[techdragon]

Point three is why I alway open a brainstorming session with one or two ideas roughly in the theme of “shut it all down”. Sometimes it’s “what if it also poisoned people? Then they can’t complain.” Other times is “we could just not? How bad could it really be?”

It’s important to prevent people thinking their ideas are foolish. Running a good brainstorming session is a skill just like running a good scrum, it’s not just another generic meeting and a lot of people try to think you can “just brainstorm”.

Experience has taught me that first improvisation skills help, because at least when I’m the first idea gathering phase you really need to both “yes, and” all the ideas being presented you also have to try and avoid “shutting down the scene” in that you want a good flow of ideas and until you start trying to select the useful apps you don’t want anyone’s behaviour to steer other people from sharing ideas they may have.

Second, if you’re the only one with any improv skills you’re also the one best equipped to “play the fool” and relentlessly suggest outrageous things and make sure they are placed on the board, to make sure everyone else is more likely to think “my ideas are better than that” and then you can encourage others to share those better ideas.

Also a brainstorming session doesn’t need to be an extrovert party. You can run one semi-asynchronous via slack it just takes longer, the key is involvement and attention. It works better when people pay enough attention and try to think of new ideas instead of doing other things which is harder to be sure of if you don’t bring the group together effectively.