-Brainstorming of thinking tools
Sometimes we need the wisdom of the team to form a concrete and feasible plan in our work, which is actually a process of collective thinking and creation. At this time, brainstorming, a thinking tool, is particularly important.
The northern part of our country is particularly cold, with heavy snow, and there is more and more snow on the wires, which leads to wire breakage and seriously affects communication. You are the boss of the local telecommunications company. What should you do? Sweep the snow with bamboo poles? Close call. Bury the wires underground? Far from hydrolysis, near thirst. What shall we do? You think hard and don't know what to do. Don't worry, there is another thinking tool around you: brainstorming.
Brainstorming is a tool to stimulate creative thinking invented by American creative scientist A.F. Osborne. You open the tool manual, gather friends as required, and read out the four principles of using tools: free thinking, delaying criticism, seeking quality by quantity, and combining improvement. Then ask: Do you have any good ideas?
Everyone is talking noisily. Some people say: Design a steel wire snow blower? Some people say: try electric heating to melt snow? Some people say: try vibration technology? Some people say: take a broom and take a helicopter to sweep the snow? You're going to collapse! These ideas are even more unreliable than you. Although "brainstorming" requires "suspending criticism", your heart is already a "grass mud horse"
At this moment, someone suddenly said: Yes, a helicopter! Helicopters fly along power lines in heavy snow, and huge propellers rotating at high speed can fan the snow, right? This idea inspired everyone at once, and soon there were seven or eight ideas of using helicopters to remove snow.
Finally, after verification, helicopter fan snow is indeed a good way to open brain holes, but it has a miraculous effect. This problem has been solved. This is a brainstorming. Its basic idea is: to get good ideas, we must first get a lot of ideas; If you want to get many ideas, you must rely on them to stimulate them. This stormy chemical reaction between individual minds brings the possibility of "1+ 1 much greater than 2".
Panasonic is a big believer in brainstorming. They got 1.979 years, with an average of 3 ideas per employee. Tomihiko Shimamura, a famous Japanese creative engineer, also helped NEC in this way, and obtained 58 patents, reducing the cost by 2 1 100 million yen.
Why does brainstorming have such power? Connection is the foundation and motivation is the core. Personal brain is a subset of knowledge. When subsets sit together, they do not automatically combine into a complete set. Only by following the rigorous process of "brainstorming" can subsets be "connected" into complete works, and then new ideas can be "stimulated" through the atmosphere of arousing association, enthusiasm infection, arousing competition and publicizing desire.
Then, how can I use this brainstorming method of "quantity drives quality and ideas stimulate ideas" to improve the quality of group thinking?
Four principles of "brainstorming":
First, think freely.
Power and prestige will affect free thinking. Once someone's opinion is considered more valuable than others', some brains will be shut down. What shall we do for the round table discussion? Don't print the title, and don't give priority to the seats. Don't say modestly, "I have an immature point of view" or "I have an idea that may not work". Maintaining respect for others, respecting other people's opinions and respecting different opinions is the key! To create such an atmosphere, we must encourage others to dare to speak their minds and express their views! (There are right and wrong facts, which can be verified. There is no right or wrong, no need to prove it! )
Second, delay judgment.
It is forbidden to criticize or even comment on other people's ideas. Don't say, "This idea is outrageous!" Criticism and comments that "this idea is too old", "this is impossible" and "this is not in line with XXX law" are the killers of more ideas. The strangulation of creativity sometimes happens inadvertently!
Third, seek quality by quantity.
At first, everyone's thoughts were like the first cold water after the hot water tap was turned on. The first 30 ideas are usually easy, and there will be many real ideas after the 50th idea. Therefore, the whole brainstorming should try to produce at least 100 new ideas. Quantity is more important here than quality.
A company collectively discusses the name of a new product. After two hours of intense discussion, we put forward more than 300 new names. Quantity is more important than quality, and the host didn't make any comments. Three days later, he asked everyone to write down the names they remembered. Everyone only wrote more than 20. They selected three of the more than 20, and then asked users to choose 1 from the three.
Fourth, combine improvement.
Back to the original case. From holding a broom on a helicopter to sweeping snow with a helicopter propeller, it is a "combination improvement". This is also the real charm of brainstorming, which is the value that a group of people think hard alone and don't have.
How come? Discuss as little as possible (10 ~ 20 people or so); Only one person can speak at any time; Don't whisper for a small meeting; Post all the previous ideas on the big white board to stimulate more new ideas.
How to conduct a high-quality brainstorming? (Operating version)
1. Clear title: Defining a problem may be more difficult than finding a solution. Prepare in advance, make clear the goal, and prepare the background materials in advance. Pre-preparation is particularly important, and full preparation is a necessary prerequisite for winning.
2. Confirmed personnel: about 10 people, 1 host, 1 recorder, and 8 storm players.
3. Clear discipline: Clear discipline can bring more effective output. Some best practices are: don't debate: don't judge and evaluate other people's ideas, and don't criticize yourself and refuse to become a debate. Advocate independent thinking, prohibit private communication and interfere with others' thinking. It is forbidden to say a word: the powerful storm crew (usually the boss and the top leader) should be suppressed, or even the boss/top leader should be forbidden to determine the direction first, and everyone should follow his direction, so that all storm members are equal. Self-talk is forbidden: "Mind your own thoughts and don't start from the thoughts of other storm players" is not encouraged, which loses the significance of collective discussion and strongly encourages starting from the thoughts of others. Don't limit yourself: think outside the box, such as "the implementation cost is too high in this case."
4, the pursuit of quantity: the purpose of brainstorming is to get as many ideas as possible, the pursuit of quantity is its primary purpose, in the shortest possible time to step up thinking and speed up output. The more ideas are generated, the greater the probability of creativity.
Mastering time: Generally speaking, brainstorming should be limited to about 30-45 minutes. Time is too short, it is difficult to speak freely, time is too long, and mental fatigue is easy. If it exceeds 1 hour, it is suggested to split it into several special storms.
Best practice steps: 1 host, 1 recorder, n storm members. I hope everyone can generate m ideas and prepare n pieces of paper, each piece of paper has M*N grids, and each storm member has a piece of paper. The host announced that the storm had begun. Within 5 minutes, each storm member needs to generate m ideas on paper: after 5 minutes, the host announces that the storm member will pass on the m ideas generated by himself to the next storm member, and each storm member will get the m ideas written by others to start the second 5-minute storm. This round of storm needs to be developed on the previous M train of thought, and the new M train of thought will be extended, and so on. After N rounds of storms, every piece of paper is full of M*N ideas (therefore, * * n * n * m ideas), and these ideas are all extended from the m ideas of the first storm member on this paper and summarized by the recorder.
7. [Endif] Be good at using tools: tape recorders, recording pens, index cards, post-it notes, mind maps, story outlines or hand-drawn pictures. The host and storm members should master the above tools skillfully in order to make a wonderful brainstorming!
Of course, there is also a lot of research on brainstorming on the Internet. Here, choose one for your analysis and research! Make full use of it in specific work, and it can be used when discussing problems and finding solutions at ordinary times. The use of the tool is "find the constant in the change, change in the constant!" To achieve this wonderful luck, lies in the realm of one heart! Are you ready?
? Gao Wei, Human Resources Department
Wednesday 2018 65438+1October 3 1
Link:/Question/19566885/ Answer /33693355
Brainstorming is a widely used method to generate ideas and solve problems in teams. However, many brainstorming activities are not perfect, and ultimately can not stimulate ideological innovation.
As we all know, traditional brainstorming, group meeting and expressing ideas one by one is usually a flawed process. Lack of preparation: If participants in a brainstorming meeting don't know the objectives of the meeting in advance, they will be ill-prepared and spend a lot of time understanding the contents of the discussion. Limited ideas: Many brainstorming activities focus on generating unique ideas or solutions that have nothing to do with the problem. However, innovation is often through personal ideas, by taking them apart, improving or changing a part. Company philosophy: what the company pays attention to is the most important, which will reduce other ideas. Inequality: Traditional brainstorming tends to be expressed by extroverts, which may lead to prolonged meetings and easy discussion of irrelevant issues. Fear: Participants are often afraid of contributing bad ideas, so they will "perform" to cater to the main body. However, research shows that criticism and conflict can produce better and more imaginative ideas.
We should make the best use of the benefits of brainstorming. Here are some brainstorming techniques: identify the problem; Stimulate creation; Equal capital contribution; Share discussions; Comprehensive classification
1. Identify the questions before the brainstorming meeting (preferably 24 hours in advance) and clearly explain the purpose of the meeting to the participants. Explain the problem you are trying to solve. Don't describe the problem too specifically, you can add creative solutions. Larger and more abstract questions allow participants to challenge assumptions, generate new ideas and find new ways to solve problems. Providing background materials helps to understand the background of the problem. . By providing participants with a summary of background materials and links to complete materials, you can help them so that they will not feel overwhelmed when preparing for the meeting. To set expectations, participants need to prepare for the meeting in advance, simply re-emphasize the goals and problems, and ensure that all participants know the objectives of the meeting at the beginning of the brainstorming meeting.
2. Stimulate creativity Many brainstorming meetings require participants to make direct statements. Many people may not know where to start, and often come up with ideas without further creativity. We can guide them to express their views better. The following are some good suggestions: Psychology: Create a list of psychological concepts to guide students to think about specific problems. Viewpoint: You can consider the problem from multiple angles. Parallelism: Similar problems in other industries can be compared. Highlights: Choose several key citations, statistics or documents from previous research results or strategic documents to help members have better ideas.
3. Equal contribution: Let participants express their opinions in the same time, which is conducive to listening to more people's ideas and collecting ideas in a shorter time. You can invite people who have nothing to do with the problem. For example, if you are a designer, you can invite product managers, customer service, engineers and so on, not just team members. Each participant can be provided with some post-it notes or cards to guide them to write more ideas on paper or express them through pictures.
4. Share the discussion. We can discuss participants' statements and records of their thoughts, which can be posted on the wall. Then discuss, combine and modify the ideas on these walls. You can ask a few more questions about these ideas to promote the discussion. At the same time, we can give you one-on-one feedback opportunities, feedback with the author or discuss with another person.
5. Comprehensive classification You can classify, evaluate and arrange these ideas in order of priority. You can also combine some similar ideas.
If you also have good suggestions or skills, you can tell us!