Today was the big meeting you’ve been planning for a week. You were particularly excited for the brainstorming session that happened about halfway through the meeting. You felt hopeful the group would unleash its creativity and finally discover the solution to the persistent problem that has been dragging down customer satisfaction for more than a year.
Maybe that’s why you felt so deflated after the meeting. The group was in a bad mood. They were sick and tired of this problem, and weren’t interested in more brainstorming.
It’s too bad you hadn’t read this article before the meeting because I could have given you a good idea that might have helped.
Reverse Brainstorming
The trick is to come at the problem from a completely different direction. In the case of brainstorming, you can brainstorm the opposite of what you want and see what happens.
I’ve always called this process reverse brainstorming, and this is how it works.
Imagine your team is supposed to come up with new ideas for increasing customer loyalty. Instead of looking for ideas to improve loyalty, the team brainstorms ways to decrease customer loyalty. Trying to improve employee morale? Brainstorm ideas for destroying morale.
Use the Negative Energy
The tool’s power results from its ability to harness negative energy (cynicism, sarcasm, hostility, etc.) and use it to spark creativity. If your team is in this type of mood, it’s very difficult to build excitement for brainstorming. By giving them a chance to vent their negativity, you will witness amazing creativity.
After the team has filled the wall with ideas for lowering morale or chasing away customers, you are ready to get down to identifying potential solutions to your problem.
Ask the team to analyze the list and develop ideas for solving the problem. Many solutions can be found simply by reversing the ideas on the list.
Others can be discovered through patterns and interesting combinations of negative ideas. In either case, the list of “bad” ideas is a tremendous stimulus for generating “good” ideas.
Next time you face the same old problems and a team tired of trying to solve them, cut the team loose on ways to make the problem worse. It will be fun, energizing, and most of all…effective.