Chapter 19

Generating Ideas

At some point, the clarifying ends and you need some ideas that will tackle those challenge(s) you've identified. This is the stage where we are seeking that moment of illumination—the “Eureka!” moment. It's the lightbulb going off over your head with the breakthrough needed to resolve the problem. Sometimes this stage proves elusive. Sometimes it happens quickly, seemingly without thinking. With a team, it often happens while brainstorming or using other divergent thinking methods. Like every other step in a performance-improvement or problem-solving process, some people like it and some do not, but it's indispensable. We have to come up with new ideas to improve our approach. Some ideas are radical, producing great change, and others are not so dramatic, producing incremental change. As with all stages in the breakthrough process there is a balance between divergent thinking—a search for many original options, and convergent thinking—the selection of those ideas that hold the greatest promise. In our experience the greatest mistake teams make is the simultaneous application of these two ways of thinking when attempting to come up with ideas. This is akin to trying to drive a car while someone keeps applying the brake—it's inefficient and frustrating.

Diverging

The name of this stage almost implies that it is all about divergent thinking. It's not. Just coming up with a ton of ideas is great but without thoughtful selection the exercise is incomplete. During the divergent phase the focus is on generating as many ideas as possible—essentially answers to your challenge questions—and then selecting carefully the ideas with the most potential for achieving innovative results.

What typically happens is that people will generate a number of new ideas quickly—say within ten minutes. Then, the well seems to run dry and the flow of new ideas runs down to a trickle. At this point, it might be helpful to ask yourself a few questions to spark new avenues of thought. Its been our experience that many groups stop their idea generation before they get to the truly novel ideas, settling only for the first set of ideas that come to mind. As Tony demonstrated in the story, some extended effort can lead to the most original ideas. To stretch your thinking further, take a look at the ideas you've already come up with and ask these questions:

• What can we substitute in these ideas to make something new?
• What ideas can be combined?
• What can we modify about these ideas?
• How can we simplify these ideas?
• How else could these ideas be used?

Remember, the goal of this stage is to force yourself to go beyond the initial brain dump of ideas and open doors to alternate ways of approaching the problem you are working on. Brainstorming is typically how we do this in groups, but think for a minute how you come up with ideas on your own. When do you get those moments of “illumination”? Are you in the shower? Driving? In the middle of a workout?

Sometimes the best approach to finding new ideas is to get as far away from the problem as you can. Once you have a solid understanding of the challenge and you've immersed yourself in the data, step away. Let that information bounce around your subconscious for a while. This is called “incubation.” Trust your subconscious mind to do the processing for you and the chances are that when you least expect it, the lightbulb over your head will turn on and a new direction will be clear.

Of course, this doesn't always happen. Sometimes our subconscious is just as flummoxed as our conscious mind. Here's when you can be more intentional about tapping your imagination. Let's say you've been working on a problem for a few days and your brain is swimming in information. You take a break from it and go to the beach. No ideas come to you. You feel your subconscious is falling down on the job. Don't despair. Instead, think about what you experienced while you were away from the problem. What was at the beach? How did you feel there?

Now ask yourself how these experiences might relate to the problem you are working on. Try it. You're guaranteed to come up with a few more innovative ideas that you would not have entertained otherwise.

Converging

Once you think you've got enough ideas to choose from, it's time to decide which ones are worth pursuing—to converge. It might help to group like ideas together—look for themes of ideas. Perhaps there is a family of ideas that speaks loudest to you or maybe you have several distinct directions from which to choose. If you do not have that one clear idea you are ready to develop, then try to pick a general direction—one theme or set of ideas that you feel has the most potential to get you a new and effective result. From looking within that theme, you may try to combine some ideas or come up with one that captures the theme really well.

Recognizing Your Team's Strengths and Weaknesses

In the story, Damon was the ideator extraordinaire. He prided himself on his ability to generate many ideas and was hard to slow down. He was always the first out of the gate with a host of ideas when they were at any stage in the process that called for the group to be coming up with options. You can recognize people like Damon on your team because they will likely show the following traits:

• Like to look at the big picture
• Enjoy toying with ideas and possibilities
• Like to stretch their imagination and often produce novel concepts
• Seem to wander off topic
• Sometimes take a more intuitive approach to things—sharing ideas that make sense to them, but may not be easy for others to follow
• Enjoy thinking in more global and abstract terms
• May overlook the details
• Have fluidity of thought, a seemingly endless production of new ideas
• Overwhelm others with their ideas
• Are not able to stick to one idea
• Are impatient when others don't get their ideas

Other people, such as Elaine or Juan for instance, may show a lack of patience for this stage. Juan was fine with coming up with one or two workable options and felt no need to spend additional time generating ideas when he had what he felt was enough to move on. Elaine would have preferred to get a particular idea and go with it. You can recognize people who may not have a preference for ideation on your team because they may exhibit the following behavior:

• Be fairly quiet
• Be slow to get the ideas flowing
• Offer stable, tried-and-true ideas
• Seem practical and efficient
• Resist original ideas and novel approaches to tasks
• Become fixed on one option without considering alternatives

How to Move the Group Through This Stage

Most people have been through a brainstorming session at one point or another in their lifetime or at least they think they have. Most people think of brainstorming as just getting a group of people together to start generating ideas. It should be noted, however, that idea generation within groups is not necessarily the same thing as true brainstorming. True brainstorming involves a trained facilitator who reinforces the guidelines of brainstorming during the idea generation phase. Research has shown that with a trained facilitator, brainstorming can help produce up to two and a half times as many ideas (both good and bad) as a group working without one. Without that facilitator holding people to the guidelines, these sessions of brainstorming can become idea-killing sessions, rarely producing the desired results.1

Ideas may come easy to some and not to others. Some people are comfortable with coming up with lots and lots of ideas and others would prefer to generate just one that works and then move on. Moving through this stage too quickly often produces lackluster ideas and rarely creates a true breakthrough. Stay in this stage too long and you risk overwhelming your people with too many options and nothing gets put into action. Managing your group in this stage is key to achieving breakthrough results.

In our story, Damon's preference for ideating was so strong that others in the group often became annoyed with him. Elaine, however, did not enjoy generating ideas at all—to her, it was a waste of time. Kate was confronted with the interesting challenge of managing team members with completely opposite preferences—a situation that surely happens to most leaders. Also, Kate herself had a preference for idea generation, so she had to first manage herself and not get too enamored with the part of the process she enjoys most by being aware of when the team truly had enough ideas to work from. So what did she do?

The first thing she did was to set ground rules or guidelines for her team to follow as they began to diverge. Kate didn't stop there, however. She also paid attention to the convergent part of brainstorming—the selection of the ideas. She brought out some guidelines here as well to help her team be deliberately more creative.

As a reminder, the divergent guidelines to use with your group when brainstorming are as follows:

• Defer judgment
• Get as many ideas as you can
• Allow for novel thinking
• Look for combinations

The convergent guidelines for preserving creativity while selecting which idea(s) to run with are as follows:

• Be appreciative
• Be deliberate
• Remind yourselves of the goal
• Consider novelty

Thanks to Tony dropping in on their meeting, the team also ended up using a divergent thinking tool called “forced connections.” This is a great tool for getting those who may not prefer to be generating ideas involved in the process. It's also a great way to stretch everyone's thinking and get some pretty novel ideas. If you find yourself stuck, or if your team seems to be cooling off too early, you might try pulling out a toy or another object unrelated to the situation you are dealing with and seeing what happens.

In effect, forced connections is a way of engaging your brain in a similar fashion as the beach example used earlier in this chapter. You are taking your mind off the actual problem for a few minutes, thinking about something completely unrelated (toys tend to be good for this), and then going back to the problem at hand. These kinds of brain games, or divergent tools, are great if the facilitator is well versed in their use. Know the game well before you start playing it and you're more likely to have success.

So how do you move a group through this stage of the creative process?

• Know the preferences of your team. How might you predict they will behave in this phase of the process? Will they stay in it too long or not long enough?
• Know your own preference so you can manage yourself well during the process.
• Present and enforce the guidelines for divergent and convergent thinking.
• Be prepared to use some idea-spurring questions or a tool such as forced connections to help the team move on from the obvious ideas and stretch their thinking.
• When converging, look for that sparkling new idea or a theme or general direction to develop into a workable solution.

Note

1. Puccio, G. J., Mance, M., & Murdock, M. C. (2011). Creative leadership: Skills that drive change (2nd ed.). San Diego: Sage.