Semi-Structured Brainstorming
Traditional brainstorming works well for getting ideas. If you want to do something more, you probably need more than ideas. Besides, some people like more than one tool in the brain box.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Here we’ve assembled some variants of brainstorming into an extended tool set.
Advantages over traditional brainstorming:
Structure. Structure can focus efforts on specific parts of problem-solving.
Persistent. You can plant it now and let it grow over time.
Solo problem solving. You can do it solo. Or in any convenient combination with group problem solving.
Ingredients
One or more walls under your control.
One or more wall-sized sheets of paper or expendable white cardboard.
Any convenient way to put the paper on the wall, leaving plenty of room for people walking around.
Normal pens, felt tipped pens, and plenty of sticky notes (small and large sizes).
If you have some structure in mind, mark out boxes on the paper and label them. You can find examples in the semi-structures page. In each box, put one or two questions that you want answered. Yes. Questions. Not objectives. Questions are friendly. Objectives are pompous.
Instructions, printed if you are gathering a group. You can use the instructions below if you want.
Semi-structures
Starter Structure
Idea Structure
Choose Structure
Plan Structure
Troubleshooting Structure
Brainstorming by walking around
See if you think of an idea that fits in any box. If you do, write in on a sticky note and put it where it belongs. As you stick it, read it out loud. Ask for suggested headlines. If you get a good one, print it in big letters on the note. (That’s what the felt-tipped pens are for.)
If you don’t have an idea:
Look over the existing notes for something interesting. Read it aloud and say why it is interesting. If it needs a title or a different title, make a note and attach it there.
Or look over the notes in a box and see if you can summarize them. Treat your summary just like an idea.
Or look over any of the Brainseeding pages for something that you can apply. For a group session, you may want to print these pages and pass out copies. Or make a Thinkerer's Kit for the participants.
Brainseeding pages
Bounce-Back Slogans and Tips
Choosing
Slogans and Tips
Idea Slogans and Tips
Focus Tips
Goal Slogans and Tips
Planning Slogans and Tips
Thinkerer's kit
Thinkerer's
Tools, Layout
Thinkerer's Kit
Tips
Problemater's Kit
(.pdf)
Tools for brains that feed on problems
Standing rules. (Apply even when you are sitting)
All notes are good. Nobody can discard notes till the project is over.
You can elaborate or reinterpret a note by sticking another note to it.
You can move a note from one box to another.
You can post a summary of any box
Persistent Brainstorming .
Nothing here about when to stop brainstorming. That’s because you don’t have to stop until you get what you need. You will adjourn, of course. Suspend. Sleep on it. Put it on the back burner for a while. But tomorrow you may be smarter. Other people get smarter too if the boxes and notes are out where people can see them. You can run a session like this for as long as you can afford the wall space.
You have already seen how to blend an initial group session of semi-structured brainstorming into the perennial method. If you don’t want to start with a group meeting, you can start the perennial brainstorming by yourself. Set up things as you would for a group. Just be sure that the wall is one you will look at several times a day.
Follow the instructions for groups, with one important change:
Don’t put up more than one note in an hour.
If you think of several ideas in an hour, write them on the sticky notes.
But post one and save the rest for other hours. After you post a note, go do something else. Let the
quiet parts of your brain work on the problems for a while. .
If you still want to involve other people, just pick a wall that the other
people will see frequently. Then make it clear that they can put up their own
notes.
