Quantified Brainstorming
In the past when I’ve encountered questions about the success of a brainstorming session, I’ve struggled to provide quantifiable responses. Sure, I’ve been able to provide a list of attendees, or provide anecdotal comments from attendees. But at times when further questioned “what was the value generated from a brainstorm session?” or “was the brainstorming purposeful?” Those questions I’ve attempted to address with descriptions of the pre-planned scope of the session or lists of the focused topics/themes of the session. Although some in management positions didn’t seem completely satisfied with my responses.
One way we’ve attempted to quantify brainstorming sessions in the past was by using affinity diagramming / card sorting activities. Through these processes you can capture individual ideas from each attendee and begin to discover common trends/themes between the ideas. The number of individual ideas on the sticky notes as well as the groupings, can be counted and thus quantified.
Then finally it dawned on me this past week, almost as an epiphany… there was another technique which could take this even a step further. Thanks to a training session of “Lean and Agile for Managers” to pull a technique that the facilitator uses within the training course itself (thanks Robin Dymond https://twitter.com/robindymond ).
I’ll describe the specific technique in a moment (cliff hanger!), but first I want to mention another important technique which has been highly valuable and beneficial (also apart of the same training, thanks again Robin). When kicking off a brainstorming session, we’ve used other Scrum / Lean techniques of self-organizing teams. Ask the attendees to generate a list of the “Rules of Engagement & Etiquette.” In other words, the group of attendees collectively sets their own ground rules for how they want to work together. I’ve noticed that our list seems to usually be similar to the 7 Tips on Brainstorming from IDEO:
- Defer judgment
- Encourage wild ideas
- Build on the ideas of others
- Stay focused on the topic
- One conversation at a time
- Be visual
- Go for quantity
Additionally the rules can include breaks, start & stop times for lunch, keeping laptops closed, and phones on silent mode, just to name a few. Even with a group of people who have been working together for months we define, or redefine, the rules each time we meet.
So now on to the technique where I had an epiphany…
It’s a technique that can be apart of the Scrum methodology for self-organizing teams. Once again, Sticky notes (I seem to never get enough of them, and my colleagues tease me that I’m always carrying a stack with me to every meeting). At the beginning of the brainstorming session, place stacks of sticky notes around all the tables. As part of your opening/introductions, ask attendees to write down their expectations for the brainstorming session, or in other words what they hope to accomplish by the end of the session. Have them jot down one expectation per sticky note. Then designate an area on a wall in the room and ask everyone to post their sticky notes there. If using a dry-erase board, you can even title it “Expectations.” Although I had mentioned affinity diagramming and card sorting before in this article, there is no need to perform that activity at this time. Rather describe to your attendees that a portion of time at the end of the brainstorming session will be allocated for them to review their individual expectations.
Throughout your brainstorming session, especially if it’s all-day or multiple days, as the host or facilitator, you can review the expectations posted to help guide conversation topics, if needed.
At the conclusion and wrap-up of your brainstorming session, designate three additional areas on the wall. Add category labels to these areas as: “Expectations Exceeded,” “Expectations Met,” and “Expectations Partially Met.” The original area where all the sticky notes exist, now becomes “Expectations Not Met.” Now ask your attendees to find their own sticky notes and to move them to the appropriate categories, or to leave them where they are.
If there is enough time remaining in the brainstorming session, the group could then discuss items related to any sticky notes in the “Expectations Not Met” and/or “Expectations Partially Met.” If there isn’t enough time remaining, the group can determine if any additional session needs to be scheduled to address those items.
Now for the beauty of this technique. From the total number of expectations captured at the beginning of your session you can now count how many sticky notes are in each of the categories. You can generate percentages of expectations met and achieved through the time spent brainstorming together. You can quantify if group as a whole achieved each person’s desired outcome. Additionally, it equally holds all attendees accountable of the success or failure of the session, not just the facilitator/host.
This technique also empowers you to be able to report back to management all of the expectations captured, segmented by category. As well as the percentage of each category to help gauge the success of the session.
To take this up a level, over time you can track the percentages from session to session. The specific brainstorming activities and methods used within a particular brainstorming session can possibly be measured to determine if that activity helped attendees of that session achieve their expectations.
On a personal side note, I hope you find this helpful. Lately I’ve been very interested in the topic of group brainstorming techniques. If you try these techniques, I’d like to hear how they go for you. Or if you’ve tried other techniques, I’d like to hear about those too.
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