Last week
Denis tried to do a brainstorming. But didn’t. It works well if you follow the rules but is a waste of time if not.
A few rules: Ask a concrete question (if you can answer in a listable form, it’s probably concrete)
Give time to think about the ideas (just 1 minute gets much better ideas)
Participants give one idea per round until all the ideas run out (it keeps everyone in the room active)
Don’t allow evaluation, criticism or explanation. (they prevent creativity, spoil the rhythm)
Make sure the colleagues can see the ideas. (it helps creativity and is easier to work with later)
This week’s story
With the above in mind, Denis creates a list with a few decent ideas from last week’s brainstorming and so he decides to have a vote to decide which would be best for increasing sales. He writes them up on the flipchart and announces it wouldn’t be fair of him to vote as the boss. Laura, Dora, Peter, David and Kata decide that democracy has to be better than the endless arguing with no result that they have been having until now and so get their thinking hats on. Laura was fastest and said that she voted for idea 3. David agreed. Kata and Peter thought that idea 5 was the solution. That left Dora, after a bit of thinking and a quick smirk at Laura, she decided that she would vote for 5 too.
Thanks to bending light on flikr for the photo
Throwing he hands up in the air, Laura cried foul play and that it was unbelievable “the idiots” hadn’t voted for facebook. Kata took offence and let Laura know where she could stick her facebook. Clueless, Denis can only wonder why things went wrong this time too.
Any suggestions?
