Rules to Better Brainstorming

Your employees are your greatest asset, yet their valuable knowledge and insights often go unnoticed. Why not harness their creativity and problem-solving abilities by hosting a fun and collaborative Brainstorming Day? It's a simple but effective way to unlock innovative ideas, foster team bonding, and empower your workforce. 🧠💪

At an annual Brainstorming day, employees are invited to share their ideas, give feedback, and pick the best one to work on. The benefits of Brainstorming are well understood, but to focus the productivity on something useful, it is important to have a system for suggesting, voting, and working on ideas. Brainstorming days also require a lot of preparation leading up to the day and follow-up work afterwards.

It's go time - teams have been allocated and the day has arrived.

Tip: This agenda can change depending on how many people are attending. E.g. If you have fewer people attending, you could start presentations earlier.

Ensure this is sent out to all staff months before the event to encourage ideas.

Beginning a Brainstorming Day without ideas prepared in advance is not a recipe for success. Time will be wasted either coming up with ideas, or preparing them to work on.

For a successful and streamlined Brainstorming Day, it's crucial to gather well-formed ideas in advance. This preparation smoothens the day's proceedings and increases its overall value.

GitHub Discussions provides an awesome way to let employees discuss ideas before the Brainstorming day. A GitHub Discussion template makes it easy for attendees to submit quality ideas in a consistent format.

Dividing participants into teams on the day of the brainstorming session can be time-consuming. It is better to form teams in advance. This approach ensures consistent team sizes and allows for early communication of team assignments to participants.

During a Brainstorming Day, many great ideas are generated, discussed, and refined. But what happens to these ideas once the day is over? Without a dedicated individual to drive an idea forward, it risks being forgotten or losing momentum. This is where the "Idea Champion" comes in.

The presentations are a very important part of the brainstorming as they are sharing the outcomes of the idea with the stakeholders who can decide whether the ideas should be implemented or not.

To keep presentations consistent, use a template and ensure the following is covered:

1. Pain - What is the problem you are solving?
2. Potential solutions and a recommendation - How can we fix the problem?
3. Cost - how long is it going to take and how much will it cost?
4. Next steps - how can this solution be implemented?

The results of the Brainstorming day can have a great impact on the company. It's important to get everyone's thoughts on each idea.

The Brainstorming day is a lot of fun, but its important all the outcomes are captured and acted on. Once you have everyone's thoughts on the ideas, they need to be digested into actionable items.