Brainstorm ideas

Over the years the term “brainstorming” has fallen out of favor.

An image of people throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick – meaning throwing out ideas to see if they have any merit – is likely to induce fond memories among old-timers who remember when brainstorming was all the rage.

But, done properly, brainstorming still works.

What is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming was the creation of Alex Osborn, a founder of my former agency, BBDO (formerly Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn). He posited that a group could generate more creative ideas for solving a problem than an individual. There’s been a lot of controversy over the years about his methodology, with research both for and against it.

The New York Times last Sunday carried a very long story entitled The Rise of the New Groupthink in which the writer, Susan Cain, debunks the current trend of people working in teams in open space – or possibly cubicles if they’re lucky – as they collaborate on projects.  She champions the introvert who needs quiet and privacy to be creative. I think she makes some valid points

When Brainstorming Works

Where Cain and I diverge, though, is when she writes, “Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity…people in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic other’s opinions and lose sight of their own; and often succumb to peer pressure.”

I beg to differ. I’ve participated in, and facilitated, numerous brainstorming sessions, which I prefer to call group problem solving sessions. They generated many original ideas that were successfully implemented.

The Facilitator’s Role

Think of the facilitator as a conductor, bringing the strings, brass and percussion together to produce beautiful music. Without the conductor, the outcome wouldn’t be half as enjoyable with musicians coming in a beat too late or too loud.

When brainstorming, the group has to first identify the real problem. They may have come prepared to work on what they thought the problem was only to discover it was something else.

Let me give you an example. A number of years ago I was invited to facilitate a session for an insurance company in New Jersey. They were losing a lot of sales to the competition. Their products and services were equal to or better than the competition, in their view. The sales team was working hard and making lots of calls. In advance of the session, the team’s leader had concluded that what they needed were more sales people.

The Real Problem

When I arrived, I started by facilitating a discussion about the problem. What did the individuals in the group think? What had they experienced in calling on prospects? Where were things breaking down?

After not too much discussion, the team discovered the real problem. The problem wasn’t that the company did not have enough sales people. The problem was it didn’t have enough trained sales people. The team was making calls but they lacked the training to be successful. It was like a light bulb going off. In changing the problem statement by one word “How do we get enough trained sales people?” we had an entirely different discussion and the ideas came tumbling out.

How to Brainstorm Successfully

Alex Osborn laid out a template for brainstorming that is still used today: focus on generating as many ideas as possible, withhold criticism, welcome unusual ideas, combine and improve ideas.

By also following these guidelines, you are more likely to generate ideas that are actionable:

• Invite a mixed group of staff. Individuals with varying job responsibilities add different perspectives. Invite an employee from outside the department who knows little to nothing about the problem. Some of the best ideas come from people who don’t have a clue that the great idea they contribute is something no one else would have ever thought of.
• Invite your client to participate. This terrifies some agencies – the client will think we don’t know what we’re doing! When I first suggested the idea I thought the managing director would have a heart attack. But the client loved being part of the process and we invited clients regularly after that when we were planning a campaign.
• Maintain control of the group. Cain is correct when she points out that a few members of the group may hog the conversation but it is the facilitator’s responsibility to ensure that everyone contributes. Even introverts have ideas to share.
• Assign responsibilities and deadlines. This is where groups can fail. What do you do with the ideas you generate? The group, the client or the head of the project decides on the ideas to be implemented based on criteria that is established after the session. Don’t give criteria in advance, such as the budget, because it will stifle creativity. At the end of the session, members of the idea team are assigned specific responsibilities with deadlines – not second quarter, but by April 1.

Brainstorming can be an effective tool in generating creative ideas. Not everyone is a Steve Wozniak who invented the first Apple computer or the next Einstein. But everyone has ideas that are worth exploring.

And brainstorming, when done properly, is an effective tool to unleash the creativity of teams whose members aren’t copywriters or designers or great inventors.

Sometimes two heads are better than one, four heads are better than two and eight heads are better than four.

Beware the password hack

Well, it’s happened to many of my friends and I’ve joined a not-so-exclusive club of people whose emails have been hacked.

Yesterday, I received over 5,000 emails in my inbox from hackers who send out hundreds of thousands of emails using hijacked email accounts. The ones going to defunct accounts are bounced back to the sending email with a message: Mail delivery failed: return to sender. Today, the company that hosts my site, Hostgator, helped to stop another barrage of 10,000+ emails. So how did this happen?

Simple — I had a real easy password that I’ve been using for years. Of course, I’ve changed it. I’m finally following the advice of the experts. A lesson learned the hard way. So, if you, like me, have been too lazy to change the passwords on your important accounts, I urge you to do so.

Here is good advice from Microsoft’s Safety and Security Center:

Create strong passwords

A strong password is an important protection to help you have safer online transactions. Here are steps you can take to create a strong password. Some or all might help protect your online transactions:

Length. Make your passwords long with eight or more characters.

Complexity. Include letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers. Use the entire keyboard, not just the letters and characters you use or see most often. The greater the variety of characters in your password, the better. However, password hacking software automatically checks for common letter-to-symbol conversions, such as changing “and” to “&” or “to” to “2.”

Variation. To keep strong passwords effective, change them often. Set an automatic reminder for yourself to change your passwords on your email, banking, and credit card websites about every three months.

Variety. Don’t use the same password for everything. Cybercriminals steal passwords on websites that have very little security, and then they use that same password and user name in more secure environments, such as banking websites.

Microsoft gives some good examples on their site so you might just want to hop over there. I’ve learned my lesson.

Related articles

• Google Remembers Your Old Passwords (mt-soft.com.ar)

Roger W. Ferguson, Jr.

[tweetmeme]I was inspired today to hear Roger Ferguson, President and CEO, TIAA-CREF, describe how companies must transform themselves to succeed in this new world and how he’s working to ensure that his company stays relevant. Some business leaders, he said, are adopting the burning platform approach that emphasizes immediate and radical change, or “getting out of their comfort zone.” He calls the process in his company continuous improvement.

While TIAA-CREF is not exactly a household name, unless you happen to work in academia, this Fortune 100 financial services organization has $453 billion under management, providing retirement planning for people who work in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields. So it’s a very big player in asset management.

Mr. Ferguson is one of the growing number of CEOs who are actively engaging employees in the transformation process to give them “a sense of ownership and what processes they want to see improved.” He’s started a program to train managers to be great coaches and to create what he calls “huddles” in which teams engage in problem solving and paint a picture of the company’s future. He calls it “leading from the middle.” It’s being rolled out gradually throughout the 7,500 employee organization.

Envision a Climbing Wall 

From KMBell's Blog

At the breakfast meeting sponsored by my professional organization, The Financial Women’s Association, Mr. Ferguson discussed how professionals shouldn’t think about a career ladder but rather a “climbing wall.” It’s rare these days for a person to have a perfect upward trajectory with specified steps. Instead, most of us are moving between seemingly unrelated jobs. What we need to do, he said, is be willing to take risks, and learn the “bridging steps” to our next job. Figure out how to leverage our previous experience and build the skills for our next opportunity.

His Own Skills

Mr. Ferguson was refreshingly candid about what he considers to be his strengths and where he feels he could improve. I was pleased to learn he believes his communications skills are his greatest strength: the  ability to synthesize disparate views into major messages. I personally feel this is where many CEOs are weak. As I wrote in an earlier post, entitled CEO as Chief Communications Officer, “This is the essence of the CEO’s job.” He feels he could improve his coaching skills with his senior team. Several were at the meeting and I didn’t get that feeling based on their guffaws. His personality came through as someone with empathy and I don’t think you can make this up for your “public persona,” as he calls his requirement to speak for the company.

TIAA-CREF is a 93-year-old “start-up,” he said. Sounds like the company is doing all the right things to be around for a long, long time.

[tweetmeme]There are more different types of blog posts than I can count on my fingers and toes. Tone of voice is important, too. For example, if you’re writing for a business audience, should you use humor in your blog posts? Will your readers think you aren’t serious?

The question you first need to ask yourself, “What is the objective of this article?” If you’re writing to entertain, then it’s OK to use humor. And, yes, business people like humor, too.

When writing about a serious subject such as unrest in the middle East and its implications for business, though, humor would be out of place.

I’ve concluded that many posts fit into the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How Come formula that I learned in journalism class that guided me as a business reporter. See if your posts answer at least one of these interrogatives. It will help to give your blog focus.

The Blog Post List

1. How to. People always want to learn how to do things better, faster, cheaper, safer. How-to blogs appeal to every demographic. Want to learn how to mow your lawn? Head over to Consumer Reports.

2. Promoting a Cause. You may feel passionate about a cause. A particular passion of mine is women and heart disease. I could make the case about why my readers should join the Go Red campaign to educate women on the risks of heart disease.

3. Analysis. In this type of post you can demonstrate your expertise by including your own opinions and those of other experts – linking to authority sites also boosts your SEO. I wrote one recently entitled “The New Leadership Paradigm: Rule by Community” that described the spontaneous formation of new communities of leaders made possible by the power of the Internet. This type of post is also called a Roundup.

4. Reviews. What’s your field? Has an expert written a new book you can review? I just downloaded the Kindle version of Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book “The Thank You Economy” and will write a review after I read it.

5. Q&A. This a great way to conduct an interview with a guest. You can make life easy for readers who don’t like a lot of dense copy. Also, it’s more personal. I interviewed Pat Weber for three blogs that I posted on the elevator speech. She interviewed me for her site and then we decided to turn these posts into an ebook, “Repairing the Elevator Speech to Burnish Your Personal Brand,” which is available to new subscribers of Write Speak Sell.

6. Entertainment. Some blogs are simply meant to entertain. They can be about serious topics – like a lack of service that I experienced at Home Depot in a post “Don’t Forget to Bring Your Own Saw to Home Depot” but written with humor with the primary purpose to entertain your readers.

7. Promotional. You may have a new product or service that you feel the world can’t live without. Write a post – but don’t be too sales-y. Remember that the reader is always asking “What’s in it for me?”

8. Lists. Like this one on blog posts. How about a list of what you consider to be the best books on leadership, or recipes for apple pie?

9. Inspirational. Posts that ask people to be better citizens, to follow their passions in life, to tap their inner spirit are examples of topics that will hopefully inspire your readers to action – and make you feel better, too.

10. Problem/Solution.  A demonstrated winner. I wrote a post a while back “Why Can’t WordPress Tutorials be Written in Language for Regular People? I received a lot of comments and I was most gratified by this one, “This was so helpful!!! I’ve been trying to figure this out for almost 24 hours!!! …LOL.”

11. Instructional. I recently wrote a post entitled “How to Insert the Name of Your Website into Your LinkedIn Profile” that received many thank-you’s. So simple, but many LinkedIn users don’t know how – just take a look at some profiles.

Do you have a favorite type of post? What have I left out?

Voting is a Civic Duty

[tweetmeme]A little over 60% of eligible voters turned out for the 2008 Presidential elections.  As usual, the turnout is higher in a Presidential election year.  Even with the highly partisan elections tomorrow, the turnout will probably not exceed 65%.   How do we get more people to vote?

An answer may be to encourage more people to vote early by mail, or in non-traditional public places like malls.  But, a rather disturbing story in the New York Times last week Voting Early, but Not So Often, analyzed voting patterns and concludes that in states that allow people to submit their ballots before Election Day, the number of voters is actually lower than in states that do not.  If the trend continues, and more states allow early voting, well you can see where that’s headed.

Employee Motivation – Give Them a Day Off

I was talking to a friend about this and we wondered why – when the privilege of voting is essential to a healthy, functioning democracy – isn’t Election Day a legal holiday? How can giving people the day off on Columbus Day, for example, trump Election Day?

That’s not likely to change soon.  But my friend had what I thought was a brilliant idea.  Everyone who votes should be given a receipt, which an employee can turn into his employer in exchange for a day off of her choosing.  What an incentive!  Another day for holiday shopping.  A Friday off for a long weekend.

I think companies would gladly agree while motivating employees to fulfill their civic duties.

What do you think?  Have any other ideas about how we can get out the vote?  Oh, and remember to vote tomorrow, if you haven’t already.

There is much talk and more written about effective business communication with your customers and prospects.  But what about how you communicate with yourself?

I began to ponder this question as I sat waiting to be called for a panel on my first day of jury duty.  The laptops thoughtfully provided for the jurors were hopelessly slow and outdated.  So I had the choice of reading the newspaper, or a paperback or pondering the meaning of life.  Finally, time to THINK!

After some thought, I began a conversation with myself about how to move forward with my redesigned blog, the steps I should be taking in new business development and how I should be balancing my personal and work lives, etc. etc.  Wow.  That’s a lot of conversation.

As I pondered how I should be communicating my ideas to myself, I realized I had several options:

• Free Association. Just let the ideas rip.  I guess nowadays that would be known as mind mapping, should I choose to write down the ideas.  But doesn’t this slow down the flow of ideas to myself?
• Make a list. If all else fails, make yet another list to myself.  Hey, Jeannette, what are your top three priorities for the next week, month, year?  Go ahead, write them down.  Wait a minute.  Didn’t I just write a list, ummm, last month?  Wonder where it is.
• Communicate through a friend. Yes!  I’ll call Janet or Andrea and discuss possible courses of action and then ask them to feed back to me, through their lenses, what my priorities should be.  This is a roundabout way to communicate with myself, but it takes a lot of responsibility off my shoulders.  It’s also called avoidance.
• Say and do nothing. Now we’re getting to the heart of the dilemma that I think afflicts a lot of people.  It’s easier to ignore this essential inner conversation and just keep trying stuff to see what sticks. No thinking needed for that.

What I’ve noticed in the complex world of the blogosphere is that my conversations with myself are shorter and less reflective.  Got to keep checking email every two minutes.  Need to get another blog written.  And don’t forget a quick look at Twitter and Facebook.

No time to communicate with myself.  Too busy for meaningful conversation that would replace a lot of wasted time on the web.

Learning to become a proficient problem solver is the key to becoming a successful manager or entrepreneur. That is because problem solving is at the heart of the planning process.

Everyone is involved in solving problems every day in his or her personal and business life. In fact, we are problem-solving most of the time, even if we are not consciously aware of it. Some are easy, like should I walk the back stairs to the 30th floor or take the elevator? Others are more difficult. For example, a manager is given the assignment to plan the launch of a new service. She knows the objective: deliver the service to customers. Yet, as soon as she gets started, what does she find? There are numerous obstacles in her way, from lack of money to lack of staff.
In the planning process, managers need a systematic way to identify, evaluate and solve the problems standing in the way of reaching their objectives.  Here are 8 steps to smooth the way.

Step 1

When asked what the first step is in problem solving most people will reply, “Define the problem.”  Uh, uh. That doesn’t even come until step 3 in the problem solving process.

The first step is:

BE AWARE THERE IS A PROBLEM. Now that sounds simplistic, doesn’t it?  But the fact is, even the CEO and the Board of Directors aren’t always aware there is a problem.  Take General Motors.  For a while the big-as-a-boat Hummer was a cash cow, but the company misread consumers who were trending toward smaller, more efficient cars.  Because it takes so long to design and get a car to market, the company was stuck with a load of Hummers when the price of gasoline hit $4 a gallon.  So if you are a manager, keep your antenna up to problems that may be lurking where you least expect them.  But also discipline yourself against too early a statement of the problem.

Step 2

We learned earlier that the first step in problem solving is to be aware there is a problem.  So once you acknowledge the problem, what do you do next? No, you’re still not ready to define the problem.  First, you must –

GATHER FACTS. When you see or sense a problem, gather as many facts as you can.  Be sure to separate fact from opinion.  For example, a few years ago Saks Fifth Avenue discontinued its petite department because of poor sales.  They posited that petite shoppers preferred to buy clothes in the misses department.  But soon Saks was receiving scores of letters from customers complaining they could no longer find clothes that fit.  Saks officials then figured out the real reason sales were dropping in petite sizes.  The New York Times printed a story headlined “By Demand, Saks Revives Petite Department.”  In it the SVP for women’s clothing was quoted, “In the past, the petite assortment has been very suited and very classic in nature, not really addressing the lifestyle needs of the customer.” End of story.

Step 3

DEFINE THE PROBLEM.  Ah, at last we get to define the problem.  We acknowledge there is a problem.  We’ve gathered all the necessary facts.  We can now define the problem that is standing in the way of reaching an objective.  In the case of Saks, it wasn’t that petite women preferred shopping in the misses department.  The problem was that Saks was offering designs that did not address the lifestyle needs of the petite customer.

I once worked with a company in the insurance business that was getting whipped by the competition.  They were convinced that it was because they didn’t have enough sales people.  So they enlarged their sales force, and still they couldn’t compete.  After gathering all the facts, we learned their problem was not that they didn’t have enough sales people. The problem was they didn’t have enough well-trained sales people.
So, what to do after defining the problem?

Step 4

GATHER MORE FACTS. Yes, here we go again gathering more facts.  Let’s go back to the example of General Motors.  We don’t know for sure what GM did, once they discovered the problem that they had thousands of unsold cars sitting in car dealerships.  But we can assume they conducted an analysis of the marketplace to learn consumer needs and desires, evaluated the competition and their own resources to determine what kind of car to build that would sell.  Oh, and they got a big infusion of cash from the government to keep them going until they solved their problems.

Step 5

PROVIDE ALL POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS.   For GM to return to profitability, it could be to make smaller cars, close dealerships, abandon some models (all of which they have done).   For Saks, it could be to launch different lines of clothing to address differing lifestyles needs of their customers.   But all of this takes time, money and people.  So, the next step is –

Step 6

ESTABLISH CRITERIA.  It’s rarely possible to implement every possible solution to a problem.  So, you need to establish criteria, such as the amount of money available, people resources, time frame, etc.  Once you’ve established criteria, the next step is –

Step 7

ANALYZE AND EVALUATE. Based on your criteria analyze and evaluate the best possible solution, and then –

Step 8

PLAN. Now that you’ve determined the best solution to your problem, develop your plan.  Act now.

I’d love to hear from you about how you’ve solved some of your problems.