Brainstorming Alone, Part I

There are some great benefits to being an indie, as the name implies we have our independence - we get to choose when we work and when we play. The decisions we make about our respective businesses are ours and ours alone. And when make a bad one it’s difficult to blame it on the boss. I find firing or beating yourself up to be very unproductive.

So what can you do when faced with a challenge or the need for some fresh, innovative ideas to to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity? Normally if you were in organization you’d pull your team together and do some brainstorming. This is not so easy to do when you are sitting alone in your home office or at coffee shop working on your laptop. Or is it?

Following a few simple brainstorming guidelines, doing some serious preliminary thinking and using the right tools, solo brainstorming isn’t as daunting as you might think.

First some simple guidelines (simple to write sometimes hard to follow) about doing effective brainstorming.

• The First and most important guideline -suspend judgement. If you have ever been a brainstorming session, I am sure you have witnesses one of the following two things. 1) Somebody throws out an idea and somebody else immediately says what’s wrong with it. Result: the person who threw out the idea stops contributing. 2) Somebody throws out an idea and somebody goes WOW!, COOL!. GREAT! Result: people start to believe the idea has been found, no need to go further. Sometimes this is true, most time it is not. So when you need to brainstorming alone, take those two little people in your head — the one who is your worst critic and the other one who truly believes your are a genius — and give them some time off. Don’t banish them forever, because you are going to need them later on in the process when it is time to judge, but give them a nice long coffer break until you need their contributions.

• The second guideline: go for quantity. Ok now that your critic and enabler are on a brief break, there’s nothing stopping you from making a long, long list of ideas. Things to remember, the first 5 to 10 ideas you write down will be the ones that have been floating around in your head all along. At thinkx we call these theses the first third ideas. They probably won’t be too original or very break-through, but it’s important to get them out to make room for next 20 plus, plus. These next ideas will hold the real promise. Dee Hock the founder of VISA, once said, “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will fill it instantly.” Now I know some of you might be thinking how the heck am I going to come with 20, 30, 50 or more ideas on my own? Bear with me a bit longer and I’ll show you some tools you can use to get lots of ideas.

• The third guideline - wild and crazy ideas wanted! I often tell my clients during brainstorming sessions. “Give me the ideas that if you presented them to your boss you’d be fired on the spot.” Why? Alex Osborn the O in BBDO and the man who coined the term brainstorming said: “It is far easier to tame a wild idea than to invigorate one that had no life in the first place.” So embrace the wild, the crazy and off the wall.

• Finally, combine and improve. When you feel yourself slowing down and the ideas are just trickling, look at your list and combine some of your ideas to create new ones.

The whole point of these guidelines is so you can effectively separate your thinking. During this process you will be diverging — making lists and then converging — making a choice from your list. Trying to do both simultaneously is like trying too drive with one foot on the gas and one foot firmly on the brake. A lot of wasted energy and little or no forward movement.

So now that you have the guidelines, what’s the best approach to brainstorming alone? First, if you are working on an issue, make sure it’s really the right issue. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve worked with clients who tell me this is the issue we need to brainstorm around only to find out what they believed the issue was - wasn’t. So before you start ask yourself a few questions.

• What’s going on?
• What’s on your mind? Don’t leave anything out even if has nothing to do with what you think you need to be working on.
• What’s bugging you? Again don’t judge — just write down everything that comes to mind. • What’s out of balance?
• What would you like to change?

Once you’ve got your list, look it over. Is there an issue or challenge that seems to hold more passion for you? That surprises you, hits you in the gut? Is there one that if you worked on it would actually take care of the one you believed you needed to work on? Once you’ve looked the list over, choose one. You can always come back to the list if you feel there is more than one thing you need to work on.

Continued: Brainstorming Alone, Part II