Brainstorming: Move It Up a Gear!

Mind Tools Newsletter 66 - 23rd January 2007 This newsletter is published by Mind Tools Ltd of 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London, EC1V 4PY, UK. You have received it because you have subscribed to our double opt-in newsletter. To subscribe or unsubscribe, just click the links at the bottom of this email.

Contents: What's New The Charette Procedure Mind Tools Store A Final Note

Brainstorming is a technique no Mind Tools reader should be without. Whether you’re generating ideas for new products, or finding new ways to solve problems, brainstorming is a “must-have” for your career skills tool-kit.

However, whilst brainstorming is a powerful technique, whether it's successful or not is often down to how well you run the brainstorming session

So imagine that you are faced with the challenge of organizing a brainstorming session, perhaps on several topics, with a much larger group of people than the usual 6 - 8 brainstormers: Maybe 10 times that number… What do you do?

Don’t panic! Today’s article has a solution, the Charette Procedure. This helps you organize brainstorming with a very large group, and even cover several brainstorming topics to boot. As such, it's a great technique for bringing out the full creativity, and winning the support, of a large group of opinionated and powerful people.

What's New?

But before you run out and organize some major brainstorming sessions, check out what else is new at Mind Tools! Another article well worth reading is Appreciative Inquiry - Solving Problems by Looking at What’s Going Right. Focusing on what’s going right is a great idea, and can be quite energizing. We often spend far too long thinking about what’s going wrong!

In the Career Excellence Club, we’ve got many more resources and discussions on a wide range of career-enhancing subjects. Recent new articles have included Kaizen - how to eliminate waste in the way you work, and Crisis Planning - preparing your best response to the unexpected.

Our popular audio / podcast series has recently included an interview with distinguished change agent and executive coach Judith E Glaser; a thought-provoking Book Insight into Stephen M R Covey’s “The Speed of Trust”; a Bite-Sized Training lesson on Impact Analysis; wise words in the Coaching Clinic about how to “Let Go a Little”; and lots of other interesting and pertinent discussions in the forums. It’s been an excellent and informative couple of weeks in the club!

Enjoy today’s article, and keep tuning in for much more!

  

James & Rachel

James Manktelow and Rachel Thompson
MindTools.com
Mind Tools – Essential skills for an excellent career!

To find out about new tools on the Mind Tools site the moment they’re uploaded, click here to subscribe to the Mind Tools RSS feed (you'll need an RSS newsreader installed), or here to find out more about RSS.

New Article

The Charette Procedure

Brainstorming Multiple Ideas With Multiple Stakeholders

Have you ever tried to hold a brainstorming session with more than 10 or 15 people? Or tried to brainstorm ideas for two or more related issues? It’s rarely pretty! These sessions quickly spin out of control, becoming chaotic and unproductive. What's more, they tend to be dominated by only a few people, with the majority remaining silent.

When an idea-generating session has numerous related issues or numerous stakeholders, simple brainstorming is often inadequate. This means that sessions are less creative than they might be, buy-in is undermined, and people disengage from the process. This is a serious problem if you need to achieve consensus.

However, brainstorming can still be effective if you take a slightly different approach to organizing the brainstorming sessions.

One such approach has a name: The Charette Procedure (sometimes spelled ‘Charrette’). It involves organizing people into several small groups, each of which brainstorms ideas one-after-the-other until everyone involved has had a chance to contribute fully. Derived from the French word for wagon, it come from the practice of architecture students in the early 1800s, who used carts to rush their drawings from one place to another to get final approvals. In much the same way, when you use the Charette Procedure, you take the ideas generated by a group, and cart them over to the next group, for them to be built upon, refined, and finally prioritized.

The Charette Procedure allows for maximum participation in idea generation, without compromising the quality or effectiveness of the brainstorming. The benefits of the process include:

• Effective use of time because many issues can be discussed at the same time;
  
  
• Improved buy-in from stakeholders, who have the opportunity to contribute their ideas on each issue;
  
  
• Encouragement of high quality options because the most popular ideas are polished with each round of discussion;
  
  
• Elimination of stalled discussion, because new people can progress an issue on each round.

How to Use the Tool

The Charette Procedure is quite simple to apply. Depending on your situation you may complete the various group discussions in one day, or they can be held over a series of days or weeks. The system you choose will be based on the logistics involved and the magnitude of your project.

1. Agree on a set of issues that need to be discussed.
   
   
2. Divide your larger group into small groups that are conducive to brainstorming. As with many types of group interaction, a group size of seven participants plus the recorder is ideal. Here again, the specifics of your situation will dictate the size of your groups. When planning the groups, consider the following:
   
   
   • If you have a set deadline, make sure the number of groups and iterations can be accommodated.
     
     
   • Think about the mix of people within the groups. Groups with a diverse mix of skills, background and experience are generally more creative than those of similarly skilled people.
     
     
   • Make sure the number of groups is equal to or greater than the number of issues to discuss.
3. Assign an issue to each group. If there are more groups than issues, then assign some issues to more than one group.
   
   
4. Have each group elect a recorder. You may also suggest this person facilitates the group discussion as well.
   
   
5. Each group brainstorms an issue.
   
   

   • Record all ideas, as for regular brainstorming. Click the link to find out more about the regular brainstorming process.
     

   • Set a time limit for discussion. This will depend heavily on your overall schedule as well as the complexity of the issues being discussed. Strike a balance between too short a session that might not uncover enough detail, and longer discussions that might lose focus
6. When the group’s time is up, the recorder moves to the next group.
   
   
   • The recorder reviews the issues and current state of the brainstorming list with the new group.
     
     
   • Brainstorming begins again, with each group now discussing a new idea or issue. The new group builds on the existing ideas and generates new one.
     
     
   • Repeat this step until each group has discussed each issue once.
7. In the final group session, allow time to organize and draw together the ideas into key ideas, themes or strands. If several groups have been working at the same time on the same issue, this is a good time to bring together the different streams of ideas.
   
   
8. Once the final session has finished, reconvene the whole group and have the recorders present their lists. This is a good time to work with the group to prioritize issues or approaches, if this is appropriate. Techniques that can help you with this are Nominal Group Technique, and Multi-Voting.

Key Points

The Charette Procedure is an efficient and effective process for brainstorming and capturing ideas, when there are multiple issues and many people involved. It is a systemic and organized approach that allows everyone to contribute in a meaningful way. When you are faced with a complex, multiplayer decision, the Charette Procedure is a great way to harness ideas and priorities as the foundation of well-considered and widely accepted plans.

The Mind Tools Store:

• The Career Excellence Club (The Mind Tools members area): Make career development and every-day part of your life with member-only discussion forums, the Mind Tools Extended Toolkit, downloadable MP3-based Book Insights and Interviews, regular coaching, training, and much, much more. More >>
  
  

• Make Time for Success: If you feel overloaded and out of control, you'll love Make Time for Success! Learn the 39 essential personal effectiveness techniques that help you bring your workload under control and maximize your productivity, so that you can make the most of the opportunities open to you. More >>
  
  
• How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You: Learn the 48 simple but essential skills you need to create an inspiring vision of the future, get the very best from your team, and become a top leader in your industry. More >>

A Final Note From James

Humility and Team Charters are just 2 of the subjects we’re looking forward to in the next two weeks. And if you are ready to make career excellence an even bigger part of your life, do come and join us in the Career Excellence Club, where you’ll find liked-minded people, and many more excellent resources.

Have a truly excellent week!

James

James Manktelow

Click here to email
Mind Tools
Essential Skills for an Excellent Career!

Privacy Policy:
Mind Tools will treat your email address with complete respect and will not circulate it to any third party.

To unsubscribe, please click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email we sent you.

IIf you are not already a member and you would like to subscribe, please visit the mindtools.com site and subscribe using the form on the right hand side bar.

© Mind Tools Ltd, 2007.
If you have enjoyed this issue, please feel free to email it on to your friends and co-workers. If you think they would benefit from the skills we teach, please pass this newsletter on!

Also, you are very welcome to post this issue of the newsletter to your own web site. If you do, you must leave it completely intact, include copyright information, and include both the URL of the mindtools site (http://www.mindtools.com) and the subscription email address for the newsletter (http://www.mindtools.com/subscribe.htm).

---

Where to go from here: