Brainstorming

Brainstorming 

Generating many radical, creative ideas

Brainstorming is a popular tool that helps you generate creative solutions to a problem.

It is particularly useful when you want to break out of stale, established patterns of thinking, so that you can develop new ways of looking at things. It also helps you overcome many of the issues that can make group problem-solving a sterile and unsatisfactory process.

Used with your team, it helps you bring the diverse experience of all team members into play during problem solving. This increases the richness of ideas explored, meaning that you can find better solutions to the problems you face.

It can also help you get buy in from team members for the solution chosen – after all, they were involved in developing it. What’s more, because brainstorming is fun, it helps team members bond with one-another as they solve problems in a positive, rewarding environment.

Why Use Brainstorming?

Conventional group problem-solving can be fraught with problems. Confident, "big-ego" participants can drown out and intimidate quieter group members. Less confident participants can be too scared of ridicule to share their ideas freely. Others may feel pressurized to conform to the group view, or are held back by an excessive respect for authority. As such, group problem-solving is often ineffective and sterile.
By contrast, brainstorming provides a freewheeling environment in which everyone is encouraged to participate. Quirky ideas are welcomed, and many of the issues of group problem-solving are overcome. All participants are asked to contribute fully and fairly, liberating people to develop a rich array of creative solutions to the problems they're facing.

What Is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming combines a relaxed, informal approach to problem-solving with lateral thinking. It asks that people come up with ideas and thoughts that can at first seem to be a bit crazy. The idea here is that some of these ideas can be crafted into original, creative solutions to the problem you're trying to solve, while others can spark still more ideas. This approach aims to get people unstuck, by "jolting" them out of their normal ways of thinking.

During brainstorming sessions there should therefore be no criticism of ideas: You are trying to open up possibilities and break down wrong assumptions about the limits of the problem. Judgments and analysis at this stage stunt idea generation.

Ideas should only be evaluated at the end of the brainstorming session – this is the time to explore solutions further using conventional approaches.

Individual Brainstorming

While group brainstorming is often more effective at generating ideas than normal group problem-solving, study after study has shown that when individuals brainstorm on their own, they come up with more ideas (and often better quality ideas) than groups of people who brainstorm together.
Partly this occurs because, in groups, people aren’t always strict in following the rules of brainstorming, and bad group behaviors creep in. Mostly, though, this occurs because people are paying so much attention to other people’s ideas that they're not generating ideas of their own – or they're forgetting these ideas while they wait for their turn to speak. This is called "blocking".

When you brainstorm on your own, you'll tend to produce a wider range of ideas than with group brainstorming – you do not have to worry about other people's egos or opinions, and can therefore be more freely creative. For example, you might find that an idea you’d be hesitant to bring up in a group session develops into something quite special when you explore it with individual brainstorming. Nor do you have to wait for others to stop speaking before you contribute your own ideas.

You may not, however, develop ideas as fully when you brainstorm on your own, as you do not have the wider experience of other members of a group to help you.

Tip:
When Brainstorming on your own, consider using minds map to arrange and develop ideas.

Group Brainstorming

When it works, group brainstorming can be very effective for bringing the full experience and creativity of all members of the group to bear on an issue. When individual group members get stuck with an idea, another member's creativity and experience can take the idea to the next stage. Group brainstorming can therefore develop ideas in more depth than individual brainstorming.

Another advantage of group brainstorming is that it helps everyone involved to feel that they’ve contributed to the end solution, and it reminds people that other people have creative ideas to offer. What’s more, brainstorming is fun, and it can be great for team-building!

Brainstorming in a group can be risky for individuals. Valuable but strange suggestions may appear stupid at first sight. Because of this, you need to chair sessions tightly so that ideas are not crushed, and so that the usual issues with group problem-solving don’t stifle creativity.

How to Use the Tool:

You can often get the best results by combining individual and group brainstorming, and by managing the process carefully and according to the "rules" below. That way, you get people to focus on the issue without interruption (this comes from having everyone in a dedicated group meeting), you maximize the number of ideas you can generate, and you get that great feeling of team bonding that comes with a well-run brainstorming session!

To run a group brainstorming session effectively, do the following:

• Find a comfortable meeting environment, and set it up ready for the session. 
• Appoint one person to record the ideas that come from the session. These should be noted in a format than everyone can see and refer to. Depending on the approach you want to use, you may want to record ideas on flip charts, whiteboards, or computers with data projectors.
• If people aren’t already used to working together, consider using an appropriate warm-up exercise or ice-breaker.
• Define the problem you want solved clearly, and lay out any criteria to be met. Make it clear that that the objective of the meeting is to generate as many ideas as possible.
• Give people plenty of time on their own at the start of the session to generate as many ideas as possible.
• Ask people to give their ideas, making sure that you give everyone a fair opportunity to contribute.
• Encourage people to develop other people's ideas, or to use other ideas to create new ones.
• Encourage an enthusiastic, uncritical attitude among members of the group. Try to get everyone to contribute and develop ideas, including the quietest members of the group.
• Ensure that no one criticizes or evaluates ideas during the session. Criticism introduces an element of risk for group members when putting forward an idea. This stifles creativity and cripples the free running nature of a good brainstorming session.
• Let people have fun brainstorming. Encourage them to come up with as many ideas as possible, from solidly practical ones to wildly impractical ones. Welcome creativity!
• Ensure that no train of thought is followed for too long. Make sure that you generate a sufficient number of different ideas, as well as exploring individual ideas in detail.
• In a long session, take plenty of breaks so that people can continue to concentrate.

·         Where possible, participants in the brainstorming process should come from as wide a range of disciplines as possible. This brings a broad range of experience to the session and helps to make it more creative. However, don’t make the group too big – as with other types of teamwork, groups of between 5 and 7 people are often most effective.

Example of Real Situation In My Daily Life:

 

I attended the class this morning; the lecturer has given my group a task that we have to present during tutorial class section. The title is about ways to portray and feel self confident, under chapter personality from the Organizational Behavior. As part of our meeting, we seem that this topic it’s quite hard to create an idea and find a source. So we have decided to use the Brainstorming technique during a planning meeting.

First step is Briefing the team about the problem. That is defined the problem idea to be brainstormed. The problem that we had now actually we have to find a general characteristic of person for us to elaborate during presentation session. In any organization, it is important for employees to portray a presentable and confident image of themselves. This shows a lot about a person’s personality. First of all, confidence can be defined as a firm belief in one's powers, abilities, or capacities (The American Heritage, 2009)"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face" (Eleanor Roosevelt as cited by The American Heritage, 2009). Being confident has its benefits as it reflects and boosts the individual’s personality, have a higher chance to move up in their career and it reflects in the individual’s state of mind and success (Open Learning World, 1999). Therefore, it is important for employees or individuals to learn and improve themselves. A confident employee also projects a good image for its organization. Another quote by E. E. Cummings is that, “Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit” (Babauta, n.d)

According to Babauta (n.d.), there are 25 ways to boost individual’s self – confidence.

Secondly, I remind them about Three Rules of Brainstorming that is Generate as many solutions as possible (Quantity counts), Wild ideas are encouraged and no criticism is allowed for judgment is deferred until later. I hope there will be no problem and do not raise sensitive issues such as racist. That is what I explained to them.

Thirdly, is a warm-up exercise, I let them rest and try to think and obtain lot of ideas. I conduct a 5-minute warm-up exercise in creative thinking using a simple method. That is I told them to look at each other and people surrounding you. Look at their characteristic; from there you obtain about other behavior and general personality.

Fourth, I’m started the session by Conduct the Brainstorming Activity. I Set a time limit (20 to 30 minutes) and ask the team members to start sharing ideas. They can begin by bringing out obvious, well-known ideas. This is known as “load dumping”. By following all the step we all have come out with lots of ideas. And I encourage them to give more creative ideas by occasionally throwing out something really outrageous. After awhile, we have come with this ideas.

1. Groom yourself. This seems like such an obvious one, but it’s amazing how much of a difference a shower and a shave can make in your feelings of self-confidence and for your self-image. There have been days when I turned my mood around completely with this one little thing.

2. Dress nicely. A corollary of the first item above … if you dress nicely, you’ll feel good about yourself. You’ll feel successful and presentable and ready to tackle the world. Now, dressing nicely means something different for everyone … it doesn’t necessarily mean wearing a $500 outfit, but could mean casual clothes that are nice looking and presentable.

3. Photoshop your self-image. Our self-image means so much to us, more than we often realize. We have a mental picture of ourselves, and it determines how confident we are in ourselves. But this picture isn’t fixed and immutable. You can change it. Use your mental Photoshopping skills, and work on your self-image. If it’s not a very good one, change it. Figure out why you see yourself that way, and find a way to fix it.

4. Think positive. One of the things I learned when I started running, about two years ago, what how to replace negative thoughts (see next item) with positive ones. How I can actually change my thoughts, and by doing so make great things happened. With this tiny little skill, I was able to train for and run a marathon within a year. It sounds so trite, so Norman Vincent Peale, but my goodness this works. Seriously. Try it if you haven’t.

5. Kill negative thoughts. Goes hand-in-hand with the above item, but it’s so important that I made it a separate item. You have to learn to be aware of your self-talk, the thoughts you have about yourself and what you’re doing. When I was running, sometimes my mind would start to say, “This is too hard. I want to stop and go watch TV.” Well, I soon learned to recognize this negative self-talk, and soon I learned a trick that changed everything in my life: I would imagine that a negative thought was a bug, and I would vigilantly be on the lookout for these bugs. When I caught one, I would stomp on it (mentally of course) and squash it. Kill it dead. Then replace it with a positive one. (“C’mon, I can do this! Only one mile left!”)

6. Get to know yourself. When going into battle, the wisest general learns to know his enemy very, very well. You can’t defeat the enemy without knowing him. And when you’re trying to overcome a negative self-image and replace it with self-confidence, your enemy is yourself. Get to know yourself well. Start listening to your thoughts. Start writing a journal about yourself, and about the thoughts you have about yourself, and analyzing why you have such negative thoughts. And then think about the good things about yourself, the things you can do well, the things you like. Start thinking about your limitations, and whether they’re real limitations or just ones you’ve allowed to be placed there, artificially. Dig deep within yourself, and you’ll come out (eventually) with even greater self-confidence.

7. Act positive. More than just thinking positive, you have to put it into action. Action, actually, is the key to developing self-confidence. It’s one thing to learn to think positive, but when you start acting on it, you change yourself, one action at a time. You are what you do, and so if you change what you do, you change what you are. Act in a positive way, take action instead of telling yourself you can’t, be positive. Talk to people in a positive way, put energy into your actions. You’ll soon start to notice a difference.

8. Be kind and generous. Oh, so corny. If this is too corny for you, move on. But for the rest of you, know that being kind to others, and generous with yourself and your time and what you have, is a tremendous way to improve your self-image. You act in accordance with the Golden Rule, and you start to feel good about yourself, and to think that you are a good person. It does wonders for your self-confidence, believe me.

One important key to success is self-confidence. A key to self-confidence is preparation. – Arthur Ashe

9. Get prepared. It’s hard to be confident in yourself if you don’t think you’ll do well at something. Beat that feeling by preparing yourself as much as possible. Think about taking an exam: if you haven’t studied, you won’t have much confidence in your abilities to do well on the exam. But if you studied your butt off, you’re prepared, and you’ll be much more confident. Now think of life as your exam, and prepare yourself.

10. Know your principles and live them. What are the principles upon which your life is built? If you don’t know, you will have trouble, because your life will feel directionless. For myself, I try to live the Golden Rule (and fail often). This is my key principle, and I try to live my life in accordance with it. I have others, but they are mostly in some way related to this rule (the major exception being to “Live my Passion”). Think about your principles … you might have them but perhaps you haven’t given them much thought. Now think about whether you actually live these principles, or if you just believe in them but don’t act on them.

11. Speak slowly. Such a simple thing, but it can have a big difference in how others perceive you. A person in authority, with authority, speaks slowly. It shows confidence. A person who feels that he isn’t worth listening to will speak quickly, because he doesn’t want to keep others waiting on something not worthy of listening to. Even if you don’t feel the confidence of someone who speaks slowly, try doing it a few times. It will make you feel more confident. Of course, don’t take it to an extreme, but just don’t sound rushed either.

12. Stand tall. I have horrible posture, so it will sound hypocritical for me to give this advice, but I know it works because I try it often. When I remind myself to stand tall and straight, I feel better about myself. I imagine that a rope is pulling the top of my head toward the sky, and the rest of my body straightens accordingly. As an aside, people who stand tall and confident are more attractive. That’s a good thing any day, in my book.

13. Increase competence. How do you feel more competent? By becoming more competent. And how do you do that? By studying and practicing. Just do small bits at a time. If you want to be a more competent writer, for example, don’t try to tackle the entire profession of writing all at once. Just begin to write more. Journal, blog, writes short stories, do some freelance writing. The more you write, the better you’ll be. Set aside 30 minutes a day to write (for example) and the practice will increase your competence.

14. Set a small goal and achieve it. People often make the mistake of shooting for the moon, and then when they fail, they get discouraged. Instead, shoot for something much more achievable. Set a goal you know you can achieve, and then achieve it. You’ll feel good about that. Now set another small goal and achieve that. The more you achieve small goals, the better you’ll be at it, and the better you’ll feel. Soon you’ll be setting bigger (but still achievable) goals and achieving those too.

15. Change a small habit. Not a big one, like quitting smoking. Just a small one, like writing things down. Or waking up 10 minutes earlier. Or drinking a glass of water when you wake up. Something small that you know you can do. Do it for a month. When you’ve accomplished it, you’ll feel like a million bucks.

16. Focus on solutions. If you are a complainer, or focus on problems, change your focus now. Focusing on solutions instead of problems is one of the best things you can do for your confidence and your career. “I’m fat and lazy!” So how can you solve that? “But I can’t motivate myself!” So how can you solve that? “But I have no energy!” So what’s the solution?

17. Smile. Another clichéd one. But it works. I feel instantly better when I smile, and it helps me to be kinder to others as well. A little tiny thing that can have a chain reaction. Not a bad investment of your time and energy.

18. Volunteer. Related to the “be kind and generous” item above, but more specific. It’s the holiday season right now … can you find the time to volunteer for a good cause, to spread some holiday cheer, to make the lives of others better? It’ll be some of the best time you’ve ever spent, and an amazing side benefit is that you’ll feel better about yourself, instantly.

19. Be grateful. I’m a firm believer in gratitude, as anyone who’s been reading this blog for very long knows well. But I put it here because while being grateful for what you have in life, for what others have given you, is a very humbling activity … it can also be a very positive and rewarding activity that will improve your self-image. Read more.

20. Exercise. Exercise has been one of my most empowering activities in the last couple years, and it has made me feel so much better about myself.

All you have to do is take a walk a few times a week, and you’ll see benefits. Start the habit.

21. Empower yourself with knowledge. Empowering yourself, in general, is one of the best strategies for building self-confidence. You can do that in many ways, but one of the surest ways to empower yourself is through knowledge. This is along the same vein as building competence and getting prepared … by becoming more knowledgeable, you’ll be more confident … and you become more knowledgeable by doing research and studying. The Internet is a great tool, of course, but so are the people around you, people who have done what you want, books, magazines, and educational institutions.

22. Do something you’ve been procrastinating on. What’s on your to-do list that’s been sitting there? Do it first thing in the morning, and get it out of the way. You’ll feel great about yourself.

23. Get active. Doing something is almost always better than not doing anything. Of course, doing something could lead to mistakes … but mistakes are a part of life. It’s how we learn. Without mistakes, we’d never get better. So don’t worry about those. Just do something. Get off your butt and get active — physically, or active by taking steps to accomplish something.

24. Work on small things. Trying to take on a huge project or task can be overwhelming and daunting and intimidating for anyone, even the best of us. Instead, learn to break off small chunks and work in bursts. Small little achievements make you feel good, and they add up to big achievements. Learn to work like this all the time, and soon you’ll be a self-confident maniac.

25. Clear your desk. This might seem like a small, simple thing (then again, for some of you it might not be so small). But it has always worked wonders for me. If my desk starts to get messy, and the world around me is in chaos, clearing off my desk is my way of getting a little piece of my life under control. It is the calm in the center of the storm around me. Here’s how.

Fifth is the closing down, after awhile we have rack our brains to get more and more idea. Than we start to realize, we actually already push all out the idea we had. I have slowed down the ideas to a trickle and the previously announced time limit is coming up, give a 3-minute warning. Some of the best ideas can be generated during the extra time period at the end.

And the last step of a Brainstorming technique is Dismissal. I thank the team members of their participation and let them know what will happen next. Finally, I collect all the ideas that were written down, as well as any tape recordings or notes or other records that were kept of the session.

Key Points:

Brainstorming is a useful way of generating radical solutions to problems, just as long as it's managed well. During the brainstorming process there is no criticism of ideas, and free rein is given to people's creativity (criticism and judgment cramp creativity.)

This tends to make group brainstorming sessions enjoyable experiences, which are great for bringing team members together. Using brainstorming also helps people commit to solutions, because they have participated in the development of these solutions.

The best approach to brainstorming combines individual and group brainstorming. Group brainstorming needs formal rules for it to work smoothly.

AHMAD MUHAMAD                                                                                                                                   1091106324