Leading from Anywhere by David Burkus

Author:David Burkus
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358533382
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2021-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Can You Brainstorm on a Video Call?

That’s probably the question I get most often when it comes to creative thinking in teams. One of the first reactions most leaders have when facing a problem they can’t solve by themselves is to gather their people and kick off their tried-and-not-always-so-true method: brainstorming. We’re trained in corporate America to equate any and all creative thinking with a brainstorming meeting. Get everybody in a room for an hour or so and generate as many ideas as we can.

But when you study the methods of some of the world’s most prolifically creative companies (and when you examine the research on creative thinking), you discover something pretty quickly. Creative thinking isn’t a meeting; it’s a process. Brainstorming, or any other method of rapid idea generation, is a part of that process, but it’s not the entire process. In fact, the real work begins many steps beforehand.

So can you brainstorm on a video call? Yes. But that shouldn’t be all you do. In fact, a brainstorming meeting shouldn’t even be the only meeting you have when working on a problem. When looking at the creative problem-solving process and the limitations (and strengths) of remote teams, you probably need at least three different meetings at three points in the process.

Research suggests that the best decisions are made when you break up meetings into smaller meetings held separately. In a classic study in social psychology, researchers recruited participants for a decision-making meeting with a twist. After the groups had come to a decision, the researchers told participants to hold the meeting again, and make a decision again. The groups were not given any feedback on their first decision or given any instructions about needing to come to a different decision than they had in the first meeting. But most of the groups did. Moreover, the second decision was typically much more inclusive of ideas discussed and more creative overall than the first decision reached. One possible explanation for this is a quirk of human behavior to chase consensus. When we’re in meetings, we tend to rally too quickly around the first idea that seems to gain momentum—partly because we want to get everyone to agree and partly because we just want to get out of the meeting. Meeting participants sacrifice genuine debate and deliberation for quick consensus. Breaking up a large meeting into several smaller ones with different goals helps prevent that harmful tradeoff.

So when you need to think creatively with your team to solve a problem, don’t schedule one long meeting. Schedule three over the course of several days: a problem meeting, an idea meeting, and a decision meeting.

Start with a problem meeting. The purpose of the problem meeting is exactly what it sounds like: to discuss the problem. Often when we first encounter a situation, we’re actually looking at the symptom of a different, underlying problem. The goal of this first meeting should be to step back and determine what problem, if solved, will have the most benefit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.