We have all participated in brainstorming sessions, but in a group brainstorming session, for various reasons only a few key players express their ideas and the rest of the room simply follows suit and expounds and rehashes the same ideas until it is spread very thin. The final consensus is reached without considering ideas that never materialised because the whole team never had the opportunity to speak up.
Some team members may simply be shy, or afraid. Some may fear that their ideas are too bold while conservatives may only stick to safe alternatives. Stronger personality types may push their own agendas.
These drawbacks are addressed by the brainwriting technique, an idea generation process that ensures participation from every team member. This approach generates far more ideas than brainstorming.
How does it address the issue?
Traditional brainstorming allows one person to speak at a time. Hypothetically speaking, by the time your chance to speak comes at the end of the table, you have already edited, rejected or forgotten your original idea. This reduces spontaneity, creativity, and productivity of brainstorming sessions. Brainwriting effectively eliminates this problem by giving everyone an equal opportunity in a non-threatening scenario.
Why use it?
Brainwriting is simple and doesn’t require any preparation It allows equal participation from all without inhibition It reduces the likelihood of conflict as people focus on the problem at hand and the solutionsHow does it work?
1. There is no need for facilitation during the process, but a facilitator should prepare papers or cards with the brainwriting template for each participant. Refer to the figure for how this template should look.
2. Six to eight participants should sit in a circle facing inward.
3. Each participant at this point needs to think of an actual problem to be addressed, and write it down on the top of the page.
4. Each participant hands their sheet of paper to the person sitting on their left for them to write a suggestion or answer to the problem proposed.
5. Once all the participants are done writing an answer or suggestion on the paper, they hand it to the person sitting on their left again.
6. This person may choose to do one of the following or both – write an entirely new suggestion below the original suggestion, or improve on the first one. Once done, participants must pass the paper to their left again.
7. The session continues like this till each participant has seen each paper and answered problems posed on every one of them.
8. In a debriefing period at the end of the process, participants may choose to discuss and select the best solutions for each of the original problems posed.
