4 Lessons from a Uni brainstorming 🧠 class.
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4 Lessons from a Uni brainstorming 🧠 class.
I had an amazing brainstorming workshop with students on Monday and it got me to four key conclusions. Careful, you might even learn a thing or two…
I had an amazing brainstorming workshop with students on Monday and it got me to four key conclusions. Careful, you might even learn a thing or two…
TL;DR:
Brainstorming sounds easy, but it's not an obvious tool for most people.
The issue with brainstorming is figuring out how to process information.
Teams usually have no method to make brainstorming an efficient thing.
It's not just school. Businesses struggle the exact same way. Make sure to sign up 👇 for more leadership and performance-building tips!
I had an amazing experience with my university students this week, and it made me realize a few things about brainstorming (and about people's ability to leverage brainstorming, actually).
Monday night is teaching night (Fintech & Reg-tech, in case you forgot) and last Monday was a bit special.
We had three topics to cover in about three hours (instead of nine) so I wondered how to make the most of our time whilst teaching our students something useful.
Really, really useful, I mean.
A bit of background
To give you a tiny bit of background, my fellow co-lecturer Ron (Hi Ron!) and I have built the whole class as a double curriculum.
On the one hand, Fintech and Regtech. And we invite a bunch of really smart guys to do the talking, by the way.
On the other hand, public speaking and persuasive communication.
Said differently? We use a finance & tech topic as an excuse to teach masters students how to take on a project, research it, shape it, and pitch it to their boss in a way that makes sense.
Why?
Because while discussion material can be found online and in books, the mental process used to turn information into a convincing argument cannot.
So, over the past weeks, we've taught our class not just how to listen (instead of sleeping, that is) but also to catch and use information.
Using color codes and a ten-meter whiteboard, we've shown them how to filter the relevant elements, how to isolate the details from the concepts, and how to draw insights from those concepts.
All this using simple markers.
This Monday, we then added post-its to the exercise.
My teammate Sam from Impactified joined us (Hey Sam!) So we could make three groups (one for each topic).
And the students took the discussion into their own hands to build their own collective intelligence on three complex topics - consuming around two hundred and fifty post-its along the way.
The whole process got me to four conclusions, which are all applicable to whatever you do business-wise.
1 - Brainstorming doesn't come up as an obvious and actionable tool.
First conclusion: people say they have brainstorming sessions all the time, but they don't and in most cases, brainstorming is not leveraged as an actionable tool.
The reality is, chit-chatting at the coffee machine and picking someone's distracted brain for ten minutes over the phone is not brainstorming.
Booking a moment with someone to have a fully focused discussion over a determined topic, with a reliable information-processing method, and a way to come up with actionable conclusions is brainstorming.
I made a test.
To warm up the class, I asked the students how they would work on coming up with a convincing pitch for their boss if they were asked to prepare a memo on a potential investment.
Thirty students produced about a hundred post-its (one post-it, one idea) and guess how many thought about naming brainstorming as a way to work?
One.
One!
Researching? A dozen.
Analyzing? Two dozens.
Prototyping and testing? Tons.
Timelining? A reasonable handful.
Brainstorming? One. On a hundred-ish!
I know, right?
You know what, though? Actually, make sure to read conclusion #4, I'll get back to that.
2 - The key issue with brainstorming is processing information
Second conclusion: the key issue is to process the information.
We made another test as part of our learning process.
Every single week, we’ve asked some students to take the markers and do the note-taking work on the ten-meter whiteboard. Their teammates would speak up and explain their research, and two volunteers would turn the explanations into a mind map on the whiteboard.
The goal was simple: give everyone a clear, visual, mind map-based, and actionable summary of a 30 min discussion.
And the rule was simple too:
Basic info in black.
Concepts in orange.
Insights/takeaways in purple.
Guess what?
The first reflex is always the same: write everything down. Everything. In black.
No filtering. No decision to eliminate the noise. No selection between what's worth writing and what's not.
And everything is in black.
The important concepts are not isolated naturally - let alone the takeaways that should be remembered.
That was the point of the class though. Teach them how to filter, eliminate, select, categorize and isolate what needs to be remembered and acted upon.
But, the exercise is not a natural one, and the experience suggests that most people would be lost if you asked them to try.
3 - Teams have no method to make brainstorming an efficient thing.
Third conclusion: teams have no structured method to turn brainstorming into something efficient that creates actionable collective intelligence.
My students were lost because nobody at school ever taught them how to process information as a group.
And it's not just my students.
I participated to a similar workshop two years ago with four hundred students (400!). They were lost the exact same way.
I’m sure you’re not surprised, though.
Hey, by the way… Did you know that your online visio-conference software has an integrated brainstorming tool that uses post-its to facilitate discussion?
Zoom has one.
Meet has one.
Teams has one.
Have you used it? Probably not.
Would you know how to use it if you knew the thing was there?
Probably not, because that kind of training is not standard for business either.
That gives me a fun job as a Aha! Moment workshop facilitator, I'm not complaining!
Still, most people have no clue as to how to use brainstorming constructively.
4 - It's not just school. Businesses have the same limits.
Fourth conclusion: school, business, same struggle. People need a push.
Let me give you two examples.
A banker friend of mine calls me and asks how to organize a brainstorming session on his company values.
Expected attendance: 10 to 15 people.
Allocated time: 45 minutes, at lunch break.
Him:
Me:
Appropriate brainstorming for that type of work takes between one and three days, with a structuring thinking process, and a real opportunity to give everyone a voice.
Lunch chit-chatting is not brainstorming.
Other example?
A promising manager drops me an email. “Antoine, please help. I need to build a strategy and I have no clue where to start. I need two hours!”.
Method? Post-its and structured thinking.
Fifteen minutes in?
Two hours later?
Outcome of the session:
At first, the whiteboard is full of random ideas. Tons of to-dos, but no logical frame.
After thinking with method: Goals are set. Priorities are set. The action plan will come next.
What made the difference? Having a methodical approach. And making sure that brainstorming was a real thing leading to a real outcome in a given amount of time.
Conclusion?
I wrote a while ago that teaching students how to structure their thoughts to reach an outcome is pretty much the same as facilitating a $10.000 workshop.
I'm still a strong believer in that.
There's immense value-creating power in brainstorming, because that’s the best way to build collective intelligence. But… it has to be done right, and with intention.
A lot of intention.
Take it like a fun game, because that's what it should be in the end. A fun game between willing participants. It's up to you!
Well, my two cents anyway!
Any thought? Feel free to hit “reply” and let's get the discussion going.
Until then,
A.