Good Ideas

Submitted by wendii on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 20:57.
in

Rereading Getting Things Done last week, I was struck by what David Allen says about ideas. He says: "If you're waiting to have a good idea before you have any idea, you won't have many ideas". When Mark talks about brainstorming with conference groups he asks: "If you have a small pile of ideas, and a big pile of ideas, which pile of ideas is most likely to have most good ideas?" Both of them are saying the same thing: in order to have a good idea you need lots of ideas.

Mark also tells groups that a manager's role is generally to reduce: to make a decision between x and y and z, and to go forward with one. That's why brainstorming is hard. It's the opposite of what we normally do - it's increasing our scope instead of reducing it.

If you ask Google how many thoughts we have a day, it gives numbers from 12,000 to 60,000. However many we have, it's many many many more than we're conscious of. Most of them are fleeting, because our 'reducing habit' dismisses them. If you want to have more ideas, start writing down your random thoughts. Don't be instantly dismissive. Follow the rabbit for a few more thoughts and see if a good idea turns up.

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Submitted by mrstevegross on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 21:49.

Guiding debate

As a manager, I often have to guide technical discussions/debates between my employees. Often, we're faced with some new problem, and we need to contemplate--and select--ways to tackle the problem. The selection process usually starts with brainstorming. Guiding the brainstorming is a tricky dance. Here are my guiding (!) principles:

* Make sure everyone understands the problem.

* Find ways to rephrase the problem statement so that you explore the subtleties of the problem.

* Ask open-ended questions: "How could we handle this?"

* When someone responds with a solution, and other people in the group start up the back-and-forth discussion process, I let it go for about 3 minutes.

* After 3 minutes, I interrupt, and paraphrase the discussion so far. Then I restate the problem, and let 'em go at it again.

* If the debate isn't getting anywhere--or if the proposed solution is rather complex--I end up the brainstorming session. Usually, I say: "Ok, let's let it percolate a bit and talk again tomorrow". The sleep-on-it process is critical for a group.

wendii's picture
Submitted by wendii on Mon, 08/30/2010 - 20:49.

Thanks!

MrSteveGross, thank you for sharing your thoughts. The art of getting better at something is to think hard about what works and what doesn't and you obviously has done that.

Thank you

Wendii