You don't need a face to face for a brainstorm
Summary
Advocates of in-person work often say they need to get their teams together for brainstorming sessions. This is a waste of time.
The science tells us that individual ideation is more successful than group brainstorming.
Digital tools overcome the logistical challenges and practical limitations of in-person meetings.
A skilled facilitator and modern collaboration tools enhance the creative process. Facilitators can also educate managers about the perils of brainstorming.
Last week Simon Holmes posted a priceless line on LinkedIn.
“If the water cooler is so important for creativity and solving big problems, why would you leave it to chance based on who is thirsty in the office at the same time?”
That quote is emblematic of the divide between the bosses and the masses. The bosses want to herd people back to an office. The masses want to protect their autonomy and focus. And hey, remote work is easier on the pocket too. I expect the tussle, however avoidable, to continue for the rest of this year and much of 2024 as well before all companies settle on their location and talent strategy.
What we must all acknowledge is that the future will be nothing like the past. No one knows how things will pan out. I say this after having made some predictions about “the future of work”. On the one hand, worker autonomy, especially in knowledge work, has become a far more important topic than it was, pre-pandemic. On the other hand, the recession has given employers a bargaining chip they didn’t have just 18 months back. Recession aside, there’s the promise of AI being a “game changer” for talent. I think of it more as a social disruption, as even white-collar workers lose their jobs to this phenomenon.
It’s anyone’s guess how the world of work will sway 18 months from now. So I don’t intend to address the future anymore until the dust settles a bit. I do want to address the present though. Particularly this thing that I hear senior leaders and managers say about getting face-to-face so they can have a brainstorming session. They say they struggle to do this online. Each time I hear this though, there’s a part of me that cringes. There are many good reasons to be face-to-face. Brainstorming isn’t one of them.
The trouble with brainstorming
Can we all get on board with science for a bit? Brainstorming is a bona fide waste of time. It feels good, just like making a wish when you see a shooting star, but as we’ve discussed earlier on this site, the merits of brainstorming are nothing more than a corporate superstition. The science is clear about this. Let me repeat some research I’ve shared before.
Individual brainstorming trumps group brainstorming 95% of the time. (Dunette, Campbell, Jaastad).
The larger the group size, the poorer the quality of ideas. (Mongeau & Morr)
Electronic brainstorming produces more ideas than face-to-face exercises. (Mongeau & Morr)
A hybrid process where people brainstorm individually before sharing their ideas with colleagues produces higher quality ideas than pure group brainstorming. (Girotra, Terwiesch & Ulrich)
There’s little evidence that team brainstorming, hybrid or not, helps to select the best ideas. Organisations might be better off using asynchronous idea generation, over synchronous, group processes. (Girotra, Terwiesch & Ulrich)
Sheena Iyengar, S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Department at Columbia Business School says this.
“Decades of research show that we’re more creative when we start the ideation process first by ourselves. After having thought about an idea alone, we can enter a group setting. In thinking individually first, and then sharing with a group, we can avoid falling into the collection.”
Yes. You read that right. Work alone first. Mull over the problem. Write things up, as even Sheena Iyengar recommends! Come up with ideas. Flesh them out, even. When everyone can do this without the fear of judgment, or the influence of other people’s opinions, you can come up with a diverse range of perspectives. Move over brainstorming. Hello, idea synthesis!
The trouble with in-person workshops
Ok, so we’ve addressed the first part of the problem, of “I need to brainstorm with my team, so I want to bring them face to face.” Simple. Don’t brainstorm. Save everyone time. But a persistent advocate of face-to-face work may push further and say, “Hey Sumeet, but what about that synthesis? Shouldn’t we do that face-to-face? Wouldn’t it be epic with all the creative juices flowing in the room and the energy in the room?”
Now that sounds very nice and seductive, but no! I’ve realised that many people (not all) who advocate for in-person meetings and workshops for “creativity”, haven’t facilitated such events in recent years. They don’t know how hard it is to just manage the logistics. You’ve got to find a suitable space. Even when we all worked in offices, you had to fly people in from various locations, organise hotels and whatnot. Since these meetings were so hard to organise, it prompted people to overload them further. Who knew when we’d get this opportunity next? Before you knew it, you had a three-day agenda, packed from dawn to dusk.
We haven’t even addressed the so-called creative workshops yet. You don’t have enough wall space for flip-charts. Post-it notes from day one have usually fallen off by day two. Figuring out where they go back is like navigating a mental labyrinth. Spare a thought for having to read people’s handwriting. Boy, that was a pain! And the pain doesn’t end with the meeting. Some poor soul has to transcribe everything that happened in the meeting, so the team can act on its outputs and so the company doesn’t have the memory of a goldfish. Actually, goldfishes have pretty decent memories. Let’s just say we’d like the memory of an elephant!
Guess what? Synthesising ideas is much easier when you use digital tools. It’s easy to switch from one tool to another. You have an unlimited canvas with virtual whiteboards. It’s all digital already, so you don’t need someone to do the clerical job of transcribing outputs. Most of these tools integrate with project management tools, so you can move from your fleshed-out idea to execution with little or no effort. This is also a low budget activity. You don’t need fancy hardware in the office to make it all work. And you don’t need a huge travel budget. All you do need is a skilled facilitator who knows their way around modern collaboration tools.
The case of the missing facilitator
And that brings me to the conclusion of this article. Show me a team that needs a face-to-face meeting for their brainstorming, and I’ll show you a missing facilitator. That facilitator has burnt their fingers with the inefficacy, shallowness and idea diarrhoea that accompanies brainstorming. They understand the creative process after years of experience. They’ve experienced how effective digital tools can be, to build shared understanding and to synthesise ideas as a team. You’ll learn from them, how to get from problems to project plans. If you need a face-to-face meeting for something, that facilitator will tell you as well.
Whatever you do, don’t ride that old superstition about in-person, “creative brainstorming”. For your company’s sake, that’s a myth we must all dump in a hurry.