Extraordinary Brainstorming: Solution-hunting for Toronto’s Refugees

This is what way, way out-of-the-box brainstorming looks like.

I spent half an hour walking up and down a busy, sun-splashed Toronto street lined with quaint shops and restaurants looking for ideas.  Ideas to solve the City of Toronto’s problems in dealing with a big influx of refugees.  I had a pad of sticky notes and a pen and, per instructions, I wrote one or two words on the back of each note capturing sights that caught my eye.

I passed a bakery with especially tantalizing pastries in the window, so I wrote “goodies” on one note.  I passed a colorful mural painted on the side of a building so I wrote “mural” on another note.  I saw a fire hydrant, so I jotted that down.  Same with the quirky name of one of the bars I passed and a bicycle locked to a parking meter.  I wrote “parking meter.”

Twenty of us did the same thing. Why?  Because we needed to start with a new perspective figuring out how to deal with the very difficult issues of the refugee crisis. We needed to switch off our brain’s normal, default A+B=C approach to problem-solving and push past cultural norms which dictate A+B=C is the right way to solve problems. We needed fresh ideas to do so.  To be truly productive.

Ideas to Work From

When the half-hour was up, we returned to our workspace and posted our stickies on the wall.  More than 100 in all. Because we had written our observation on the back of each note, we couldn’t see the words.  Which was the point.  Each team chose two notes.  My team chose one that had “grapefruit” written on the back and another that had “hoody.”  In our teams, we brainstormed solutions keying off those words. One idea led to another and to another.  But we held off choosing just one. 

Instead, we moved on to additional brainstorming exercises.  To enlarge the idea pool.  One, called reverse brainstorming, was to think of ways to achieve the opposite of what we really wanted to happen.  Another was to imagine a sugar-daddy coming to town to embrace whatever we suggested. 

My Eureka Moment

My biggest insight from that day:  Confirmation that the normal, business-as-usual approach to brainstorming isn’t cutting it.  I had seen that when leaders in meetings call on one person and then another for an idea to solve a problem, it doesn’t go as well as it might.  People hold back.  The ideas offered are duds.  Everyone leaves disappointed.

The reason:  Fear.  Fear of looking stupid.  Fear of embarrassing others.  Fear of being unfairly judged. All normal feelings in snap-action, limited brainstorming sessions.  I’ve seen fear as a participant in meeting after meeting and as a facilitator in meetings I’ve led. The science is clear that unless you can overcome your fear, it will stifle your flow of creative ideas.  You must get past fear to switch off business-as-usual to solve ambiguous problems.

The good news is it’s actually pretty easy to overcome fears around brainstorming, to turn boring and stiff meetings into innovative and fun exercises, to set aside business-as-usual, problem-solving methods which really don’t work very well.  Brainstorming blitzes, involving a diverse group of participants sometimes lasting a couple of days have led to amazing outcomes.  Groups have developed successful new products and started amazing social ventures that have returned money to investors while, for example, putting a stop to human trafficking in parts of the world.  It’s the good news that leads me to work with groups to create opportunities for insight which, in turn, lead them to do their best work.

Boosting Brainstorming from Good to Great

The fundamentals of good brainstorming with groups remain the same:  The quantity of ideas is what matters most. Offer both the obvious and the strange.  Build on others’ ideas.  Withhold criticism and judgment.  Boosting brainstorming from good to great means doing more:

• Be certain participants understand the topic they’ll be brainstorming about ahead of brainstorming sessions.  To know something ahead of time is to be less hesitant when working with others.
• Also, ahead of sessions, ask participants to brainstorm ideas alone and write their ideas down.  When individuals work alone and then pool their ideas, they are more creative and productive than if they come into a meeting cold.  One reason:  Highly productive people tend to see their contributions as expendable and so decrease their performance, believing someone else will pick up the slack.
• Make the brainstorming valuable for every participant.  Use it to solve significant complex problems.
• In long brainstorming sessions, take frequent breaks – 15 minutes or more.  During breaks, the brain is still processing ideas which can lead to additional ideas.
• Or hold several short brainstorming sessions over a period of weeks.
• Use sticky notes so everyone can write down their ideas all at once. Post them for all to see at the same time.  Doing so will keep people from losing good ideas because they’re waiting for others to go first.  Sticky notes are the ultimate leveling tool.
• Ask a facilitator – reach out to me for more specifics – to run the brainstorming session.  So goals are set, rules are followed and people stay on task and on time. 

Who Benefits from Great Brainstorming

Great ideas are critical to moving people and projects forward, to realize innovation, in every organization. They matter to the innovators and the disrupters who crave space to explore new possibilities, writes John Beilenberg and his colleagues in their book Think Wrong.  They matter to organization caretakers who protect an organization’s innovators.  To the guides who help the innovators and caretakers navigate uncharted paths and point out the most rewarding course.  To those in organizations who enforce the rules and make sure everything runs on plan.  They need to know where in an organization it’s permissible for the innovators to do their thing and where others must stick to ordinary thinking.  And they matter to most everyone else in an organization because it clarifies their efforts to keep things running well and even support the innovators.

Thinking back to Toronto, — the event was organized by the Design Thinkers Group, based in Amsterdam, and led by the group’s U.S. leader Marc Bolick — “goodies” played a role in the solution to the refugee crisis we came up with. Refugees need to eat. And they need a place to sleep. The social workers at various agencies had no place to send them. One told us how he let a family move into his basement for several months until they found their footing. He felt he could not turn them out on the street with no place to go.

“Goodies” led to technology.  Tech was at the core of our solution as it’s likely to be with every solution to a problem going forward. We decided to recommend an app which essentially created a marketplace where people who had an empty bedroom or other living space could register the availability of that space on the app.  And where social workers who needed to find a place for refugees could go to see what empty spaces were available.  Spaces, including kitchens where refugee families could cook their own “goodies.”

Have a question? 

Submit it to bbancroft@conbrioconsulting.com.

Beginning with the next blog post, I’ll be answering a few fascinating questions from readers about insight and how it reveals strategic solutions leading to creating conditions for people to do their best work.  If you’re comfortable, include your first name and city. Anonymous submissions are fine, too. I’ll pick a question or two to answer each month. All topics are fair game, but if you’re looking for plumbing fixture recommendations, I can’t promise I’ll be all that helpful.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Bring our mini Design Thinking Workshop, including its brainstorming element, to your organization. Let’s talk: bbancroft@conbrioconsulting.com or call  214.941.8199.

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City of Mesquite: Development Review Process
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