[HN Gopher] Stop Brainstorming
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Stop Brainstorming
Author : burticlies
Score : 74 points
Date : 2022-01-26 21:06 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (matthewstrom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (matthewstrom.com)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| There seems to be a difference of intent between what Osborn
| describes (at least the selected quotes) and what the
| researchers, Diehl and Stroebe, studied. In particular, he
| describes brainstorming as for developing creative ideas, while
| the researchers study it as a method for _problem_ solving.
|
| From the quotes by Osborn it seems his purpose for it was to find
| ideas, no matter how far out there. Whereas the researchers were
| directing people to use brainstorming to find (what sounds like)
| one or a small number of viable _solutions_. Those are two
| different activities, so an approach could be useful for one and
| useless (or suboptimal) for the other, but there is no way to
| conclude how applicable it is to the former based on studies of
| the latter.
| indymike wrote:
| > In particular, he describes brainstorming as for developing
| creative ideas, while the researchers study it as a method for
| problem solving.
|
| The article should have been called "Stop Brainstorming to
| Solve Problems". The title is clickbaity. Brainstorming to
| solve a problem is just team easter-egging.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| We're not allowed to use the word brainstorming here in the UK,
| it's thought to be offensive to people without brains.
| ajuc wrote:
| Brainstorming isn't for problem-solving, especially when problems
| are small and well defined. Communication overhead destroys the
| efficiency.
|
| I've participated in several team programming competitions. The
| way every team worked was - everybody read all tasks, quickly
| decide who works on what, and then we work solo on one problem
| each in parallel, when somebody finishes (s)he can help others
| who are stuck or take on another tasks. Talking about the problem
| all the way was way too slow and didn't much helped.
|
| But problem-solving isn't the only creative thinking people do.
| When creating a story for table-top RPGs brainstorming works
| great.
| ouid wrote:
| I think the opitmal number of people working on a problem is
| somewhere between 1 and 2. The amount of communication required
| obviously scales very poorly, but in principle, having to
| explain your process to someone else functions well. I prefer
| pair programming to solo work, usually. I catch more bugs, and
| am forced to explain things to myself as I explain them to my
| partner.
| ajuc wrote:
| Pair programming works well for tasks that take a few days.
| For tasks that take hours it's not worth it IMHO.
| rurp wrote:
| I see a lot of parallels between this article and a discussion
| from yesterday about how often to loop in others on your work[0].
| Like most things in life, there are a lot of complicated
| tradeoffs between solo work and group collaboration, and rarely
| any straightforward answers. That said, one prevelent trend is
| that whatever is in vogue is probably being over used.
|
| If group brainstorming is top of mind for a lot of executives,
| it's a good bet that there's way too much of it going on. If a
| dev team thinks they always do their best work in isolation,
| they're probably missing out on some major benefits to be had by
| mixing in more collaboration and pair programming.
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30074949
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > That said, one prevelent trend is that whatever is in vogue
| is probably being over used.
|
| This is a great rule of thumb, and could likely be applied to
| itself even, if it become a widespread sentiment.
|
| It's not quite the same thing, but I think there might be a
| relationship to Goodhart's Law. It may also partially explain
| why Agile has gone so wrong for so many companies.
| zwieback wrote:
| My experience exactly. We used to do this but gave up many years
| ago. Better to have individuals develop bare-bones ideas and then
| review with a group. Better yet, have a ranked voting system with
| a large but somewhat informed group to winnow down the list.
| bluetwo wrote:
| As far as solving well defined problems, I don't necessarily
| think brainstorming is great. That's never how I've seen it used.
|
| But for better defined unstructured problems and then turning to
| novel solutions, it is great.
|
| It bothers me that corporations don't use it that way MORE. And I
| dearly HATE meetings.
|
| Also, the hip term these days is "ideation" not "brainstorming".
| Get with the times, boomer. (Just kidding--almost a boomer here)
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I buy the ineffectiveness of brainstorming meetings.
|
| I don't think it's as big of a deal as it might seem, though. You
| still need to get together and decide what to do with your team,
| it just probably should be a safe space is all. We knew that.
|
| Hardly anything works without safety, and nearly anything works
| with safety. Sounds good to me.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I can say with certainty that failure to be systematic about idea
| generation has led to many failed projects that otherwise could
| have been great successes. These projects were, in hindsight,
| "almost hugely successful", had we had the correct idea to pivot
| to. Sometimes only a tweak or an additional feature was required.
|
| Also, a separate comment to this thread:
|
| Edward De Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" is an alternative way of
| approaching innovative idea generation.
|
| https://www.debonogroup.com/services/core-programs/six-think...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats
| atmb4u wrote:
| Great ideas comes from individuals; But a combination of ideas as
| a team effort is what usually solves sizable problems.
|
| There may be narrow use cases where the overhead of brainstorming
| doesn't add any value; but otherwise, I still believe
| brainstorming is a good way to consider alternatives for open-
| ended problems.
|
| Collective >> Individuals or 1+1=3
| kerblang wrote:
| In my experience it is best to explain the problem _today_ , and
| ask about ideas _tomorrow_. Most people tend to think up ideas on
| their own time rather than on-demand as if they 're some kind of
| ideas slot machine you can just yank on.
|
| I think it helps to have weekly-or-so discussions about The
| Problems We're Having Lately, not so much as "brainstorming" but
| giving people a chance to offer their latest ideas and explain
| problems encountered with previous ideas.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| It's amazing how much I have built my career around psychological
| safety (one tends to admit these things a bit more as we get
| older)
|
| So yes. If anything can improve your work experience, your
| productivity , it's psychological safetry
|
| Taken to an extreme it would be sensible to give teams a annual
| bonus at the start of the year. Give them FU money and so be
| fairly confident they will say FU when it's needed
| leblancfg wrote:
| I've had SOME great brainstorming sessions that provided great
| ideas for paths forward when starting new projects. I think that
| last part is important. Specifically, the "Discover" part of the
| double diamond design process.
|
| In the cited article, sure the faster problem solvers will solve
| more individually. But
|
| 1) the proper grain to measure success is as the team level, and
|
| 2) it's easy to score a problem with a known answer, but it is
| significantly harder for a group to come to consensus as to what
| the best answer might be - you can't always just crunch the
| numbers to see who was right.
|
| The advantages of the brainstorm at the _team_ level can be
| profound: they can reach consensus as to what these better
| options are, as well as a shared understanding of the problem
| space and what the next steps are.
|
| [1] https://www.thefountaininstitute.com/blog/what-is-the-
| double...
| m1117 wrote:
| Get outta here. Is it a controversial marketing headline?
| Brainstorming is a fantastic tool, just use it wisely.
| milesvp wrote:
| >Brainstorming has become a heuristic, an attempted shortcut, a
| lossy substitution for psychological safety.
|
| I'm glad this was where the author ended up. As I read this, I
| kept thinking that I know how to get better ideas out of people
| than a lot of typical brainstorming scenarios I've experienced in
| the past. My mind kept going back to how good some of the (Agile)
| retros I've had, and the one thing they all had in common was
| psychological safety was key. Creating a safe space allowed
| people to really express their issues, which made it much easier
| to address them. I've always understood one of the most important
| actions in a brainstorming session is the "turkey shoot" by one
| of the seniors. It's an idea so bad that even interns think, oh,
| my idea is better than that and so find it easier to participate.
| Without that, you can very much end up with a session dominated
| by hierarchy.
| _djo_ wrote:
| Can you explain more about the 'turkey shoot' in brainstorming
| sessions, and the value it adds? It's not something I've heard
| about before.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Another term that may be more familiar is "ice breaker". The
| senior person offers up an idea to get the ball rolling. It
| shouldn't be too complex, it shouldn't sound like _the_ way
| to go. It 's just something to help make other people more
| comfortable participating, especially people junior to them.
| It may even be a dumb idea, getting some laughs and breaking
| the tension.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| It's basically just throwing an idea out there that's so bad
| it's easy to shoot down (like turkeys which are notoriously
| easy to shoot).
|
| The value is creating space where the bar for acceptable
| ideas is so low that people don't self-censor.
| codeflo wrote:
| I think the article's missing an important trick: Brainstorming
| establishes a shared understanding (depending on the group
| dynamics, you might call it a fiction) that the _group_ , not any
| individual, came up with the idea. That sense of ownership is
| psychologically important for aligning the group during the
| execution phase: People are usually a lot more motivated to
| implement a plan that they came up with, and if anyone challenges
| the idea, much more eager to defend it.
| underwater wrote:
| A lot of people do this very badly. They craft a brainstorming
| session designed to arrive at their pre-selected destination.
| They either design the process to steer the conversation, or
| shut down tangents as they go. This always feels manipulative
| and scummy.
| mnutt wrote:
| Many of the Design Sprint brainstorming sessions I've been a part
| of felt superficial. I can see the value in pushing people to
| list out lots of ideas very quickly, to force them to explore the
| solution space and not get stuck on a single idea. But the output
| is more like idea stubs than ideas, usually a few words on a
| sticky note.
|
| In the brainstorming sessions I've attended, the next stage
| involves the facilitator taking all of the idea stubs and
| grouping them together, then riffing on the idea groups. The
| whole process (intentionally?) feels like improv comedy. And much
| like improv, it often seems geared more for the enjoyment of the
| participants than the quality of the output.
|
| And maybe that's ok, using brainstorming purely as a tool to
| circulate half-ideas and get the creative juices flowing? But in
| a design sprint, the brainstorming outputs are often directly
| used for longer term planning. I've found something like a
| lightweight RFC process is a much better medium for refining and
| discussing ideas. RFCs are usually written alone, and discussed
| as a group.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| TLDR: Brainstorming has become a heuristic, an attempted
| shortcut, a lossy substitution for psychological safety.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >"Brainstorming" -- the problem-solving technique of coming up
| with as many ideas as possible in a short period of time
|
| I'm Longstorming-the problem-solving technique of coming up with
| as many ideas as possible in a long period of time
|
| Now I have over 100 startup ideas, it's kind of hard to keep
| track anymore. But it is interesting how some ideas synergize
| with each other and can be combined in order to solve bigger
| problem.
| draw_down wrote:
| vlfig wrote:
| Mostly yes. My advice on this topic is to read up on Liberating
| Structures, which I think are a level up.
|
| https://liberatingstructures.com/
| d3vmax wrote:
| Does this not depend on the situation / requirement? I am sure
| brainstorming under duress can help in certain situations.
| 692 wrote:
| I'm a divergent thinker and like to bounce ideas off other
| divergent thinkers, so I can work alone or with others, but/
| ideally they need to be creative/ open
|
| Once we have a list of ideas, then whittle the list down with the
| realist and pessimistic people of the group; until there's one
| obvious way forward or a couple of least worse ideas.
|
| Generally most people are better at telling you what you can't
| do,
| allenu wrote:
| I've also found brainstorming isn't great for more "creative"
| thinkers. In a group setting it's easy to say "no that won't
| work" or not get buy-in on the spot, so ideas that aren't
| mainstream get shot down right away.
|
| People like me also need time and space to think deeply about
| certain topics, and a brainstorming session has neither time
| nor space, so you're immediately limited in the ideas that are
| presented.
| convolvatron wrote:
| i am too...and i basically cant work at the same level if i'm
| just sitting alone by myself. so i _have_ to kick stuff aronud
| with people. unfortunately the longer i stay in the industry
| the less people are used to working this way.
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