ideapaint-the-new-art-of-brainswarming™-2013

8/11/2019 IdeaPaint-The-New-Art-of-Brainswarming-2013

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THE NEW ART OF

BRAINSWARMING

KEVIN MANEY


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IDEAPAINT 2

BRAINSWARMINGBrainstorming implies a short burst of energy that

quickly dissipates. Innovative organizations work more like brain swarms,constantly moving and attacking problems. Lets call it brainswarming.

WHY SWARM?Asking the right question is key to focusing a brainswarm.

THE RIGHT SWARMERSThe best ideas come out of teams that feel

comfortable with each other but not too comfortable.

BUZZDont just ask swarmers to prepare get them to pre-think.

THE SWARM ROOMGet out of the old conference room and into a more

democratic space.

HERDING SWARMERSSwarms may look like freewheeling affairs, but

effective ones start with structure.

THE CRITICAL SWARMEvery idea might be welcome, but debating and

defending ideas makes them better.

SWARM SUCCESSHerd the best ideas together and capture them

UN-SWARM TO RE-SWARMBrainswarms dont end they just keep moving

and solving new problems.

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CON-TENTS

CONTENTS


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Weve all gone to those meetings brainstorming meetings.

Need ideas. A new direction. Something. Anything! Get people in a room. Whiteboard. Coffee.

Donuts if youre lucky. No bad ideas. Let em fly. Scribble them down. Keep going! Yes! We have

tons! Wonderful! Thanks! Break it up. Take a donut with you. Back to work. Done. Over. Birds

chirping. The ideas gone.

Creative thinkers dont like the word brainstorming anymore. It relies on a thunderstorm

metaphor a sudden swirl of energy, noise, electricity and wind that gets everybodys attention

for a moment, then passes by, dissipates, and leaves nothing behind.

And that describes a good brainstorming session.

I think in most brainstorms, theres actually very little brain and hardly any storm, says

Keith Yamashita, Founder and Chairman at SYPartners, a transformation consulting firm.

Brainstorming is really the art of thinking collaboratively. And thinking takes work. It takes

preparation. And it takes a different view.

Digital agency Huge sees it the same way. The old concept of brainstorming seems outdated.

We dont just use it as a one-time thing its part of a process, says Michal Pasternak, a

Huge partner. We start with crazy ideas and refine, refine, refine.

Huge, SYP and other creative thinkers see a better way to idea-jam and a better metaphor.

Innovative companies collaborate on ideas in a process that looks more like swarming than

storming. Individuals come together to swarm over a problem, but then the swarm doesnt

break up and disappear it shifts, changes, keeps moving and re-forms, building on what its

done until it solves one problem and then carries what it knows to the next one.

Lets call it brainswarming.

IDEAPAINT 3BRAINSWARMING

1/ BRAINSWARMING


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Design firm IDEO is famous for coming up with brilliantly creative products. And it all starts

with the right objective. When a group at IDEO came together to swarm a problem that had to do

with bicycle cup holders, it didnt start by defining a solution like develop a spill-proof coffee

cup lid. It started with an objective: Help bike commuters to drink coffee without spilling it or

burning their tongues.

That opened up the brainswarm to a wider range of ideas and clearly defined what success

would look like.

Multi-industry mogul Richard Branson does the same. His mantra: Define the problem, not the

solution. When the conversation strays, he told Entrepreneur, remind everyone about the

problem youre trying to solve, and keep working toward that objective.

So the first rule of brainswarming is to make sure the swarm has a clearly defined goal one

that leaves as much room for creativity as possible while injecting discipline and direction into

the session.

2/ WHY SWARM?

IDEAPAINT 4WHY SWARM?


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A study of the teams that produced Broadway musicals from 1945 to 1989 yielded an

interesting insight: the relationships among collaborators were a reliable predictor of a

shows success.

If the collaborators were relatively unfamiliar with each other, they were not likely to create a

hit show. But if the bulk of the team had connections and a fluency with each other, the shows

probability of success shot up. It turns out that when people know each other, they interact

efficiently and feel safe enough to let ideas fly.

3/ THE RIGHT SWARMERS

IDEAPAINT 5THE RIGHT SWARMERS

To a point.

The study found that if the Broadway teams stayed together too long, they got stale and their

shows flopped. The best mix turned out to be a familiar team spiced up with newcomers. They

had to be connected, but not too deeply connected.

Pasternak sees this at Huge. She has a solution: We inject new team members to get the

naivete back up again.

At Goodby Silverstein and Partners, the agency goes a step further -- injecting entirely new

disciplines into the mix. Were hiring people who bring something new and different to

the table -- stand-up comedians, rappers, says Mike Crain, who leads the agencys Doritosaccount. Put those newcomers in with a connected team, and theyll spark a refreshing energy

in the thinking.

The lesson for brainswarming: Cultivate a tight-knit core swarm and get them into a room with

fresh recruits who will say something to shake up the familiar.


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Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, argues that research proves that

brainstorming groups think of fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone, and

later pool their ideas, Psychology Today reported.

So once you clearly define the problem and identify the people who will swarm it, dont just pull

everyone into a room and press the start button. Give them the problem before the brainswarm

and ask them to come up with solutions that theyll then bring to the group.

Creative leaders find different ways to get the pre-swarm juices flowing. At Goodby Silverstein

and Partners, Crain says he might map out a consumers routine when buying a bag of chips,and ask swarmers to come in with ideas about how to alter those routines in a clients favor.

At SYPartners, pre-swarm field trips are in order. I always find that before you get anyone in

a room to think together, they have to experience something that challenges their beliefs

shakes them up, Yamashita says. I almost always send people out on a seeing trip of some sort

to look at the problem from a new angle.

Getting buzz going before a swarm has another benefit, research shows. If no one comes

prepared with ideas, the first good idea can become an anchor pulling all the thinking

in that direction. If everyone comes in with their own strong ideas they want to present, its

anchors away.

4/ BUZZ

IDEAPAINT 6BUZZ


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The worst place to jam on new ideas might just be the place where most companies today send

people to jam on new ideas: the traditional conference room.

Here you have a table, chairs, and a whiteboard if youre lucky or, if youre not, one of those

pads on an easel that always falls over. Its uninspiring, undemocratic (he who controls the pen

and pad controls the meeting), and isolating. It almost ensures that brainstorming sessions

are anomalous one-offs, not part of the flow of a place.

PayPals offices in Boston are set up to eliminate the distinctions between where people work

on their own and where people think together. We designed the office to be very collaborative

in nature, says PayPals David Chang. Desks roll and are moved around. Instead of having

one or two conference rooms, PayPal has 40 spread everywhere, plus another ten lounges for

gathering swarming and knocking around ideas. IdeaPaint covers almost every wall so

people can spontaneously brainswarm wherever they happen to be.

Multiple writing and sketching surfaces are key. If everyone in the session has a pen and access

to a writing surface, barriers to sharing ideas fall away. Collaboration expert Dan Roam preaches

a gospel of drawing pictures to solve problems the more pictures from more people,

the better.

Keith Yamashita wants each of his brainswarmers to feel like a kid with a crayon in a house of

white walls. If I could have my ideal room for a thinking session, it would be one where you

could write on every surface of the room the walls, the tables, the floor, he says. Im not

kidding. Writing down the ideas, diagramming them, sketching themthats the secret. When

we commit the ideas in those forms, they become legitimate ideas.

IDEAPAINT 7THE SWARM ROOM

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When most people do brainstorming, they run all over the place and think outside the box,

Ralph Keeney, emeritus professor at Dukes Fuqua School of Business, told Forbes. I think

they should think inside the box.

Heres the problem: Too many idea sessions start with a rule that there are no rules. Think of

anything, the group is told think outrageously, no boundaries. And then everyone sits there

stumped if you have infinite choices, what do you choose? Or, ideas are so all over the place,

they never focus enough to solve any problem.

If you add some process, then brains in the room feel like they know where theyre going,says Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas

with Pictures.

A little structure is actually an enabler. Its the creative power of constraint.

Roam preaches his own brand of structure. He suggests starting brainswarms by drawing a

series of rough pictures, starting with a portrait of whos involved with the problem or goal,

then a chart of how much (money or another measurement) is involved, and on to items like a

timeline and flow chart. You end up with, essentially, a visual equation describing the situation.

By that point, ideas are flowing but staying focused.

Others have their own ways of guiding the swarm. Yamashita uses time limits: Tell the team

they have 30 minutes to generate three viable ideas, he says. Or simply lay out parameters that

give the group direction. But mostly, remember that a swarm isnt a swarm if its spread all over.

But put it in a box then youve really got a swarm.

6/ HERDING SWARMERS

IDEAPAINT 8HERDING SWARMERS


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Youve done everything right: pulled the right mix of people into the right kind of room; stirred

up pre-swarm buzz; set up parameters; and launched healthy group debate thats starting to

winnow a truckload of ideas to get to the strongest ones.

Now its time to funnel down to the very best ideas and capture them.

Yamashita, not surprisingly, gives everybody a pen at this point. I encourage people to connect

ideas, show the relationships of the ideas, draw lines between them, create a map of the ideas,

he says. Its by looking at the relationship that you figure out what a real idea is.

As the swarm coalesces around a smaller number of ideas, the democracy of the swarm has to

take a back seat. We tend to be flat until the end, when someone has to drive, says Huges

Pasternak. Someone has to make the decision about what ideas to go after.

There are lots of ways to make sure the ideas dont get lost. Assign someone to synthesize and

write up the swarms best ideas. Assuming youve done this in a well-equipped swarm room, the

ideas will be all over the walls. Take photos. Better yet, dump the images into Evernote, which

can later search handwritten words just as if they were typed text. If at all possible, leave the

drawings and scribbles on the wall, so swarmers can come back to them, talk about the ideas,

touch them up, draw new connections.

If you have the power, says Richard Branson, say yes to some good ideas that come out of

brainswarms -- it energizes the swarm to keep going. Sure, you might make an occasional

mistake, but if you take a risk, youre more likely to find success, he says.

And then, importantly -- dont stop. Thats the vital difference between brainswarms and

brainstorms. Brainswarms never end.

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IDEAPAINT 10SWARM SUCCESS


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Go back to those Broadway teams. The best teams didnt simply do one show and then atomize.

They swarmed one show, disengaged, perhaps added a couple of new members, then

re-swarmed over the next show, bringing with them and applying what they learned both

about the problem and about each other.

This is how brainswarming works. Objectives dont go away the minute a meeting breaks up

with a few good ideas to offer. A good swarm will continue attacking the problem, naturally,

spontaneously breaking apart to work on their own and re-forming to work together.

When one objective is met, keep a good swarm together and send it after the next one.

Such swarming has a crucial benefit: speed. Things are happening faster, says Crain at

Goodby Silverstein. We cant necessarily wait and sit in a room for two hours and talk. We need

it faster.

Swarms dont wait for someone to call a Thursday at 10 a.m. thinking session. Good swarms

become pre-loaded efficient problem-solving machines. Pull them into a room, give them a

target, and let the brainswarm begin.

If the conditions are right, it will never end, and the innovative ideas will keep coming.

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IDEAPAINT 11UN-SWARM TO RE-SWARM


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ABOUT IDEAPAINT

For more information visit www.ideapaint.com, or contact us at

[email protected] or 617.714.1050.

In 2008, IdeaPaint launched with one goal in mind: to improve the way people work.

Just five years later, over 75,000 of the worlds most innovative companies including

Apple, Google, NASA, Amazon, Nike, Autodesk, Yelp and Adobe use it to help their

teams communicate and collaborate effectively.

ABOUT KEVIN MANEYKevin Maney is an author and journalist who writes about technologys intersection

with business and society. His most recent books are The Two-Second Advantage:

How We Succeed by Anticipating the FutureJust Enough, and Trade-Off: Why

Some Things Catch On, and Others Dont.

ideapaint-the-new-art-of-brainswarming™-2013

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