Outrage and then heated debate reverberated around Propellernet Towers yesterday when our daily news scanning found a story in the Metro generated by A&M University in Texas, about the University’s research on the effectiveness of brainstorms. The story claims that people get their best ideas when sitting quietly on their own and that brainstorms are counter productive.

What rot! As Creative Director at Propellernet, reading the story fair made my blood boil and I felt compelled to answer these broad brush and ill considered claims!

Brainstorming with a team is one of the most valuable methods we use to come up with the fresh and exciting ideas we do for clients and if they are prepared for, facilitated properly and focused, deliver creative yet realistic and achievable results.

I absolutely accept that people’s brains are wired differently. Some of the team here are ‘creative perculators’ going away from a brainstorm still brimming with ideas and developing these in their own minds over coming hours or days, but some of the team are ‘creative builders’, who take nuggets of ideas from other team members and build on them to make an idea bigger, better and more focused.
Brainstorms at Propellernet are always productive, energetic and an exciting meetings of minds, never ‘random thoughts in the boardroom on a Monday morning’ and here’s why:

Timing:
Picking a good day: Mondays and Friday afternoons are really bad times for brainstorms – at the start of the week people are focused on their fresh week’s to do list and what they forgot to do on Friday. On Friday all we care about is that first pint in the pub at the end of a week! In our experience, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are all great brainstorm days, you’ve planned out your week so you’re not stressing about rushing off to a meeting or meeting a deadline and you’ve got your head back around delivering for clients after the weekend.

My favourite day is Thursday, we’re over the hump of the week and everyone’s starting to look forward to the weekend, but we haven’t all switched off yet. It also helps if you bring sweets!

Give people notice: A short notice brainstorm is never going to be very productive, unless you’ve been given a great opportunity by a client that you can get excited about, you should always be able to plan when you want a brainstorm to happen. If you can’t then I would recommend you have a look at your time and client management skills…

Facilitation:
A brainstorm will only be as good as the effort you put into it. We have trained brainstorm facilitators at Propellernet that make sure every brainstorm is run to a strict activity and timed plan, with deliverables at each stage.

A good facilitator will enable a brainstorm to run smoothly and productively, encourage positivity, steer discussions away from conflict and negativity and keep people energised and motivated throughout the session.

It’s a really tough job and is taken really seriously by the team here that conduct the brainstorms, but since we implemented professional facilitation to our sessions, we have seen creative input and interest in attending brainstorms, rocket.

Focus:
As with any activity we undertake for clients, we know what we’re going to do, how long it’s going to take and what we’re going to deliver from it.

Our brainstorm facilitators play a big part in keeping the team focused during a session, but it’s also vital that the objective, goals, client objectives and results we need to deliver for that client are circulated before the brainstorm and that the team involved in the session are bought into and have absorbed that info before we start.

A good brainstorm also asks people to prepare – sometimes by bringing in an example of a great campaign that has inspired them in a similar field, sometimes by getting people to come to the meeting with one utterly bonkers idea that they think is the opposite of what is needed and challenging the team in the session to “make it work”. The ‘stuffed crust’ pizza was born out that very same facilitation tactic!

This focus means that people come to the session already in the right mind set, which means we hit the ground running and we deliver more within the hour

Inclusion:
You know what? Not everyone is a creative powerhouse - but what’s really important when considering running brainstorms is that you must include everyone. Don’t just invite the same old people because you can rely on them to come up with the goods, everyone on the team has valid input and you never know what gems you might lose because the quiet team member didn’t get an invite.

It’s your responsibility to find out where and how everyone expresses their creativity and nuture that. Some of the team are the ‘fireworkers’ – the ones that shoot out ideas until they find one everyone likes, some of the team are the ‘slow fuses’ the ones that don’t necessarily shout out often, but when they do, come out with a real corker of an idea!

Different people also like to contribute in different ways; not everyone is comfortable discussing ideas in front of a crowd and may prefer a small group dynamic. All ideas, as long as they are focused and positive, no matter how they are expressed, are good ones. The difficult job is planning a brainstorm to play to everyone’s strengths to make sure that you coax out the best ideas from all.

What do you think? What’s your opinion on the creative process we use at Propellernet? What do you do and how do you encourage creativity? Get in touch and let us know!