The task: 4 x 15 minute brainstorming sessions with our small teams focused on improving the life of your target individual, organization, cause and the metrics you'll use to evaluate your impact.
The rules:
- Defer judgment
- Encourage wild ideas
- Build on ideas of others
- Go for volume
- One conversation at a time
- Headline - capture the essence and move on
The point: Quantity of ideas leads to quality of ideas. It's great for team building too.
Our team enjoyed this kick-off exercise so much we created a "virtual whiteboard" with Google Docs as a place put ideas as they arise. (Have you ever noticed ideas seem to pop up when you least expect them? It's nice to have a place to put them.)
I loved the rules Jennifer mapped out for brainstorming... and I loved "killing Devil's Advocate." I studied Improvisation while in my undergrad at Stanford. It wasn't the "whose line is it anyway" kind of improv, but was instead focused around that amazing creative moment when an idea is born, and how to allow stories to take on a life of their own... Making something from nothing. What the practice circled around was saying "Yes!" to any suggestion that someone put out there, without filtering your ideas. It was amazing to watch: when you say "Yes", the story grows. When you block someone's idea (say "No"), the story dies before it's born... If you ever watch a child play, they don't think or process, they just play. A child does not *imagine* being in the jungle, they ARE IN THE JUNGLE. Children embody pure human creativity, but as we grow older, we learn to judge and filter our ideas. That automatic judgement/filtration is hard to unlearn.
ReplyDeleteIf you get the chance, go see a show with the SIMPS (Stanford Improvisers). They do EOQ (end of quarter) shows and they are a lot of fun to watch.