5-step strategy for achieving better results from your creative thinking sessions. Increase the quality of outcomes and improve the engagement levels of participants.

1. Steering Your Brainstorming
Sessions from Failure to Success
December 2012

2. Do your organisation’s brainstorming sessions
result in little more than brain drain?
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3. Traditional Brainstorming is ‘Anything Goes’
• People turn up, throw out ideas and go back to
work...or maybe not, if the event has gone way
over time.
• These sessions can result in little more than
unusable ideas on paper.
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4. Traditional Brainstorming Sessions =
Unproductive, Waste of Time!
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5. Maybe it’s time to steer your
brainstorming session in a new
direction.
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6. WiserChange™ would like to introduce
you to brainsteering# - a strategy for
getting better results from your
creative thinking sessions.
#
A term introduced in the March 2011 McKinsey Quarterly
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7. The following 5-step process will improve
participants’ engagement levels and their
perception of these sessions.
More importantly, it will increase the
quality of outcomes.
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8. Are You Ready?
Let’s Learn to Brainsteer!
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9. Step 1: Draft Ideas and Set an Agenda
• Pick a theme or subject.
• Choose who should be involved.
• Request ideas in advance from those attending.
• Convert key ideas into an agenda with time
limits.
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10. Step 2: Create Thought-Provoking Questions
Related to Key Ideas from Step 1
• Questions should be open-ended and
encourage your people to look at the given topic
from a different or unfamiliar perspective.
• Apply real-life limitations to refine creative ideas
and steer them into viable, realistic options.
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11. Step 3: Begin the Brainsteering Session and
Stick to the Schedule
• Aim for the goal of capturing a few viable ideas.
• Stick to the agenda to ensure time doesn’t run over.
• Break participants into small groups when there are a
number of ideas per topic.
• Have these groups explore 2 ideas and then report their
results to the larger group.
• Provide participants a summary sheet to document their
discussions. This formalises the creative process.
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12. Step 4: Agree on Actions and Socialise Them
• Have subgroups set the actions required for their
allocated topic(s).
• After the session, socialise those agreed actions with key
decision-makers and report back to the group.
• Allocate roles, responsibilities and actions to ideas that
will be investigated further or implemented.
• Set a schedule for reporting back on progress and hold
people accountable to their allocated actions.
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13. Step 5: Report Back
• Report back to the session stakeholders on outcomes of actions.
• This serves multiple purposes.
 You show that participants’ input was valued no matter the
outcome of those ideas.
 Participants gain a sense of pride when their idea(s) are
implemented.
 Organisational perceptions of “brainstorming sessions” are
improved.
 Organisational resistance to future creative events is reduced.
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14. To read a more in-depth, detailed look at how to
improve your brainstorming sessions…
• Visit the WiserChange™ blog and read, “How to run a
half day workshop that will deliver some truly workable
ideas.”
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15. Questions? Contact WiserChange™
If you have questions about brainsteering, innovation or
change management, please contact
the WiserChange™ team.
info@wiserchange.com
Phone - 612 9955 1212
www.wiserchange.com
facebook.com/WiserChangeConsulting
linkedin.com/company/wiserchange
@WiserChange
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