Brainstorm your way to breakthroughs at work

Whether you work in government, on-site or behind a desk in corporate, chances are you've run into roadblocks on the job. So how do you get through them? Professionals have long used a variety of inventive brainstorming techniques to generate new ideas and problem-solve in the workplace.

There are dozens of brainstorming approaches to choose from – and countless variations on these approaches. All aim to get your creative juices flowing and help you break through those pesky occupational stumbling blocks. Here, we look at some of our favourite tried-and-tested brainstorming strategies and alternatives.

Turn to traditional brainstorming

Sometimes you just can’t go past good old-fashioned brainstorming. This method brings together a bunch of your colleagues in one place – either from one team or across a number of company departments – to kindle creative thinking, fire up new ideas and spark solutions to problems. (Tip: Fuel the creative fire by supplying snacks and coffee.)

Generally, participating brainstormers call out ideas as they think of them. No idea is too ridiculous, too expensive or wrong; they’re just ideas at this point.

Participants can build on or modify others’ ideas. The intention is to generate as many ideas as possible. From these, you’ll later be able to categorise and whittle them down to the best, and come up with potential ways forward.

Cast the net wider with brain-netting

Also known as online or electronic brainstorming, brain-netting takes traditional brainstorming and adds technology, harnessing the internet to cultivate and share ideas. It’s a great alternative when you have a geographically widespread team and a quick catch-up in the conference room isn’t an option.

Getting started can be as simple as finding a shared, cloud-based repository or choosing an online tool (such as GroupMap or Stormboard) through which team members can write and post ideas. Each brain-netting exercise should have:

• A clear objective.
• A reasonable time frame.
• A designated leader to spearhead the session, encourage communication and collaboration, and keep ideation and problem-solving on course.

Bonus? You’ll not only develop ideas and find solutions, but also help unify your far-flung team members.

Let mind mapping help you make up your minds

For a more visual approach, mind mapping is a graphical brainstorming technique that you can work with either online or offline. It involves creating a diagram, or 'mind map', to connect and organise ideas, knowledge and information. The aim of this exercise is to direct efforts towards a specific situation or problem.

We suggest delegating one person to do the writing/drawing. On your whiteboard, blackboard or big piece of paper, or using your online software, start by writing or drawing your central idea or problem in the middle of your mind map.

From there, staff can share ideas, words, images, suggestions – whatever free associations they come up with. Add those contributions to the mind map, using connecting lines to show new ideas branching off from the central concept, or from the relevant offshoots.

When you’ve finished, you’ll have a comprehensive collection of ideas and relationships from which to motivate actions or formulate solutions.

Bring everyone onboard with brainwriting

Whereas brainstorming is a group idea-generation exercise that encourages staff members to share ideas verbally, brainwriting, though still a group activity, has an individual, nonverbal component.

The reasoning behind this is that though a good brainstorming environment should foster involvement from everyone on the team, in reality this is not often the case. More often, the more extroverted and vocal on the staff contribute the bulk of the ideas. Brainwriting, on the other hand, levels the playing field. It allows everyone – even the shy or quiet types – to participate equally.

To hold a brainwriting workshop, start by posing a question or presenting a problem to your group of brainwriters.

Instead of asking participants to shout out their ideas, give them a set amount of time (usually a few minutes) to write down their ideas on paper. When time’s up, each team member passes their sheet to someone else, who reads the ideas (to themselves), then modifies or builds on them, or adds their own ideas to the mix. The process repeats every few minutes for a specified time frame (15 minutes should yield plenty of results). At the end, you collect the sheets and collate the ideas for further discussion.

The next time you come up against a brick wall at work, one of these brainstorming strategies may be just the bulldozer you need to have a breakthrough.