How often does your company host a brainstorm session? If the answer isn’t at least once a quarter, perhaps you don’t understand the value of a brainstorming session. A brainstorm is a great way to get employees or consultants to rethink the way you are doing business or create more efficiencies on what you are doing in your business.

There are a few things to keep in mind when you host a brainstorm session.

• Ensure each session has a goal or business problem/pain point that needs to be solved or improved. 
• Have a variety of people at the table. Employees from different business units and levels within the organization and outside consultants can provide a fresh look at the problem. 
• Keep the size of the group to a minimum. Depending on how complex the situation, no more than 10 people around the table tends to be a good number.  You can always create a taskforce to help implement and tweak the new idea to bring it to life.

To start a brainstorm session, give a recap on what the company is experiencing and what the current process is for executing the business issue at hand. Start by asking a simple question, what ideas do you have to improve or change this business process? (Don’t forget to have a great note taker in the room to capture all the ideas.) 

Next, set a time limit for the free flow of ideas, however no longer than an hour. 30 minutes is probably a best practice for just capturing ideas. Then, quickly recap the ideas and have the group vote on what is the best, most realistic ideas or approach. Our team suggests no more than three and each idea gets 30 minutes. The objective of focusing 30 minutes on each of the three ideas is on how to bring it to life, what is needed and what risks are involved.

If you want to bring more of the company in on the change from the beginning, you could recap the top three ideas and give a short overview on what it would be for the business, how it would potentially change their role or the company and the expected results. Then have them vote on the best idea. This gives everyone the chance for a voice even if they weren’t chosen for the recent brainstorm session. With this practice, it will take less effort to get employees and customers to adopt the change.

Another important part of new ideas is keeping the company up to date on implementing the changes and the results the company. There could be times you need to rework something because it is not achieving the expected results. Most companies always want to get it right from the start, but 20/20 hindsight is a real thing. Learning from what we have done or changed helps to make better decisions in the future. So, go, host your first or next brainstorm. If you need some outside perspectives, give Marketing Strategist a call, we love to brainstorm and create new ideas.