Page 83 - The John Adair Handbook of Management and Leadership

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• Free-wheel – anything goes, the wilder the better

• Quantity – the more ideas the merrier
• Combine and improve – link ideas, improve suggested ones.

In leading a brainstorming session
the four main steps are:
1 Introduce aim of session and remind people of
Osborn’s rules
2 Warm-up if necessary do a practice exercise (eg
20 uses for a hammer)
3 State the problem not too detailed

4 Guide time to think
generation of ideas
no judgement/criticism/evaluation!
clarify
maintain free-flow of ideas

In leading a session which is ‘sticky’ and short of ideas to start with,
ask ‘what if’ questions to stimulate thought.
Brainstorming sessions should always be followed up, perhaps in
smaller groups and ideas should then be evaluated by:
• deciding the selection criteria

• selecting obvious winning ideas
• eliminating the unworkable ideas

• sifting ideas into groupings and selecting the best in each
• applying the selection criteria to obvious winners and ‘best of’
the various groups
• testing the selections by ‘reverse brainstorming’ (ie in how
many ways can this idea fail?)
• informing the participants of further developments.

Chapter 4: Creativity and innovation 73