Preparing Like an Improviser
People might think that improvisers just show up at the theater, pull creative ideas out of their heads, and engage in perfectly timed scenes using only their sheer inborn talent. Not true. Improvisers rehearse, practice, and repeat games over and over. They are constantly working on their characters.
When I first started doing improv in the late eighties, rap was coming to the forefront of music. Anything new in art or culture is immediately nabbed by improvisers, and they try to integrate it into their work. Rap is complicated if done well, and a fellow troupe member made it a goal to master the form. He rapped all day long about everything he was doing—whether he was folding laundry, grabbing the bus, or getting ready for a show, he was rapping about it. He recognized that he couldn’t wing it; to represent a rapper onstage with real respect, he had to do the work up front.
That’s what this chapter is about: the up-front work. There’s a lot that goes into creating innovative environments and behaviors in a team or organization or just for yourself. Innovators are tenacious—a lot of time, hard work, and failure will occur before the big breakthrough. Let’s examine some of the classic up-front formats and foundations for good, innovative work.
Brainstorming is widely held as a key component of getting ideas out onto the table. It’s seen as a great exercise and an important piece of engaging your team. Creativity and brainstorming are how we get to innovation. Great inventions and improvements often start at the brainstorming table, so why do so many brainstorming sessions feel useless? Or start with a bang only to yield nothing? No surprise here—it’s about our behaviors before, during, and after.
Some descriptions of brainstorming sessions I’ve heard include:
• “We threw out about 20 ideas each, they were written up on a board, then time was over so we walked out and did nothing.”
• “I had an early idea, but my manager said we’d never have the budget and it wouldn’t work. So, I didn’t add anything else.”
• “No way am I sharing my best ideas with the group. I need those to get ahead.”
• “Some ideas seemed stupid and had nothing to do with the project.”
• “Two people commanded the whole conversation and kept throwing out ideas so no one else could contribute.”
That’s frustrating talk! Wasted time, unheard ideas, and uneven contributions. Some modern experts consider brainstorming, which was introduced in 1948 by advertising executive and author Alex Osborn, to be good in terms of the need for group process, but awful in terms of method. Fear of failure or judgment and looking after one’s own interests are the key reasons we disengage during brainstorming.
Being aware of the strengths and pitfalls of brainstorming can turn that around. Good brainstorming is a critical tool in the pocket of every project team and manager. The key is to understand the nature of effective brainstorming. You must ban the devil’s advocate, go for the ridiculous, and embrace the lull.
The first issue with effective brainstorming is that we must stop allowing the critic to attend. You know the one I’m talking about—the devil’s advocate. The moment someone throws on the cloak of the devil’s advocate, I want to scream. It means this person is couching criticism and idea-killing comments in the guise of the concerned editor.
We forget how detrimental criticism can be. Contributing in any scenario is very scary for many people. Even those who’ve worked together for years report putting on a more careful, professional head at work—one that tells them to wait, not say anything, and don’t get into trouble. If they believe a comment will be shot down or criticized in any way, they usually choose not to speak. That’s narrowing the field of ideas considerably.
The issue is bigger than we may realize. Depending on the setting, normally verbose people can have anxiety in small group sessions. Researchers at Virginia Tech and the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B found through MRI scans that anxiety affected some people’s ability to access their IQ—making them feel dumb, tongue-tied, and worried. Those feelings worsened when they thought others in the group knew more or told them why their ideas wouldn’t work (Bernstein 2012).
Don’t underplay the importance of all forms of criticism. Rolling your eyes, a sneer, or a silent shrug will do just as much harm as a verbal comment. Body language is loud, and as a leader or member of a team, you have a responsibility to make the brainstorming room safe, creative, and open.
The writer and teacher John Cage created a list of principles for great writing. If you are worried about the critic attending your next brainstorming session, try posting his eighth rule on the wall:
Rule #8: Do not try to create and analyze at the same time. They are different processes.
Brainstorm first. Analyze on a different day.
I watch executives pull their hair out trying to get their teams to think of something crazy. But even though we all love to say, “The crazy idea may be the best,” humans are risk averse. Crazy ideas scare us, and committing a budget to something weird can be a career-limiting move. So the team may be too afraid to take a risk, even in a theoretical brainstorming session.
To loosen up that fear and practice the art of accepting craziness, we use an improvisational brainstorming game called the Ad(d) Game. It requires players to suspend disbelief and commit to a ridiculous idea. They must market a household object with an attribute so weird and unexpected that it is almost unusable in its traditional form: a vacuum cleaner that blows dirt instead of sucking it up or a car with no wheels.
The improvisational aspect of this game is that the participants have to use “yes, and” in their brainstorm and accept every idea to its full potential. As the game progresses, the players enthusiastically plan a rollout of their ridiculous product, complete with pricing, packaging, media plan, celebrity endorsement, and consumer targets. And no matter how ridiculous the idea, every contribution in the brainstorm is greeted with a rousing chorus of “yes, and!”
You can imagine how loud, fun, and crazy this exercise can become. I’ve seen two extremes of behavior over hundreds of times running this exercise with teams from steelworkers to media CEOs. Ninety-eight percent of teams jump into the game, utterly suspend disbelief, commit with energy, and come up with ideas that are so surprising and brilliant, I’m ready to run out and buy that wheel-less car. Conversely, 2 percent insist the exercise is silly and come up with the most boring ideas I’ve ever heard. They allow the critic to attend, spending more time arguing than creating. And without fail, those in the latter group do not innovate.
While I have a huge amount of respect for professional marketing and creative teams, my experience shows that they are among the lowest performers in the area of sheer creativity in the Ad(d) Game. Ideas are their stock in trade, and having control of the creative process is a matter of professional pride. I believe they run into a crisis of control—the game can be messy and uncoordinated. Any expert in any field wants to have the best answer—in the case of the Ad(d) Game, I think that need keeps creatives from letting go and just playing the game.
So, what’s the point of going for crazy and shutting down the critic? It immediately widens the field of possibility. Although the craziest ideas may not be usable, they expand the breadth of the applied ideas. If you’re playing it safe in a limited field of ideas, the chosen ideas (usually in the middle) will remain mundane. If you have a huge field that ranges from mundane to unbelievable, you will probably make connections and see possibilities that are far more interesting.
And sometimes, the most ridiculous and crazy ideas end up being the ones we needed all along. For example, consider a power plant being constructed in Copenhagen by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels’ firm, BIG. As the architects and planners brainstormed about the environment, someone noted that there’s nowhere to ski in Copenhagen. They joked about putting a ski slope on the power plant. A ridiculous idea, right? Ingels said, “We proposed it as a brainstorm as a joke, but then, you know, it wasn’t so silly, and we started like, why would this not be a good idea?” (Bobkoff 2014).
Very soon, you’ll be able to take a lift to the top of the power plant, and ski down.
“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
—John Cage
Another issue in driving creativity in brainstorming is ending ideation too soon. I call it “the lull.” I see it whenever we play the Ad(d) Game.
There’s some unavoidable discomfort playing the Ad(d) Game. People are nervous to be up in front of their colleagues, and there is so much fear of being judged. But the exercise always snowballs once participants realize they’ll always be greeted by an enthusiastic shout of “yes, and!” The energy is so infectious; audience members join in the fun and start shouting ideas to the volunteers onstage.
However, at some point, there’s a lull. Ideas run out, and silence stretches into the room. The participants always look at me, as if to say, “We’re done, facilitator. Aren’t you going to let us off the hook?” But I don’t. I make eye contact, smile encouragingly, and wait for them to start up again. It’s slow, and you can practically see their brains working. But this is the point when the million dollar ideas show up and people begin blurting out unexpected combinations and ideas.
By its nature, brainstorming creates obvious outcomes at first. We say everything that pops into our heads. We have to get the easy stuff out of the way before we really start to innovate. It’s not until after the lull that groups come up with something kooky, unexpected, and sometimes brilliant. Persistence, discomfort, and sticking with it is a big part of that next step. And in the space of the lull, really creative ideas begin to formulate.
Adam Grant, author and professor at the Wharton School of Business, in his research on the people and teams who seem to come up with the most original, unexpected, and successful innovations, considers the lull an aspect of slowing down and procrastination. In the majority of subjects he studied, procrastination was a constant element in the innovative process for outliers, which he dubbed “Originals.” These Originals were natural procrastinators; although they would investigate, study, and think, they resisted solid action until the very last minute. It’s funny to hear how their habits drove the author, a self-proclaimed “PREcrastinator” (someone who is driven to do everything early and right away) absolutely crazy! It doesn’t make sense, and seems so impractical to people of action. However, he realized that an important synthesis was going on during procrastination.
Grant cites Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech as another example of the power of procrastination. King did not finish writing that speech before he gave it, and was making changes up to the last minute—this is where preparation, teamwork, the lull, and improvisation come together.
King had been using his “I have a dream” refrain over the last year, but had removed it from this speech in his notes. As he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial speaking from his prepared text, Mahalia Jackson, legendary gospel singer and King confidante, must have realized he had more—more passion and more energy. Remembering what may have been her favorite refrain, she called out to King, “Tell them about the dream!” In the midst of his speech, King paused, abandoned the script, and improvised. And in that moment of improvisation, he pulled out four brilliant words he had been preparing for more than a year, and “I have a dream” became history.
Grant’s realization became complete when he remembered the Zeigarnik effect. Bluma Zeigarnik, a Russian psychologist, found that when people were interrupted during a task, they remembered that task. But they forgot about tasks that were complete. Whenever we finish something, our brain essentially checks it off a list and forgets about it because it needs the space for things that are still in action. Yet, when we leave something unfinished, the brain never stops working on it. It’s always a sort of open file, even if it is relegated to the subconscious. The brain can’t help but continue working on it (Grant 2016a, 2016b).
That’s what happens in the lull! The brain has done a little work, and wants to be let off the hook. However, if we allow the lull to stretch out, even into days or weeks, if the brain understands that there is still work to be done, that work will continue.
In improvisation, that sense of the lull comes from patience. We are always trying out new characters and ideas; we let them brew and don’t bring them out again until the time is right. Then one day—BAM! Something really brilliant happens onstage. Our lull can be developing a character over months or respecting the lull that happens in the middle of a show.
I will never forget the difference I saw between improvisers who embraced the lull and those who plowed through it during an improv show in NYC’s East Village. Four groups performed that night: three new groups and the house team. It’s understood on weeknights the audience only pays a small admission price to see improv by people just learning the craft, as long as they also get a little bit from the pros. I’d rate the first three groups that night from OK to mediocre—they hit a few good moments, but the single attribute that ran through all three was a propensity to rush. They were nervous, dying for a laugh, and wanting to be that combination of energetic, fast, and funny that so many people associate with improv. They were whipping through scenes so quickly that we couldn’t keep track of what was going on in the story! And because they were also working so hard, they kept speaking over one another and negating something someone else had just said because they weren’t listening.
Then, like a long yoga breath, the house team finally performed. They embraced the lull in a way that felt like relief for us—the confused audience who’d just been hammered by such rushed, loud improv. The team arrived onstage in silence, and seeing that the audience was leaning forward, curious, and engaged, they didn’t even speak for the first two to three minutes. Instead, they watched one another as they began to make the actions of eating. When an improviser starts a silent action onstage, her troupe members watch closely so that when they join in, it will work. Slowly, they used their actions to show us and one another that they were eating noodles. As you may imagine, pantomiming the weird stuff that can happen while eating noodles is funny, even without dialogue!
From there, they contributed lines, just one at a time, that were dry and surprising. Whenever a line would catch the audience off guard and we’d laugh, the troupe would let the laughter grow and die down, and would then luxuriate in the next lull. It was like an improvised Samuel Beckett play. They’d acknowledge the new information, think about it quietly, eat their noodles, and wait for the right line to come … which it did, again and again. Those noodle eaters explored work, sex, and love in matter-of-fact tones of voice while they slowly put away their lunchtime noodles. It was one of the most brilliant improv scenes I’ve enjoyed in years. That one scene took up the entire space of their time slot. There was no need to zip between settings, characters, and time—they luxuriated in lulls and patience to fully explore a hysterical trio of noodle eaters.
Adults dislike discomfort and being outside their area of expertise. And in group situations, we often hate silence. But we must stretch into the unknown. Having the courage to hang on through the lull is critical. Sometimes the lull is a break, a moment of relaxation when we access different areas of our brain and an idea arrives. Sometimes it’s just believing that there’s more, and not giving up. I sometimes wonder how many great ideas were left unsaid because we bailed out of an uncomfortable lull.
Why does environment matter to improvisation and innovation? The physical environment isn’t the only thing that affects our behaviors; the resources and personal interactions that occur in our environment also deeply affect our efficacy.
From a foundational perspective, researchers continue finding links to our efficacy and success based on our childhood environments. How and where we are raised and nurtured has so much to do with what we accomplish later in life. For example, economists have found that access to good public transportation and manageable commute times are key indicators in escaping poverty and gaining upward mobility (Chetty and Hendren 2015). Sadly, it has been found that even if impoverished kids have better test scores, two parents, and a lower crime rate near their home, if they don’t have access to reliable transportation to get in and out of their neighborhood, they’ll have less chance of moving up and out of poverty than those who do. That single lever influences their success so much.
There are many levers that can affect your team’s ability to improvise and innovate. The key is to look around, question, and try things that could improve outcomes from an environmental perspective. This is a front-end effort because if the environment doesn’t work, how can we? The critical importance of environment cannot be underplayed—if the environment is conducive to creativity, your brain will be better able to focus and innovate. In addition, environment affects our behaviors, which is exactly what we are trying to unleash.
Take this professional services firm located in a small Midwestern town, for example. All the offices in this classic, historical stone building are private, and the abundance of carpet, walls, and narrow hallways encourage quiet work and isolation. Every office is dominated by a big oak desk or table, so that people are separated by a piece of furniture when they sit down, and it’s difficult to have a seating configuration other than facing off across a desk. If people from the same department work on different floors, they rarely see each other. Admins must walk across the building or to different floors to talk to a teammate, and may not see each other in a whole week.
The firm determined that they could save money and be more productive if administrative assistants could collaborate and share more work, but there are no spaces large enough to build a team area. While email, text, instant message, and videoconference may help, such an environment—common for early-20th-century work—is problematic for modern collaboration. What could the firm do?
Actually, quite a bit. The firm decided to rethink how it worked, and deal with the constraints as a conduit for creativity rather than a barrier. For example, there was a library that took up most of the first floor, but it wasn’t really necessary with so much information available online. So, the library was transformed into a gathering and conference space with a coffee bar, reception area, and many informal spots for small, in-the-moment meetings. Admins, executives, and support staff could now mix in a way that allowed much more social and professional interaction. In addition, the support staff was consolidated on the basement floor—which was refurbished and reconfigured for light, access, and color—where they could be near each other and collaborate quickly. Most impressive, the firm reconsidered its entire strategy. By reconfiguring reporting, office, and work structures, it was able to work as a team more effectively and serve its clients more efficiently.
This was all accomplished because the firm decided to approach its restrictive environment as creatively as possible. By contrast, let’s consider an innovation lab set up by Cardinal Health in Columbus, Ohio.
Built out from the expansive shell of a former grocery store, the lab, Fuse, was deliberately designed to be an environment that encouraged collaboration and open ideation. There were no offices or assigned desks. Instead, people simply chose a quiet spot or a place in the open theater area near their current project teammates. The conference rooms are designated by colors chosen to compliment certain sorts of brain activity: red for intense discussion, speed, and co-creation; blue for project planning and consideration; green for focused work and productivity; and orange for sharing and creative play. Magnetized walls and dozens of rolling whiteboards are covered with notes, pictures, designs, and plans, and were meant to move and change with the activities and ideas they document. Interactive screens and video monitors stream key information into the conversation each day. And suspended from the ceiling are toys and other playful artifacts that represent the spirit of various teams and projects.
The mix of professional skills throughout the environment is also very deliberate. The diversity in expertise and close proximity build respect and help spark ideas that would simply never catch fire in a regimented, cube-walled office. Each day, quick stand-up meetings keep everyone current on the work being done in the lab within and across different teams. Employees are encouraged to eat together (on actual plates with silverware) at a sprawling family table called “the Hub” and frequent pot-luck events foster even more community. Once a week, in a labwide stand-up meeting, employees share accomplishments and announcements, and then everyone pitches in to do a quick clean-up of the desktops and common areas—almost like a family. The space feels like an active part of the collaborative culture and seems to say, “We are all accountable, we are all in this together.”
These stories are meant to inspire you to think creatively about preparing and changing your environment. Putting Fuse together was an act of deliberate innovation. However, if you find yourself in an environment more like the professional services firm, ask yourself what you can do to prepare like an improviser. If your physical space is restrictive, what can you change, even if it is small? What behaviors can you introduce that will change the way your team interacts with the environment?
In an improv show, we tend to work in small theaters, close to the audience. We even tear down the metaphysical fourth wall to make the entire audience part of the show. The fourth wall (a term from classical theater) refers to the idea that there’s an invisible fourth wall on the stage that keeps the actors separate from audience. They are entirely immersed in their characters in the time and place the script dictates. But in improv, we look right at the audience, speak with them, and even bring them onstage from time to time.
When participants walk into one of my ensemble’s improv workshops, the first thing they see is an open semicircle of chairs. That, in and of itself, often makes them very uncomfortable. They likely expected to come into a room full of tables, where they could set up their laptops in the back, stay out of the spotlight, and zone out for the training. That open room lets them know there will be no hiding. Being asked to improvise puts many people way outside their comfort zone. The key is creating a safe space for them where there are no mistakes, people volunteer rather than being told or chosen to engage, and everyone has a chance to contribute. We are all in it, together.
Environment matters. What culture and physical attributes are in yours?
The adage “luck is when opportunity meets preparation” refers to the fact that many humble people have said that they owe their big break to “luck.” As if anyone could have achieved that same moment, if only all the stars aligned in the same way. Not true. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines luck as “the things that happen to a person because of chance: the accidental way things happen without being planned.” However, when people work very hard, prepare a great deal, or practice incessantly—so that when the moment comes and the agent or CEO is in the room, they perform perfectly—the “luck” that put the right person there pays off because they rock the house.
Preparation is a huge part of dealing with challenges. Every athlete knows that if you don’t put in the time to practice, sweat, fail, get up, start over, and try again, you’ll never reach the physical skills and endurance it takes to be great. Practice is an obvious and entirely expected part of their excellence. So why do we think we can be creative or innovative without dedicating our own sweat and practice?
If you want to be a more creative person, engage in small creative behaviors. Do small things every day, practice the art of creativity, and innovate in ways that seem very household. Give your brain a chance to create new neural pathways, and give your body and emotions the chance to engage in failure, challenge, and retry. As long as you are comfortable and totally in your zone of expertise, you are probably stagnating!
Ben had a challenge ahead of him. As a senior scientist and vice president of a global medical device company, he had just received the green light to move forward on an innovative project that could revolutionize the way medical tests are conducted in automated clinical labs. He had the audacious goal of creating a machine that could produce outcomes on clinical medical tests (such as cervical cancer) in less time and in significantly higher numbers than ever before.
This high-throughput instrument allows clinical laboratories to screen many more women for cervical cancer. That’s a huge improvement in medical outcomes. But that wasn’t all—the company wanted him to complete this project in less than half the time they usually allowed.
Ben is a man with enormous good humor, which would be critical in the next few years. He told me about the challenge: “There are so many eyes on this project! We got a great budget, but everyone is wondering if we can make this happen. We have to totally reconsider how we collaborate as a team, build devices, and serve the client. Everything is changing.”
Instead of diving right in, Ben knew that a lot of up-front work had to happen to achieve this innovation. His main concern rested on two very simple communication behaviors: speaking up and clarifying. He had led teams for many years and had observed a persistent and problematic set of behaviors in the company—a reticence to speak up in rooms with people who were higher-ranking and an avoidance of asking questions.
For example, if a team was reviewing its work on a scientific project, people in the room wouldn’t want to bring negative news and were worried that they didn’t have the rank to speak in meetings, even though the team leader asked about any issues that may have arisen during testing. So, while they would explain the issue to their peers after the meeting, it could take another week for the issue to come around to the team leader. That is a huge amount of time wasted, which Ben knew he didn’t have for this new project. In addition, if team members did not understand, they would go off and do their own research, and then take action on what they learned. That often led to issues simply because they didn’t clarify their actions.
“I’ve even found out that members of my own team won’t challenge me in front of others, when I’m begging them to do so!” he explained to me. “My simplest measure of success is even one person speaking up immediately who normally would have stayed quiet. Right there, we could save a week of time—and we need every single minute we can spare on this project.”
It may seem surprising that these behaviors were being exhibited by extremely smart, highly educated scientists. However, anyone can feel intimidated, shy, and reticent. If you work in an environment where no one else seems to be engaging in certain behaviors, such as clarifying with questions, you will avoid those as well. You’ll just nod with understanding like everyone else.
Ben wanted to create a completely different environment. He needed to prepare his team for this intense experience, which would be short and reliant upon radical collaboration. He needed an improv troupe.
And so, ImprovEdge engaged the team in a series of workshops, webinars, coaching sessions, and internal cohort work organized around improvisational behaviors. We taught the team about “yes, and,” so that they could question and confirm their intelligence: “Yes, I appreciate the explanation, and I’d like to know more about the third component.”
We also discussed culture and environment—what interactions could allow them to feel more comfortable? We created formats for everyone to speak up in brainstorming sessions, so that lower-level employees would become comfortable with adding their voices to all interactions. High-level leadership attended all sessions, encouraging everyone to contribute, speak, add ideas to the table, and work together.
We taught them specific communication tools such as reflections (What I hear you saying is …), open-ended questions (Could you tell me some more about … ?), and ideation. And yes! The team played the Ad(d) Game many times to explore the lull, getting through everyone’s ideas, and contributing quickly. One junior project manager told us, “The level of trust I feel with this team after the sessions is incredible! It’s higher than anything I felt at my last company after three years. I think the fact that we all had to step out of our comfort zone together is what made the difference. My superiors were just as nervous as I was—but we all had fun! And the techniques work, too. Just yesterday, I brainstormed with my VP—we never would have even chatted before this.”
One of the most telling success stories came from a woman on the team for whom English was a second language. After learning how to use reflections, she told the entire group that she had implemented that simple technique for clarification. “When I started to reflect back on what I thought I heard, so many people clarified for me. I have realized that I probably have been misunderstanding about 50 percent of what I’ve been hearing from all of you. I was scared to tell you this, but my team member encouraged me to let you all know so we can work together to help me understand everything more quickly.”
She realized that by pushing through her shyness and reflecting and pausing to set a foundation of understanding, she was speeding up her work significantly. In addition, by reaching out and clarifying, she was building stronger relationships with her team members. Her assumption had been that questioning would push them away, but once she got into more specific conversations, she realized that it was bringing them closer together in camaraderie and understanding.
In another instance, an engineer came to our third workshop with a story about “yes, and”:
I went to visit our vendor partner who is manufacturing a special component for the machine. I was starting to get concerned, because I was confused about the specs he was showing me. I kept questioning him about missing pieces, but he was starting to get defensive and, I would wager, was also starting to think I was an idiot because I didn’t seem to understand him. In the past, I might have just ended the meeting, come back, and told the team we may have to reconsider our choice of vendor, which would have been a huge problem. Instead, I took a deep breath and remembered “yes, and.” So I stopped for a second, totally changed my tone of voice, and said, “Yes, I see that those four components are right in place. They look great. And as I turn the plans around, I’m confused about the back half. Could you help me see that more clearly?”
The vendor’s face lit up. “Oh I get it! The specs don’t even show the back half! I’m so sorry. Wow, I can see how that could be confusing. We don’t use the mirror image, and I thought you knew that. Here! Let’s go out on the manufacturing floor and I’ll show you the whole process.”
That engineer from Ben’s team ended up getting a tour of the whole facility, they had a great conversation, and he saw everything being made and assembled. That meeting launched a much stronger, more communicative relationship with the vendor.
The outcome of this up-front improvisational work for the project was enormous. By setting a foundation and environment of improvisation, the team achieved its innovative goals, and Ben included them all when they made their final presentation to the CEO. Most impressive? The first versions of the machines have been built and are currently running thousands of medical tests in R&D labs.
This fun, high-energy brainstorming session is about getting ideas and plans into place quickly. By making the event game-like, it allows people to have fun and create a very visual outcome. Their ideas will cover a wall and they’ll be timed to create intensity. Finally, multiple teams will engage on how to use and implement ideas.
1. Choose topics or projects that need to be addressed. Create teams of three people, with at least two teams per subject. For example, your company needs to launch a product for a new target market.
2. Carefully consider preparation and environment. You’ll need notecards or sticky notes (use large ones for easy writing, nothing tiny) and colored markers, as well as lots of wall space, flipcharts, and of course, snacks! Consider: Is there enough space for the number of people you have invited? Will sticky notes stay on the wall in the room or will you need to tack notecards to the wall? Do the markers work well? Is the room in a place where you can have a noisy session?
3. Assign trios of people to the topics for the collaborative brainstorm. They each have a role: One person is the brainstormer, who thinks and speaks. Another person is the scribe, who writes down everything the brainstormer says—one idea per sticky note. The third person is the organizer, who gathers the outcomes and posts them on the wall.
4. Set a timer for three to five minutes. The brainstormers will come up with ideas around something specific (example: how do we create a new process to roll out the website?) or general (example: what can we do to reach our yearly goals?). As they say each idea, the scribes write it on a sticky, which they hand to the organizers. Since there are at least two teams per topic, the organizers for each topic work together as a team to create categories for the ideas on the wall as quickly as possible. As they grab ideas and collaborate, columns or areas of sticky notes with common ideas should start to come together. If you are brainstorming multiple topics, put each topic on a separate wall to avoid confusion.
5. Have everyone do a quick, one-minute review of the wall so they know which ideas have already been written down.
6. Now, rotate roles! Do at least two rounds if not three, so that the team members experience each different role. Encourage new ideas and encourage crazy! Remind them that you want to see ridiculous ideas right beside the obvious ones.
7. Work together to eliminate duplicates and organize the wall to create clear categories of ideas for each topic.
8. Once the brainstorming is over, have the groups use flipcharts to strategize how to put the ideas into action. Allow at least 15-20 minutes for conversation and work.
9. Have each team present their ideas to the group. This is an idea session, not an editing session! Keep everything and edit later.
In the year since we last saw them, Innovation and Improvisation have gone into business together. They chose an office filled with wall space for ideation and lots of room for group interaction. But Innovation worries that her partner’s constant playfulness followed by procrastination will sink the ship. Here it is, the night before their first presentation to a venture capital firm, and they still don’t have a name for the company!
