I hate it when that happens.
In the final hour of a cross-country flight last week, I shut down my laptop as the battery flickered out and opened a New Yorker from a couple of weeks back. “Enough work,” I thought.
But rather than the relaxation and diversion I expected, I was confronted by a myth-busting article about “brainstorming” that made me realize I had been doing something stupid for years.
Although I am a big believer in debate and dissent, and lead many meetings that encourage this style of interaction, I had bought wholesale into the idea that, when trying to generate ideas, a non-judgmental-suspend-evaluation approach is most effective. So, when running certain kinds of meetings – such as those focused on generating ideas for new members of our Advisory Board or ideas for our conference program – I will say, “let’s just throw ideas on the whiteboard. No judgments for now!”
Ooops.
In a much-discussed New Yorker article entitled Groupthink, Jonah Lehrer writes,
“At the design firm IDEO, famous for developing the first Apple mouse, brainstorming is ‘practically a religion,’ according to the company’s general manager. Employees are instructed to ‘defer judgment’ and ‘go for quantity.’
The underlying assumption of brainstorming is that if people are scared of saying the wrong thing, they’ll end up saying nothing at all. The appeal of this idea is obvious: it’s always nice to be saturated in positive feedback. Typically, participants leave a brainstorming session proud of their contribution. The whiteboard has been filled with free associations. Brainstorming seems like an ideal technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. But there is a problem with brainstorming. It doesn’t work.”
I took some consolation in the fact that the folks at IDEO, who have always struck me as pretty smart, have also bought into the brainstorming myth. Still, it’s sobering to recognize that a technique that so many assume to be effective, and that I thought was effective, isn’t.
In his fascinating article, Lehrer describes the importance of dissent in spurring creativity. Turns out, groups given the instruction to debate and even criticize each other’s ideas generate more ideas – both during the meeting and after – than those given the standard brainstorming “no criticism” rules. (Especially depressing is the fact that much of the research Lehrer cites was conducted years ago. And yet many of us marched on merrily with our brainstorming meetings.)
Lehrer then addresses the question of what kinds of groups most easily interact together in a mode that produces maximum creativity. He describes a study of Broadway productions that concluded that the most effective teams working on Broadway were neither assemblies of strangers nor bands of longtime colleagues and old friends, but rather those with an “intermediate level of social intimacy.”
Finally, Lehrer turns to the question of how to arrange work spaces to maximize productive creativity, discussing MIT’s Building 20, which became a “legend of innovation” because of the interaction among a diverse set of researchers that its layout spurred (interestingly, this was a product of happenstance, not design).
Lehrer’s piece supports the idea that dissent and debate are essential to effectiveness, even if they make people uncomfortable. And it suggests some helpful ways to spark productive debate and dissent (including going for the right level of familiarity among the group and the right proximity and space).
But the article doesn’t really deal with the important issue of power dynamics: the fact that some are going to be less comfortable speaking up by virtue of their tenure or position in the organizational hierarchy. (I have blogged about my struggles with this issue at CEP.) Put another way, it’s easy for leaders of an organization, or old-timers, to say “bring on the dissent;” harder for those who perhaps feel less secure to oblige.
I think fostering creative dissent and debate requires leaders to work hard to create the right environment.
But my judgment is that the “no judgment” brainstorming model so many of us have used should be put to rest.
Phil Buchanan is President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy.
Phil:
Stick to reading the SkyMall catalog when you are tired on the plane.
I’m with you that the field of philanthropy is suffocatingly polite.
But dissent is like The Force. It has a dark and light side.
If the goal of the brainstorming is to spur creativity in a group that has strong relationships and trust, then perhaps your “no dissent” rule of thumb is worth testing.
But brainstorming in problem solving and strategy development has many purposes:
–Serving as an icebreaker
–Building trust among members
–Identifying common themes for further dissent rich discussion
–Coming to rapid consensus on core topics
–Preparing for sorting, mapping, tagging, etc.
All of the data on collective decision making suggest that bad meetings happen to good people for two reasons: 1) We are bad at group process and avoid conflict or, 2) We have so much group baggage that it drags us down into a familiar dark hole near Mordor.
If the gloves come off too soon all is lost.
Or as Yoda said of philanthropy, “The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.”
I work in the volatile world of family and private foundations. I use brainstorming as scaffolding to create a healthy space for deliberation. It is never used independently.
The creative deliberation that we are all hungry for is always the middle phase of planning and never the beginning or end.
Scott Berkun does a much better job of defending brainstorming than I do: http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2012/in-defense-of-brainstorming-2/
Thanks for flagging this article and appreciated you take on it, Phil. I hadn’t seen it despite my New Yorker subscription…a few too many weeks behind in my reading!
If you haven’t seen it already, there’s a nice bookend to this piece in the NYTimes called “The Rise of the New Groupthink” http://nyti.ms/zEXLRv by Susan Cain. The piece is focused mainly on the benefits of having time to think alone, instead of in groups. But the second half has four or five paragraphs on why brainstorming fails. A big one is that some people just don’t think well when others are talking. Another is that, in groups people tend to sit back and let others do the work.
I’ve usually found it helpful to think about a topic and get a few ideas flowing on my own before going into a group setting to discuss…almost like a warm up before exercising. There’s an interesting finding in the NYT piece that some of the most successful brainstorming sessions are virtual…where groups think together but separately. Good stuff – thanks again for posting.
josh
Thank you for highlighting a topic from a thinker outside of philanthropy with ideas that may help foundations become better learning organizations. GEO is excited to have Jonah speak at our conference next month to explore a variety of ideas that might help to improve philanthropy. Another important point that Jonah will discuss in his talk is about risk-taking; how taking a risk in funding innovation may lead you to strike out at times but it can also help you to hit it out of the ballpark too. I’m excited to hear him share examples from other areas and explore how we can apply some of his thinking towards building more effective organizations.
I think the point you make about power dynamics within organizations could also be applied to the grantmaker-grantee relationship. There is certainly a power imbalance that foundation leaders need to address by embracing empathy to build better connections with grantees and soliciting input from grantees and recipients in the communities they serve. Foundations are more effective when they keep their ear to the ground and use what they learn to craft solutions that address the most urgent needs of grantees and communities. To do this well, grantmakers and grantees will both need to exit their comfort zones in order to have open and candid conversations about a grantee’s true needs and how to strengthen future grantmaking.
Thanks for the comments. Prentice — Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments. Still, even after reading the spirited defense of brainstorming you provided a link for, which I am glad to have read, I remain unconvinced that it is as good an approach as it is made out to be. Or that there is any real evidence to suggest that it is. Josh — thanks for the referral to the excellent Susan Cain piece, which I re-read. Danielle — thanks for your comment. I look forward to hearing Jonah at your conference. I agree with your point about funders and grantees. I think the best way to create a candid discussion between funders and grantees is for the funder to obtain candid, confidential, comparative feedback from nonprofits through a process like CEP’s Grantee Perception Report (GPR). [I am sorry, but I really do think so and you gave me a softball.] Funders can then have a very different kind of conversation with grantees, rooted in the candid feedback they’ve received. I have seen it be transformational.
I’m a little late to this, but for what it’s worth… While I think it’s fine to second-guess the received wisdom that brainstorming is good, I also think you bring up a good point about group and power dynamics. My experience is that in some groups, brainstorming is really the only way to get new ideas on the table – because the group isn’t comfortable critiquing each others’ ideas. As a facilitator, I think it’s important to be able to take the group’s temperature so that you can determine the level of candor that’s possible. In some cases you need to spend more time building the group’s internal trust before you can start constructively critiquing ideas.
Since we are talking about philanthropy, if you’re doing this in a group that includes a funder things can get haywire fast due in large part to the uneven power dynamics. But the same holds true for groups where they haven’t embraced some verstion of Bob Suttton’s “No A$$hole Rule.” Lower level staff won’t volunteer untested ideas since they don’t want the grief. A brainstorm could be a bridge to further conversation in those cases.
Optimally, you want a group where there’s a level of trust an candor where ideas can be flung around and constructively critiqued. But there aren’t a lot of groups like that out there.