to creative thinking (less writing off ideas just because they came from Bob or Carol).
- Fricken 6y ago
  Idea sessions for us are less about coming up with anything new than they are about vetting the ideas we have kicking around and deciding which ones are worth running with.
- clairity 6y ago
  that's the raison d'être of structured approaches like design sprints, to control for the collapse of the creative space during brainstorming sessions (colloquially, groupthink).
- hanniabu 6y ago
  From my experience the best comes from a combination of both. Everyone think separately and come up with your own solutions, then meet as a group and everyone goes over their ideas, then go one by one and list the pros and cons of each solution. Typically you can eliminate half right off the bat. Then you go through each of the remaining ones and brainstorm how you can tweak it to maximize the pros and minimize the cons. Sometimes you can't make any changes and sometimes you end up combining different parts of different solutions into one. Note that this will only work in small groups, like 3-5 people or so.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
benjiweber 6y ago
One can counter these challenges when facilitating a group session by including separating diverge and converge phases. Give people time to work individually without influence by the group before sharing and combining the best perspectives of the whole group. Often when a brainstorm session is run in a way where everyone's work is immediately visible to everone else people get anchored early and miss out on good ideas. This could be as simple as everyone spending a few mins jotting down their ideas separately before sharing them in a group chat, or on a whiteboard.
- Someone 6y ago
  Yes, one can counter this by not doing brainstorming (in the narrow sense as defined by Alex Osborn in the 1950s) The article doesn’t claim there isn’t any way to get creative ideas out of larger groups, it claims that Osborn’s method of doing it isn’t a good one.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm working on a couple of things right now where people are commenting on a larger document, individuals and subgroups are going off to work on things and come back to present, get feedback, rinse and repeat. It's incremental iteration and convergence.
jyriand 6y ago
Is brainstorming witha group even a thing nowadays? Last time I did some brainstorming with a group was in a high school.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  IME, not in the literal sense covered by the article. With my teams, we'll meet, chat about a problem, go out separate ways for a while, then regroup. Or, we'll send one expert off to do some solo thinking/analysis, and bring it back and we'll all discuss it, then send that person off again. Which way depends on the problem and the individuals involved.
yboris 6y ago
Reminds me of the wonderful book "The Wisdom of Crowds". The author points out under what conditions 'crowds' (or a group of people) can come together with a better answer than any individual. Primary take-away relevant to this situation is to have independent thought, and to have independent voicing/collecting of ideas. It's rather dangerous for a 'leader' of the group to express an opinion, only to have everyone confirm so as to score points.
- georgeecollins 6y ago
  I think you are missing the point of the wisdom of crowds. Crowds are great at aggregating the influence the various factors that go into a complex problem. The example from the book was (I think) that crowds were great at say, estimating the weight of a cow. Or, in modern terms, the price of a stock. Crowds are terrible at being creative whether they are lead by a person or not.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    "Wisdom of crowds" is pretty fascinating in that it does really well under some circumstances. A friend of mine has been running an Oscar contest for years and I grabbed some data from him a few years ago. We knew that "consensus" did well but I actually did some graphs and analysis; it's pretty striking: https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2012/04/crowdsourcing-prediction-and-other-data.html https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2012/04/crowdsourcing-predicti... Undergrad, we were were both on the movie committee where we had an attendance-guessing contest that had similar results. But... outside of some very specific and often artificial circumstances where the effect is very robust. It doesn't really work.
  - yboris 6y ago
    An example I remember from the book was about locating a sunken submarine. The 'experts' related to submarine/naval stuff were all briefed together on the problem and were asked to think about it independently and then their individual ideas were brought together in some fashion. Their composite proposal ended up being very successful. That example from the book was meant to illustrate (as I understood it) that you can aggregate individual thoughts on complex subjects and arrive at a useful conclusion that may be closer to the truth than any individual alone. I shared my comment in response to a claim that brainstorming is a waste of time. It is definitely the case that certain ways to aggregate people's thoughts (e.g. "groupthink") can be worse than having a well-informed individual solve the problem. What I believe _is_ possible is to combine ideas of a group of people to get better results that choosing just a few "smart" individuals to make the decision. A far analogy is the voting system in the US. Because we don't have Approval Voting or RCV / IRV (Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff Voting) we now have a 2 party system where 3rd parties can have deleterious effects. The way you aggregate REALLY matters.
askafriend 6y ago
Brainstorming accomplishes a lot that you can't measure. Just like casual water cooler conversations result in ideas that wouldn't have seen the light of day otherwise (and this is why office design is important too!). All this stuff matters. There's different ways to go about it (and different methods can accomplish similar goals), but to blanket declare brainstorming generally as placebo with no effect is just wrong in my view.
- de1978st 6y ago
  I agree, I haven't read the article yet, but I will say, brainstorming in my experience is actually a form of entertainment. There is nothing more rewarding to me having worked in IT than being able to collaborate with others. This is not about getting a project done, or building. This is more about looking back on the course of my career and realizing the only important things are the fellowships gained throughout, otherwise, its all just IT shit, at the end of the day, anyway.
redelbee 6y ago
How valuable is the “making your team feel good” result mentioned at the end of the article? I think good team cohesion and understanding are valuable outcomes of brainstorms that can be overlooked. In my experience at an advertising agency “Making people feel good” was the best result of brainstorming, but certainly not the only one. Everyone had a chance to voice their ideas and offer feedback on other ideas. In the end the ideas usually ended up coming from the people who were great at making ideas, and the tactical executions of those ideas came from the people who were good at making ideas come to life, and sometimes they combined to make an even better idea and execution. As a creative leader I also required each person involved in the brainstorm to do individual work beforehand. Perhaps this is why we saw good results. Either way, measuring brainstorming success by number of ideas or some other measure of “creativity” is likely missing out on the social benefits of the process.
- mdbauman 6y ago
  I agree with this, also based on my experience working at an ad agency. Particularly the part about team members with different expertise finding better ideas and execution strategies. I'll buy that on average, brainstorming is an inefficient way to improve the quality of a product, especially if all members of the team are reasonably knowledgeable about the subject. But as the article mentions, that's often not the case. It may not always or even often result in a better product, but there's definitely value in finding those outlier projects where you can save time and money with an approach that would be obvious to someone with more familiarity with the subject. It's hard to know if this is the case beforehand, so it may be a sensible default to hold a short brainstorming session for any project so your team at least has the opportunity to identify areas for improvement. Edit: formatting
- Frost1x 6y ago
  >As a creative leader I also required each person involved in the brainstorm to do individual work beforehand. This is overlooked. There's an inherent assumption with brainstorming that you start from nothing and form ideas. The issue is that you need some context around what you're generating ideas for to shape them. It also helps to have time to shape these ideas before sharing them, even at the "first stage." This allows everyone time to form some early ideas and shape them in a way they can easily express them so others understand the vision and can iterate, mutate, etc. around a solid understanding around the shape of the context. You don't need weeks but at least an evening to casually/informally think over things is typically enough. If you dont do this, you get some initial thoughts with a lack of any data and everyone asking lots of questions around context instead of forming ideas around the context. Essentially, you spend time finding the cursory data you need to have a proper brainstorming session. Then you get ideas that had no time to form. People can typically generate ideas and iterate out sets of bad ideas themselves. The remaining potentially good ideas are the ones perfect for a brainstorming session. From my experience, this is where valuable group brainstorming starts and takes on a life of its own.
bonestormii_ 6y ago
I don't think well in groups, because conversation is distracting. I think this applies to everyone when the subject matter is deeper than like, advertising or something superficially creative. The value of brainstorming is mainly the suspension of criticism, and it's an important part of any creative task, even if applied alone. I see it all the time--a very smart person with lots of aptitude who can't write, can't draw, can't code, can't do anything because any small attempt is immediately "not good enough". The suspension of criticism is necessary in order to push through. You can't run from the problems forever, but I do think that making some shitty version of something before you make a good version is... necessary? You never really know what you are doing until the shitty version exists and you can see the problems, and subsequently the solutions.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Its the same reason that open work spaces aren't just productivity killers, they are creativity killers. Both require a rational thought process, randomly interjecting other ideas from the people chattering in the room rarely helps.
  - bonestormii_ 6y ago
    Exactly. That said, a one-on-one type thing with someone you trust can be great.
corpMaverick 6y ago
From the same author. I think this is quite interesting. "Why do so many incompetent men become leaders?" https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men I read article years ago and I couldn't find it until just now.
- tropdrop 6y ago
  This was a great read - thanks!
ThomPete 6y ago
that really depend on the group
crispyambulance 6y ago
It depends on the group. Small groups where everyone knows each other and are skilled at communication, experienced at problem-solving with each other, and don't have psychological safety issues--- sure, they can brainstorm together and stimulate creative thinking. I expect that what the hbr guy has in mind is a table of shark-like MBA's, each with something to prove, hide, or vanquish. Yeah, that's not good for a brainstorming session, it will just become a feeding frenzy.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Enough with the stereotypes. We can probably agree that a table of people who are all trying to "win" whatever their degrees and motivations is probably not the best way to tackle a problem.
  - Frost1x 6y ago
    Definitely. In environments where there's clearly a form of competition (most business environments), brainstorming often turns into a silly exercise of ego and political play more than a judgement free arena to generate ideas and offer true constructive criticism. If you're in a business environment where you have a team where everyone isn't trying to make sure they have an opportunity to get paid more than you, receive a promotion before you, have their idea "win" for RDD, or have more job security when resourcss are tight, then count your blessings. I've worked in these environments and you can truly innovate, it's marvelous and fun even if the work is challenging. It requires teams who are understanding of one another, have humility, and are shielded by some manager or business policy who/that allows for this sort of dynamic. It's pretty rare, unfortunately.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I guess I've had a better experience in general.
      - ilikeerp 6y ago
        Or maybe you were never a shark, never progressed beyond the bottom levels and were never really in charge of anything substantial? My kids sometimes feel like they've made life changing and important decisions when in reality I just gave them a choice between two pairs of shoes to go to the park. The tech equivalent is owning a small product at a big company, feels like you're the man but the CEO doesn't give a toss and you're not strategic.
russfink 6y ago
I am most creative when I'm invited to attend a lengthy meeting that becomes boring. Doodles on the page lead me to wonder is there some better way to do all of this? anyone else feel this way, too?
- jlokier 6y ago
  I'm creative in meetings, but probably have better ideas after the meeting is over. L'esprit de l'escalier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier
Puts 6y ago
Has anybody else noticed that when walking in a group of more than 3 you end up in a really uncomfortable tempo? It's like everybody tries to adjust to the slowest, but nobody knows who the slowest is so you end up in a really weird and slow tempo that really no one ever would walk in normally? I tend to think that this even happens mentally to groups. We start to think slower when we are in a group of other people. I guess this is why discussions on social events also ends up on subjects like celebrities and sports rather than abstract philosophical topics.
csours 6y ago
Group Brainstorming may be a waste of time if you only consider the ideas from that brainstorming session; but if you consider group brainstorming as a communication session, then you should also look at the ideas that those involved come up with and develop later.
inetsee 6y ago
"Social Anxiety: People worry about other team members’ views of their ideas." One way of dealing with this problem is to do Anonymous Brainstorming https://extension.unr.edu/publication.aspx?PubID=2579 https://extension.unr.edu/publication.aspx?PubID=2579 The idea, in a nutshell, is that there is a facilitator. The members of the team do not meet in person. They send their ideas to the facilitator, who aggregates the ideas and sends the complete list out to the members of the team. This is intended to remove the social effects that might interfere with some of the team members participating fully, or other members dominating the process because of their perceived position in the hierarchy, or their better social skills. An advanced version of this involves rounds; everybody sends their ideas to the facilitator, the complete list goes out to everybody, the members critique or support some of the ideas, the facilitator adds the new input and sends the revised list back out to the team, and the process repeats (presumably until there is some agreement on the best idea(s), or everybody gets tired if doing it). My recollection is that this process can be very effective at problem solving, but it certainly isn't as quick as getting a bunch of people in a room to hash out some ideas.
- Rapzid 6y ago
  I'm going to plug my old employer here for this, https://www.polleverywhere.com/ https://www.polleverywhere.com/ . We heavily used the service internally and the anonymous "Q&A" used for retros and brainstorming was eye-opening to say the least.
fluffernutter 6y ago
I had a colleague recently take CliftonStrengths. Their "skills" were equally balanced across all 4 categories and they have a history of "getting things done" although not always doing all things to the point they are "correctly done". When I took it a few years back all my skills were clumped into strategy, which might explain why just doing strategy isn't necessary a way to get things done and may be a waste of time if done to excess.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Strategy is important but it can also devolve into "writing thick reports that no one reads." I was involved in an expert witness report a number of years back which involved going through a bunch of depositions. I remember reading through the deposition of one senior executive who was basically asked "But your corporate strategy office said this initiative was important. Are you saying you disagree?" And his response was basically that the corporate strategy office writes a lot of things [that I don't pay much mind to].
omarhaneef 6y ago
These are the reasons group brainstorming is a waste of time, and they can all be addressed by a simple hack, which is that each person writes down all their ideas in advance before sharing the list and discussing them in public: Social loafing: There’s a tendency – also known as free riding – for people to make less of an effort when they are working in teams than alone. As with the bystander effect, we feel less propelled to do something when we know other people might do it. Social anxiety: People worry about other team members’ views of their ideas. This is also referred to as evaluation apprehension. Similarly, when team members perceive that others have more expertise, their performance declines. This is especially problematic for introverted and less confident individuals. Regression to the mean: This is the process of downward adjustment whereby the most talented group members end up matching the performance of their less talented counterparts. This effect is well known in sports – if you practice with someone less competent than you, your competence level declines and you sink to the mediocrity of your opponent. Production blocking: No matter how large the group, individuals can only express a single idea at one time if they want other group members to hear them. Studies have found that the number of suggestions plateaus with more than six or seven group members, and that the number of ideas per person declines as group size increases.
- brightball 6y ago
  The downside to your approach is the natural tendency for people to defend their own ideas rather than participate in the discussion.
- Rapzid 6y ago
  > which is that each person writes down all their ideas in advance before sharing the list and discussing them in public This sentiment has been echoed by other posters here and I believe it to be clutch. Generally speaking I loath any meeting that does not include an agenda/context so I can prepare for it(even if just mentally).
- watwut 6y ago
  Countrepoint: I get more creative when I hear other people's ideas. Alone with paper I have harder time come up with creative ideas. Also, large reason is that with paper I second guess myself more and anticipate or prepare for possible negative reaction. When I see that the group dynamic is good right now, I have less reason to be careful and get more free.
programmarchy 6y ago
Brainstorming is usually done in a pretty haphazard manner, so I'm not surprised by these results. Just getting minds in a room is not enough. The hub-and-spoke model was used at AT&T labs, where individuals or small teams descend into "spokes" to do deep work, then return to a "hub" to synthesize results and plan future directions. You also need solid leadership to provide direction and organization, although I suppose there's exceptions to that rule like Valve's holocracy. I'd be curious how something like the Manhattan Project was organized.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
I'm not gonna throw out crazy ideas, when I'm the senior person in the room and know what the result should look like. I don't want to spend the next week showing folks that a triangle can't have four sides, or whatever. There are few times in my life, where brainstorming would get me where I wanted to go.
vanderZwan 6y ago
When I taught design for a year I was forced to give a lecture on how to do brainstorming as well. It just so happened that I hated classic brainstorming with a passion. So I subverted the lesson by making it a long rant about everything wrong about brainstorming, with research to back it up, while suggesting other methods of ideating together instead. I shared the link to the slides here once before, it seemed to be well-received (there were anonymous viewers looking at that presentation for many months after sharing) so I might as well link it again[0][1][2]. [0] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EYyS4AtRhNa6i299R_RB0a54ePU2PEQsILQnwWgY9KU/edit#slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EYyS4AtRhNa6i299R_RB... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15237174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15237174 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15241373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15241373
- bostonvaulter2 6y ago
  I remember reading this a few years ago. Well worth the re-read.
robomartin 6y ago
I am about five months into burning time and money brainstorming for a solution to a problem. Our client insisted in having "the team" participate. Never mind that we knew exactly where to go and what to implement five months ago (experience matters). We could have been a couple of iterations into a real solution by now (this is hardware+software) rather than being nowhere while everyone understands what they don't understand and finally understands that what we said five months ago was the correct path. Rather than being critical, sometimes one needs to realize that people and organizations, at times, require going through a process before accepting reality or agreeing with a conclusion. I've seen this many times during my career, from simple problems to designs that are currently orbiting our planet. It's unfortunate because it burns time, money and valuable human capital (people could be doing far more valuable things).
fuzzfactor 6y ago
Brainstorm solutions, not needs.

96 points by sciurus 6y ago

> In fact, a great deal of evidence indicates that brainstorming actually harms creative performance, resulting in a collective performance loss that is the very opposite of synergy. This is my experience. It's difficult to get under the surface of a problem in a committee. Better to take the same group, state the issue, then ask everyone to separately go on a long walk and think about it. Then come back and perform group memetic meiosis on the solutions.

noneeeed 6y ago
I seem to remember reading about some studies that came to a similar conclusion. The optimum approach to generating new ideas was to ask everyone to presubmit suggestions, which were then put to the group unattributed (at least initially) and the group then riffed on those ideas. People tended to come up with a wider variety of options on their own, and presenting them all equally made personal/power relationships in the group less of an impediment to creative thinking (less writing off ideas just because they came from Bob or Carol).
Fricken 6y ago
Idea sessions for us are less about coming up with anything new than they are about vetting the ideas we have kicking around and deciding which ones are worth running with.
clairity 6y ago
that's the raison d'être of structured approaches like design sprints, to control for the collapse of the creative space during brainstorming sessions (colloquially, groupthink).
hanniabu 6y ago
From my experience the best comes from a combination of both. Everyone think separately and come up with your own solutions, then meet as a group and everyone goes over their ideas, then go one by one and list the pros and cons of each solution. Typically you can eliminate half right off the bat. Then you go through each of the remaining ones and brainstorm how you can tweak it to maximize the pros and minimize the cons. Sometimes you can't make any changes and sometimes you end up combining different parts of different solutions into one. Note that this will only work in small groups, like 3-5 people or so.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

benjiweber 6y ago

One can counter these challenges when facilitating a group session by including separating diverge and converge phases. Give people time to work individually without influence by the group before sharing and combining the best perspectives of the whole group. Often when a brainstorm session is run in a way where everyone's work is immediately visible to everone else people get anchored early and miss out on good ideas. This could be as simple as everyone spending a few mins jotting down their ideas separately before sharing them in a group chat, or on a whiteboard.

Someone 6y ago
Yes, one can counter this by not doing brainstorming (in the narrow sense as defined by Alex Osborn in the 1950s) The article doesn’t claim there isn’t any way to get creative ideas out of larger groups, it claims that Osborn’s method of doing it isn’t a good one.
ghaff 6y ago
Yeah, I'm working on a couple of things right now where people are commenting on a larger document, individuals and subgroups are going off to work on things and come back to present, get feedback, rinse and repeat. It's incremental iteration and convergence.

jyriand 6y ago

Is brainstorming witha group even a thing nowadays? Last time I did some brainstorming with a group was in a high school.

alistairSH 6y ago
IME, not in the literal sense covered by the article. With my teams, we'll meet, chat about a problem, go out separate ways for a while, then regroup. Or, we'll send one expert off to do some solo thinking/analysis, and bring it back and we'll all discuss it, then send that person off again. Which way depends on the problem and the individuals involved.

yboris 6y ago

Reminds me of the wonderful book "The Wisdom of Crowds". The author points out under what conditions 'crowds' (or a group of people) can come together with a better answer than any individual. Primary take-away relevant to this situation is to have independent thought, and to have independent voicing/collecting of ideas. It's rather dangerous for a 'leader' of the group to express an opinion, only to have everyone confirm so as to score points.

georgeecollins 6y ago
I think you are missing the point of the wisdom of crowds. Crowds are great at aggregating the influence the various factors that go into a complex problem. The example from the book was (I think) that crowds were great at say, estimating the weight of a cow. Or, in modern terms, the price of a stock. Crowds are terrible at being creative whether they are lead by a person or not.
- ghaff 6y ago
  "Wisdom of crowds" is pretty fascinating in that it does really well under some circumstances. A friend of mine has been running an Oscar contest for years and I grabbed some data from him a few years ago. We knew that "consensus" did well but I actually did some graphs and analysis; it's pretty striking: https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2012/04/crowdsourcing-prediction-and-other-data.html https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2012/04/crowdsourcing-predicti... Undergrad, we were were both on the movie committee where we had an attendance-guessing contest that had similar results. But... outside of some very specific and often artificial circumstances where the effect is very robust. It doesn't really work.
- yboris 6y ago
  An example I remember from the book was about locating a sunken submarine. The 'experts' related to submarine/naval stuff were all briefed together on the problem and were asked to think about it independently and then their individual ideas were brought together in some fashion. Their composite proposal ended up being very successful. That example from the book was meant to illustrate (as I understood it) that you can aggregate individual thoughts on complex subjects and arrive at a useful conclusion that may be closer to the truth than any individual alone. I shared my comment in response to a claim that brainstorming is a waste of time. It is definitely the case that certain ways to aggregate people's thoughts (e.g. "groupthink") can be worse than having a well-informed individual solve the problem. What I believe _is_ possible is to combine ideas of a group of people to get better results that choosing just a few "smart" individuals to make the decision. A far analogy is the voting system in the US. Because we don't have Approval Voting or RCV / IRV (Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff Voting) we now have a 2 party system where 3rd parties can have deleterious effects. The way you aggregate REALLY matters.

askafriend 6y ago

Brainstorming accomplishes a lot that you can't measure. Just like casual water cooler conversations result in ideas that wouldn't have seen the light of day otherwise (and this is why office design is important too!). All this stuff matters. There's different ways to go about it (and different methods can accomplish similar goals), but to blanket declare brainstorming generally as placebo with no effect is just wrong in my view.

de1978st 6y ago
I agree, I haven't read the article yet, but I will say, brainstorming in my experience is actually a form of entertainment. There is nothing more rewarding to me having worked in IT than being able to collaborate with others. This is not about getting a project done, or building. This is more about looking back on the course of my career and realizing the only important things are the fellowships gained throughout, otherwise, its all just IT shit, at the end of the day, anyway.

redelbee 6y ago

How valuable is the “making your team feel good” result mentioned at the end of the article? I think good team cohesion and understanding are valuable outcomes of brainstorms that can be overlooked. In my experience at an advertising agency “Making people feel good” was the best result of brainstorming, but certainly not the only one. Everyone had a chance to voice their ideas and offer feedback on other ideas. In the end the ideas usually ended up coming from the people who were great at making ideas, and the tactical executions of those ideas came from the people who were good at making ideas come to life, and sometimes they combined to make an even better idea and execution. As a creative leader I also required each person involved in the brainstorm to do individual work beforehand. Perhaps this is why we saw good results. Either way, measuring brainstorming success by number of ideas or some other measure of “creativity” is likely missing out on the social benefits of the process.

mdbauman 6y ago
I agree with this, also based on my experience working at an ad agency. Particularly the part about team members with different expertise finding better ideas and execution strategies. I'll buy that on average, brainstorming is an inefficient way to improve the quality of a product, especially if all members of the team are reasonably knowledgeable about the subject. But as the article mentions, that's often not the case. It may not always or even often result in a better product, but there's definitely value in finding those outlier projects where you can save time and money with an approach that would be obvious to someone with more familiarity with the subject. It's hard to know if this is the case beforehand, so it may be a sensible default to hold a short brainstorming session for any project so your team at least has the opportunity to identify areas for improvement. Edit: formatting
Frost1x 6y ago
>As a creative leader I also required each person involved in the brainstorm to do individual work beforehand. This is overlooked. There's an inherent assumption with brainstorming that you start from nothing and form ideas. The issue is that you need some context around what you're generating ideas for to shape them. It also helps to have time to shape these ideas before sharing them, even at the "first stage." This allows everyone time to form some early ideas and shape them in a way they can easily express them so others understand the vision and can iterate, mutate, etc. around a solid understanding around the shape of the context. You don't need weeks but at least an evening to casually/informally think over things is typically enough. If you dont do this, you get some initial thoughts with a lack of any data and everyone asking lots of questions around context instead of forming ideas around the context. Essentially, you spend time finding the cursory data you need to have a proper brainstorming session. Then you get ideas that had no time to form. People can typically generate ideas and iterate out sets of bad ideas themselves. The remaining potentially good ideas are the ones perfect for a brainstorming session. From my experience, this is where valuable group brainstorming starts and takes on a life of its own.

bonestormii_ 6y ago

I don't think well in groups, because conversation is distracting. I think this applies to everyone when the subject matter is deeper than like, advertising or something superficially creative. The value of brainstorming is mainly the suspension of criticism, and it's an important part of any creative task, even if applied alone. I see it all the time--a very smart person with lots of aptitude who can't write, can't draw, can't code, can't do anything because any small attempt is immediately "not good enough". The suspension of criticism is necessary in order to push through. You can't run from the problems forever, but I do think that making some shitty version of something before you make a good version is... necessary? You never really know what you are doing until the shitty version exists and you can see the problems, and subsequently the solutions.

valuearb 6y ago
Its the same reason that open work spaces aren't just productivity killers, they are creativity killers. Both require a rational thought process, randomly interjecting other ideas from the people chattering in the room rarely helps.
- bonestormii_ 6y ago
  Exactly. That said, a one-on-one type thing with someone you trust can be great.

corpMaverick 6y ago

From the same author. I think this is quite interesting. "Why do so many incompetent men become leaders?" https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men I read article years ago and I couldn't find it until just now.

tropdrop 6y ago
This was a great read - thanks!

ThomPete 6y ago

that really depend on the group

crispyambulance 6y ago

It depends on the group. Small groups where everyone knows each other and are skilled at communication, experienced at problem-solving with each other, and don't have psychological safety issues--- sure, they can brainstorm together and stimulate creative thinking. I expect that what the hbr guy has in mind is a table of shark-like MBA's, each with something to prove, hide, or vanquish. Yeah, that's not good for a brainstorming session, it will just become a feeding frenzy.

ghaff 6y ago
Enough with the stereotypes. We can probably agree that a table of people who are all trying to "win" whatever their degrees and motivations is probably not the best way to tackle a problem.
- Frost1x 6y ago
  Definitely. In environments where there's clearly a form of competition (most business environments), brainstorming often turns into a silly exercise of ego and political play more than a judgement free arena to generate ideas and offer true constructive criticism. If you're in a business environment where you have a team where everyone isn't trying to make sure they have an opportunity to get paid more than you, receive a promotion before you, have their idea "win" for RDD, or have more job security when resourcss are tight, then count your blessings. I've worked in these environments and you can truly innovate, it's marvelous and fun even if the work is challenging. It requires teams who are understanding of one another, have humility, and are shielded by some manager or business policy who/that allows for this sort of dynamic. It's pretty rare, unfortunately.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I guess I've had a better experience in general.
    - ilikeerp 6y ago
      Or maybe you were never a shark, never progressed beyond the bottom levels and were never really in charge of anything substantial? My kids sometimes feel like they've made life changing and important decisions when in reality I just gave them a choice between two pairs of shoes to go to the park. The tech equivalent is owning a small product at a big company, feels like you're the man but the CEO doesn't give a toss and you're not strategic.

russfink 6y ago

I am most creative when I'm invited to attend a lengthy meeting that becomes boring. Doodles on the page lead me to wonder is there some better way to do all of this? anyone else feel this way, too?

jlokier 6y ago
I'm creative in meetings, but probably have better ideas after the meeting is over. L'esprit de l'escalier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier

Puts 6y ago

Has anybody else noticed that when walking in a group of more than 3 you end up in a really uncomfortable tempo? It's like everybody tries to adjust to the slowest, but nobody knows who the slowest is so you end up in a really weird and slow tempo that really no one ever would walk in normally? I tend to think that this even happens mentally to groups. We start to think slower when we are in a group of other people. I guess this is why discussions on social events also ends up on subjects like celebrities and sports rather than abstract philosophical topics.

csours 6y ago

Group Brainstorming may be a waste of time if you only consider the ideas from that brainstorming session; but if you consider group brainstorming as a communication session, then you should also look at the ideas that those involved come up with and develop later.

inetsee 6y ago

"Social Anxiety: People worry about other team members’ views of their ideas." One way of dealing with this problem is to do Anonymous Brainstorming https://extension.unr.edu/publication.aspx?PubID=2579 https://extension.unr.edu/publication.aspx?PubID=2579 The idea, in a nutshell, is that there is a facilitator. The members of the team do not meet in person. They send their ideas to the facilitator, who aggregates the ideas and sends the complete list out to the members of the team. This is intended to remove the social effects that might interfere with some of the team members participating fully, or other members dominating the process because of their perceived position in the hierarchy, or their better social skills. An advanced version of this involves rounds; everybody sends their ideas to the facilitator, the complete list goes out to everybody, the members critique or support some of the ideas, the facilitator adds the new input and sends the revised list back out to the team, and the process repeats (presumably until there is some agreement on the best idea(s), or everybody gets tired if doing it). My recollection is that this process can be very effective at problem solving, but it certainly isn't as quick as getting a bunch of people in a room to hash out some ideas.

Rapzid 6y ago
I'm going to plug my old employer here for this, https://www.polleverywhere.com/ https://www.polleverywhere.com/ . We heavily used the service internally and the anonymous "Q&A" used for retros and brainstorming was eye-opening to say the least.

fluffernutter 6y ago

I had a colleague recently take CliftonStrengths. Their "skills" were equally balanced across all 4 categories and they have a history of "getting things done" although not always doing all things to the point they are "correctly done". When I took it a few years back all my skills were clumped into strategy, which might explain why just doing strategy isn't necessary a way to get things done and may be a waste of time if done to excess.

ghaff 6y ago
Strategy is important but it can also devolve into "writing thick reports that no one reads." I was involved in an expert witness report a number of years back which involved going through a bunch of depositions. I remember reading through the deposition of one senior executive who was basically asked "But your corporate strategy office said this initiative was important. Are you saying you disagree?" And his response was basically that the corporate strategy office writes a lot of things [that I don't pay much mind to].

omarhaneef 6y ago

These are the reasons group brainstorming is a waste of time, and they can all be addressed by a simple hack, which is that each person writes down all their ideas in advance before sharing the list and discussing them in public: Social loafing: There’s a tendency – also known as free riding – for people to make less of an effort when they are working in teams than alone. As with the bystander effect, we feel less propelled to do something when we know other people might do it. Social anxiety: People worry about other team members’ views of their ideas. This is also referred to as evaluation apprehension. Similarly, when team members perceive that others have more expertise, their performance declines. This is especially problematic for introverted and less confident individuals. Regression to the mean: This is the process of downward adjustment whereby the most talented group members end up matching the performance of their less talented counterparts. This effect is well known in sports – if you practice with someone less competent than you, your competence level declines and you sink to the mediocrity of your opponent. Production blocking: No matter how large the group, individuals can only express a single idea at one time if they want other group members to hear them. Studies have found that the number of suggestions plateaus with more than six or seven group members, and that the number of ideas per person declines as group size increases.

brightball 6y ago
The downside to your approach is the natural tendency for people to defend their own ideas rather than participate in the discussion.
Rapzid 6y ago
> which is that each person writes down all their ideas in advance before sharing the list and discussing them in public This sentiment has been echoed by other posters here and I believe it to be clutch. Generally speaking I loath any meeting that does not include an agenda/context so I can prepare for it(even if just mentally).
watwut 6y ago
Countrepoint: I get more creative when I hear other people's ideas. Alone with paper I have harder time come up with creative ideas. Also, large reason is that with paper I second guess myself more and anticipate or prepare for possible negative reaction. When I see that the group dynamic is good right now, I have less reason to be careful and get more free.

programmarchy 6y ago

Brainstorming is usually done in a pretty haphazard manner, so I'm not surprised by these results. Just getting minds in a room is not enough. The hub-and-spoke model was used at AT&T labs, where individuals or small teams descend into "spokes" to do deep work, then return to a "hub" to synthesize results and plan future directions. You also need solid leadership to provide direction and organization, although I suppose there's exceptions to that rule like Valve's holocracy. I'd be curious how something like the Manhattan Project was organized.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

I'm not gonna throw out crazy ideas, when I'm the senior person in the room and know what the result should look like. I don't want to spend the next week showing folks that a triangle can't have four sides, or whatever. There are few times in my life, where brainstorming would get me where I wanted to go.

vanderZwan 6y ago

When I taught design for a year I was forced to give a lecture on how to do brainstorming as well. It just so happened that I hated classic brainstorming with a passion. So I subverted the lesson by making it a long rant about everything wrong about brainstorming, with research to back it up, while suggesting other methods of ideating together instead. I shared the link to the slides here once before, it seemed to be well-received (there were anonymous viewers looking at that presentation for many months after sharing) so I might as well link it again[0][1][2]. [0] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EYyS4AtRhNa6i299R_RB0a54ePU2PEQsILQnwWgY9KU/edit#slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EYyS4AtRhNa6i299R_RB... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15237174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15237174 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15241373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15241373

bostonvaulter2 6y ago
I remember reading this a few years ago. Well worth the re-read.

robomartin 6y ago

I am about five months into burning time and money brainstorming for a solution to a problem. Our client insisted in having "the team" participate. Never mind that we knew exactly where to go and what to implement five months ago (experience matters). We could have been a couple of iterations into a real solution by now (this is hardware+software) rather than being nowhere while everyone understands what they don't understand and finally understands that what we said five months ago was the correct path. Rather than being critical, sometimes one needs to realize that people and organizations, at times, require going through a process before accepting reality or agreeing with a conclusion. I've seen this many times during my career, from simple problems to designs that are currently orbiting our planet. It's unfortunate because it burns time, money and valuable human capital (people could be doing far more valuable things).

fuzzfactor 6y ago

Brainstorm solutions, not needs.