I enjoyed the Martha Stewart apprentice show (not sure why "America" didn't like it). Even the frustrating parts of the show caught my attention, in an inquisitive, "here's something to learn" kind of way.

Week after week, Martha's apprentice nominees started a new project by gathering with their team to come up with ideas of how to implement their new task. Each team wanted to come up with something that was better than the other team so that they would be declared the winner.

And week after week, I observed mismanaged brainstorming and evaluating, resulting in frustrated team members and lukewarm ideas.

What did they keep doing wrong?

One week, team member Leslie from the (constantly) winning team came over to the losing team to lead them as their project manager. It took this team too long to perform the tasks of brainstorming and evaluating. During the brainstorming session, they kept evaluating. When they finally got to the evaluating part of the task in order to choose one idea, they kept brainstorming new ideas! Getting to the point of choosing one idea took them 6 hours, when it should have taken about 2 hours.

On another episode, Sarah, as the project manager, decided that her team members would start out by brainstorming silently. WHAT?

What in the world is brainstorming silently? I'll tell you what it is: It's nothing!

The basic idea of brainstorming is that everyone gets to hear everyone else's ideas, and that ideas generate more ideas! In other words, when people hear other peoples' ideas, it gets their thoughts going, and more ideas appear. So, even bad ideas generate good ideas!

And that leads me to the problem I've seen from Martha's apprentice candidates over and over. It is the same problem repeated in millions of businesses worldwide. While they're brainstorming ideas, they're evaluating ideas; and when they're evaluating ideas, they're brainstorming even more ideas.

No wonder it takes too long to get through this process!

Here is a very simple solution to this chaotic problem: The brainstorming phase is for idea generation only! When you are brainstorming, there is no evaluation of ideas allowed. During brainstorming, there is no development of ideas allowed. Schedule a set amount of time for brainstorming. Appoint someone as the "scribe" who writes all ideas on either a flip chart or a white board. Even bad ideas get put on the list (because "even bad ideas generate good ideas" ). O

nce the brainstorming session is over, the evaluation stage begins. During evaluation, there is no more brainstorming. Schedule a set amount of time for evaluation. First, weed out the ideas that are bad, goofy, distasteful, and just won't work (according to the group). Try to whittle the list down to the two best ideas (without developing the ideas yet). Once you have your two best ideas, spend a set amount of time brainstorming (yes, again!) how each of these two main ideas could be developed (and, again, only ideas and more ideas at this time). Evaluate one of the main ideas (and all of the development ideas you just thought of that go along with it). Evaluate the second main idea (and all of its development ideas). Decide between the two which you are going to implement!

If teams would focus on this method for brainstorming and evaluation, they would come up with better ideas and better ways to implement those ideas. Also, they would no longer feel that this process is a heavy, mind-numbing burden. Rather, they would feel that this process is fun, invigorating, and challenging (in the good way!).

Read on to my article titled "How to Brainstorm with a Large Team" (also available at EzineArticles.com) to find out how to do brainstorming with a large team. Even if you have a team of less than 20 people, the additional ideas will help you to use each individual team member's talents and skills to generate the best ideas possible.

© 2006 Borgeson Consulting, Inc.

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