"Team work" not what's cracked up to be?

On Friday, June 23, 2006 at 21:29,
Ziya Oz <listeraearthlink.net> wrote:

> Christopher Fahey:
...
> > A good brainstorming session needs to be run by a
leader whose job it is to
> > encourage as many ideas as possible as quickly as
possible, to record them in
> > detail, and to silence all judgements until the
session is over.
> 
> If that works for you, great. But if you are suggesting
it as "best
> practice," no way. 
> 
> Brainstorming in no way should be considered a
quantitative and aggregating
> process. It shouldn't be literal or linear. In fact,
I'd argue that the real
> value of brainstorming is the very promise of
connecting nodes of thinking
> and POVs of individuals of a sufficiently
differentiated group, and thereby
> enhancing the individual value of contributions towards
a greater sum. There
> isn't a whole lot of point to brainstorming with
homogenous groups, which is
> indeed what (corporate) teamwork often (but not always)
ends up becoming.
> 
> So to the extent that brainstorming conforms and
coagulates towards the
> perceived expectations of likeminded people it
intersects with the adverse
> affects of teamwork. It becomes more normative than
illuminating, to say
> nothing of its drain in productivity.

If your "brainstorming" converges to a vanilla
"solution", that's not brainstorming. Even with
a 
homogenous group, you should end up with a whole bunch of
wildly divergent mostly impractical 
ideas which shed new light on the problem and its
environment. 

If people are shy or invested, change the value system from
"most practical" to "most
ridiculous" 
to get everyone imagining. Give candies or halloween kisses
for each idea which is wilder than 
the one before.

Introduce randomness with randow words from a thesaurus or
dictionary, eg, "How does 
"aardvark" relate to "handling customer
complaints" when you get stuck.

tOM

-- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur --
   ,__ 	tOM Trottier
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and more, 
~~~~~~~~~~~~	to whosoever will think of it. --Thomas
Carlyle



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tOM Trottier:

> If your "brainstorming" converges to a
vanilla "solution", that's not
> brainstorming. 

So you are saying that there's no unsuccessful
brainstorming?

> Even with a homogenous group, you should end up with a
whole bunch of wildly
> divergent mostly impractical ideas which shed new light
on the problem and its
> environment. 

Homogenous groups, almost by definition, don't tend to
generate wildly
divergent ideas. And I'm not sure why one would try to
extract "mostly
impractical" ideas from such a group either.
 
> If people are shy or invested, change the value system
from "most practical"
> to "most ridiculous" to get everyone
imagining.

If brainstorming is not a therapy session, encouraging
participants to
generate "most ridiculous" ideas serves what
purpose?

> Give candies or halloween kisses for each idea which is
wilder than the one
> before.

Other than raising triglycerides, what would this do?

> Introduce randomness with randow words from a thesaurus
or dictionary, eg,
> "How does "aardvark" relate to
"handling customer complaints" when you get
> stuck.

Brainstorming is a means to an end: solution of a problem.
While enhancing
interaction, communication, participation, etc within a
group is worthwhile,
in the end, the point is to find relevant, effective,
imaginative and,
hopefully, competitively advantageous solutions. Otherwise
it's very easy to
get sidetracked.

Brainstorming is akin to what an actor does with his voice
and body
exercises, getting into character before the curtain goes
up. But we care
about what he delivers on the stage, not what goes on behind
the curtain.

Groupthink is NOT the result of not having enough
impractical, ridiculous or
wild ideas but, despite all that, it's gravitating towards
solutions that
are perceived to be comfortable, conventional, risk-averse,
etc. It's that
gravitational force and the desire to be part of the team
that impedes
out-of-the box thinking.

----
Ziya

Usability >  Simplify the Solution
Design >  Simplify the Problem



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