Didn't realize it's been almost eight months since I wrote my last blog. I always keep telling people that you always have time to do things you want to. It's all about priorities. So I will not make any excuses here.
I don't remember how many creative brainstorming sessions I have been in last six months.More than I can count I guess.Some yielded brilliant ideas/solutions and some were absolute bizarre.I was discussing the proceedings of one such session with a colleague. He suddenly interrupted me in the middle and asked me what did I graduate in. I said mechanical engineering. His immediate response was how can engineers suddenly get the skill to handle creative brainstorming and have a point of view on creativity. The MBA degree definitely doesn't teach that. VERY TRUE !! In fact I was very uncomfortable initially to get into such creative brainstorming sessions as, like many engineers, I am a strong left brained person.My strength lies in numbers,analysis and problem solving. I love dealing with numbers because there is always a logic and definitive process leading you towards a solution.A creative brainstorming is very different, very unpredictable and can be chaotic.
But over last several months, I have been involved in cracking creative ideas for many brands across variety of industries including Telco, Tech, CPG, Auto, Finance, Travel , e-Commerce having never worked in any of them. So far I think I have done a decent job of handling these situations. Come to think of it,engineers actually are creative people.They can think designs, build logic and can prove/disprove hypothesis that solves the problem at hand. The only difference in a creative space is you are handling flow of thoughts instead of flow of logic. The rules of the game don't change much. At the end of the day it's all commonsense and everything in the world has a particular order or pattern. There is nothing truly random and as long as that holds true you always have the ability to influence the outcome.
Let me try to dissect a group creative ideation session for you. You will generally find four types of people in the group -(1)people who are not creative, (2) people who are genuinely creative, (3) people who think they are creative, (4) people who think only they are creative. The first two types are easy to handle and the more of such type people you have in the group the better are the chances of ending up with a good idea.The later two types are the ones you should be watchful of . Nonetheless, there is a little control you have on what type of people are in your group, but after being a part of so many of them I guess I can handle these different personalities little better.The trick of the trade is to stay little detached from the core ideation and ask right set of questions to the group in a right way at the right time. It's very difficult to avoid the "creator bias", hence at times it's better to avoid being a creator.
The first ten minutes of the brainstorming process is very critical. When a problem is thrown at us, our brain immediately start processing information in a way that may be not even deliberate. You have to somehow structurally capture them and you would be pleasantly surprised to see some interesting non obvious solutions. More often or not the best ideas come within the first ten minutes of brainstorming.So the best way is to ask everyone to individually jot down the ideas on post it notes, as many as they can. Its very critical not to open up the discussion to the group at this time as you run the risk of type (3) & (4) people hijacking it and disrupting the thought process of every individual in the group.
After ten minutes you should ask everyone to just quickly run the group through their post it notes. Here is when you identify different kinds of people ( type 1 to 4) in your group and formulate your strategy to handle them through the session. Just observe carefully and people will tell you what type they belong to. The type-1 will state their ideas as a matter of fact, the type-2 will tell you their ideas in form of a story, the type-3 will only tell you a long story but less of ideas, the type-4 will tell you a long story and laundry list of ideas in different forms with many of them being more or less the same. If you still want confirm the type (3) & (4) then while they are talking just shoot a question and you will see them defending with great vigor. It's not necessarily bad to have type 3 or 4 in the group, it's just that they have to be handled with care for a better collective output.
I don't remember how many creative brainstorming sessions I have been in last six months.More than I can count I guess.Some yielded brilliant ideas/solutions and some were absolute bizarre.I was discussing the proceedings of one such session with a colleague. He suddenly interrupted me in the middle and asked me what did I graduate in. I said mechanical engineering. His immediate response was how can engineers suddenly get the skill to handle creative brainstorming and have a point of view on creativity. The MBA degree definitely doesn't teach that. VERY TRUE !! In fact I was very uncomfortable initially to get into such creative brainstorming sessions as, like many engineers, I am a strong left brained person.My strength lies in numbers,analysis and problem solving. I love dealing with numbers because there is always a logic and definitive process leading you towards a solution.A creative brainstorming is very different, very unpredictable and can be chaotic.
But over last several months, I have been involved in cracking creative ideas for many brands across variety of industries including Telco, Tech, CPG, Auto, Finance, Travel , e-Commerce having never worked in any of them. So far I think I have done a decent job of handling these situations. Come to think of it,engineers actually are creative people.They can think designs, build logic and can prove/disprove hypothesis that solves the problem at hand. The only difference in a creative space is you are handling flow of thoughts instead of flow of logic. The rules of the game don't change much. At the end of the day it's all commonsense and everything in the world has a particular order or pattern. There is nothing truly random and as long as that holds true you always have the ability to influence the outcome.
Let me try to dissect a group creative ideation session for you. You will generally find four types of people in the group -(1)people who are not creative, (2) people who are genuinely creative, (3) people who think they are creative, (4) people who think only they are creative. The first two types are easy to handle and the more of such type people you have in the group the better are the chances of ending up with a good idea.The later two types are the ones you should be watchful of . Nonetheless, there is a little control you have on what type of people are in your group, but after being a part of so many of them I guess I can handle these different personalities little better.The trick of the trade is to stay little detached from the core ideation and ask right set of questions to the group in a right way at the right time. It's very difficult to avoid the "creator bias", hence at times it's better to avoid being a creator.
The first ten minutes of the brainstorming process is very critical. When a problem is thrown at us, our brain immediately start processing information in a way that may be not even deliberate. You have to somehow structurally capture them and you would be pleasantly surprised to see some interesting non obvious solutions. More often or not the best ideas come within the first ten minutes of brainstorming.So the best way is to ask everyone to individually jot down the ideas on post it notes, as many as they can. Its very critical not to open up the discussion to the group at this time as you run the risk of type (3) & (4) people hijacking it and disrupting the thought process of every individual in the group.
After ten minutes you should ask everyone to just quickly run the group through their post it notes. Here is when you identify different kinds of people ( type 1 to 4) in your group and formulate your strategy to handle them through the session. Just observe carefully and people will tell you what type they belong to. The type-1 will state their ideas as a matter of fact, the type-2 will tell you their ideas in form of a story, the type-3 will only tell you a long story but less of ideas, the type-4 will tell you a long story and laundry list of ideas in different forms with many of them being more or less the same. If you still want confirm the type (3) & (4) then while they are talking just shoot a question and you will see them defending with great vigor. It's not necessarily bad to have type 3 or 4 in the group, it's just that they have to be handled with care for a better collective output.
