Brainstorming is a meeting of a workgroup or members of an organization to solve a problem. During this type of meeting, individual or collective creativity is encouraged, actions are implemented, problems are analyzed, solutions are found, and a more comfortable and stress-free work environment is promoted.
What Does Brainstorming Mean?
This anglicism derives from the conjunction of two words: brain, which means brain, and storm, which means storm. When discussing brainstorming, reference is made to a tool for developing group work that makes it easier to obtain new ideas about a specific problem. With her, original ideas are generated in a relaxed and relaxed atmosphere.
Quality Factors
For brainstorming to be successful, it is necessary to pay attention both to the composition of the group and to the moderation or direction of the meeting.
Managing the Meeting well is Essential
For this, it is best to have a veteran who can order, prepare, moderate, control and direct the meeting. The person in charge must control and motivate the attendees if the brainstorming is not to fall on deaf ears and be an absolute waste of time.
Group Composition
It is good that people who are linked to other departments of the company join this type of meeting. They will be able to provide solutions to problems that are approached differently. Suppose the experts on the subject participate or are too involved in the objective of the meeting. In that case, they will be counterproductive since the generated ideas will be similar to the patterns they are intended to avoid.
Keys to Organizing a Brainstorming
If the meeting is to be effective, the following six points should not be overlooked:
Define the Topic or Problem
Although in a brainstorming session, any type of idea is launched without any filter, it is necessary to have a starting point to face and solve a particular problem.
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For this reason, it is necessary to establish what the objective of the meeting is, what types of objectives are intended to be covered, which ones must be achieved and others that may be interesting but will have a secondary role.
If there are many primary objectives, it would be best to hold several meetings to address them.
Write Individual Ideas
The moderator of the meeting must ensure that the attendees know the procedure, the rules and the problem. Each of them should have a blank sheet of paper and a pen and write down all the ideas that come to mind without thinking about what others may think or are writing.
Ideas are Organized
Once everyone has written their ideas on their sheets, they must be organized with a certain logic to optimize time and not talk about the same thing several times.
Exhibition of Ideas
After the organization, each attendee must present their ideas without debating, judging or criticizing them. While they are exposed, the ideas that arise from those contributed by their classmates can be noted down and presented later.
Brainstorming
Once all the ideas have been exposed, it is necessary to analyze the viability and eliminate those that do not fit with the objective pursued or are very repetitive.
The group members must vote for the best ones and draw up a list of those considered most suitable, which must not contain more than 33% of the ideas presented. The least voted will be eliminated, and the best-rated will be voted on. If there is no winning idea, it would be necessary to vote again or hold a debate on the remaining ideas until finding the one that best responds to the purpose of the meeting.
A Conclusion or Solution to the Problem is Evaluated
Once the most attractive ideas have been selected, a global solution must be created to facilitate the resolution of the problem. If there is only one more voted idea, it will be decided how to implement it. Still, if there are several, it will be necessary to merge them to find a specific plan.
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