Inviting the Right People to a Brainstorm

One way to instantly improve the quality of your creativity is to invite the right people to the brainstorm.

A brainstorm should not be a cattle call (“let’s invite everybody!”), nor should it be random (“invite whoever is here today”).

You want specific people or people with specific skills.

Here are the Right People for Every Brainstorm

Invite people who are …

1. Prolific idea people.

You want individuals who can let fly a dizzying volume of ideas.

No, every idea they utter won’t be perfect, that’s not the point. Whether they/you know it or not, the prolific idea person is following in that you want as many ideas as possible because 90% of the ideas generated will be poor, but 10% will be terrific. In other words, if you only have 10 ideas, you mathematically only have one good idea. Get people who will help you generate volume so the percentage of good ideas increases exponentially.

2. People who fit the target profile.

You want people who are the target audience, or they immediately understand, appreciate or communicate how the ideas may be perceived, positioned or implemented to attract key audiences.

3. People with the right knowledge, background or experience.

Look for people who have similar or relevant …

• Knowledge – in the industry, about the problem, or within a specific situation
• Background – such as education or professional development, career history or successes, a large network where they might find other people to provide advice, suggestions or alternatives. Some of these people may be in a different department than you, who have access to information you may not.
• Practical experience, in that they might be able to transfer insights from one situation to a second, dissimilar situation.

For example, in a brainstorm for a petrol company wanting to launch a new gasoline with unique additives making the engine operate more efficiently, we brought in people who recently worked on a health supplement launch where the product had unique additives which made the human body operate better.

4. People with knowledge of either/both the purpose or key problem.

You want people who have a real, applicable knowledge or information about the topic or the problem.

For example, at a brainstorm to boost tourism for a foreign country, we invited people who frequently travelled internationally, heavy users of tourism magazines, and experts in event management.

5. People with key skills or attitudes, such as …

• Collaborative.  They work well with others.
• High emotional intelligence. They don’t attach their ego to ideas. In fact, they hope by sharing the idea with other like-minded people, someone else will improve it.
• Empathic.  Their feedback is both specific (this is what’s wrong) and constructive (this is an alternative to help improve the idea).
• Positive.  They’re fearless. They don’t see problems, they see opportunities.
• Curious.  They not just insatiable about learning, they also love to find ways to put what they’ve learnt into action.

How Many to Invite?

The number of people depends upon the type of brainstorm. Informal or casual brainstorms need minimal people, probably 2-3 is fine.

More formal brainstorms – where you’re probably looking to nail the best idea(s) in a finite amount of time – need more people to ensure success, somewhere between 4 to 8 people. I’ve had ones with lots of people, but anything over 10 to me becomes more of a hostage situation and less a brainstorm.

Here’s Who You Should NOT Invite

The decision maker or brainstorm host … but only if they can’t behave themselves.

For every great decision maker or client who were sensational helping to create and deliver great ideas, I’ve had the opposite: a person  who should never have attended their own brainstorms. For (somewhat) understandable reasons, they brought a high level of negativity to the brainstorm, such as …

1. They’ve lived too closely to the subject for too long.
2. Their opinion is always unfailingly correct to them.
3. They’ve been worn down by management, by their clients/partners/bosses, or by themselves.
4. They’re already come up with their own ideas, and they get frustrated by everyone else’s inability to see the merit of their ideas.

Here’s some options to address this problem.

• Make sure you have 100% clarity on what criteria they will use top select the best ideas. If you don’t get criteria, you’ll fall into a bad case of creative churn.
• Enforce good brainstorms rules and etiquette.
• Meet with them in advance to determine how to advance and/or manage the brainstorm. I want to know all of their ideas, concerns, issues, frustrations, complaints, background and history … and in turn, I use these to guide the brainstorm without them in the meeting.
• Ask them to come after the brainstorm, when the walls are lined with ideas. Sometimes it’s easier and faster to ask them to focus on culling the best ideas from the worst.
• One client – arguably the worst I ever had – told me once “To hell with you, I’ll join my own brainstorm, thank you very much.” That’s fine. I held my own brainstorm beforehand to ensure we’d have fresh ideas regardless of her.
• Some people ask one of their staff members to join instead. That’s great – but everyone follows the same rules.

How have you decided who are the right people to attend a brainstorm?  Please leave your thoughts and comments below.