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Organizations need creative ideas to grow and innovate. Employees are creative because they have expertise, are motivated and can think well. Teams are creative because they benefit from the synergy between people. The most common method to turn that creativity into something concrete is the brainstorming. But that method actually does not work at all.
Brainstorming was devised by Alex Osborn in the 1950s. It has four rules:
- You must generate as many ideas as possible.
2. You must give priority to unusual and original ideas.
3. You must combine and refine the ideas
4. You can not criticize the ideas during the brainstorming session.
This informal and unstructured process is based on two ancient theories from psychology. Namely that the presence of others has positive consequences for people’s motivation and that quantity leads to quality. Osborn even claimed that brainstorming would lead to fifty percent higher performance. But his theory has been studied for almost seventy years. What seems? Brainstorming produces no better and no more ideas than if all individual employees would work independently. In fact, there are even indications that brainstorming damages creativity.
Why brainstorming does not work
In a survey more than 800 teams were analyzed. The conclusion was that individuals produce more ideas when they do not interact with others. Brainstorming mainly damages the larger teams. Especially if they are subsequently also under a magnifying glass from a manager and if the ideas must be handed over orally instead of in writing. Moreover, teams give up faster when they notice that all their efforts do not yield anything.
There are four explanations for this. First, there are always people in a team who do not really commit themselves. They do not do their best and deliver little. This is the result of a psychological phenomenon known as the bystander effect. We are less likely to do something if we know that others can do it too. In addition, people are also afraid of what others might think of their ideas. If there is someone who is very good at a brainstorm, the rest may think they are not good enough. This reduces the overall performance. This effect is even stronger if someone is introverted or insecure. Then there is the human tendency to find an average. The best in a group adjusts its performance downwards, until the average of the group is reached. We often see this in sports teams when they play against a much worse opponent. They lower themselves to the level of the opponent. Finally, there is the fact that, no matter how large the group is, we can only introduce one idea at a time. The amount of ideas reaches a plateau when there are six to seven participants in the group. After that the total amount of ideas remains the same, and the amount of ideas per person falls.
Why we still brainstorm
But why is there so much brainstorming? This is probably due to the ever-increasing specialization in the field of work in organizations. The expertise is divided equally among the team members. If a problem needs to be solved that requires different levels of knowledge, it is important to put together the brainstorming group in the right way. As a result, the available knowledge is more diverse and the problem is highlighted from several perspectives. This benefits the solution. In practice, participants have to be carefully selected for a brainstorming session.
Much coordination and coordination is also required. If you have ever been to a brainstorming session, you know that that is not always the case. Even if groups do not produce more or better ideas, a brainstorm is more democratic. As a result, employees may feel more involved and use the solution sooner. Whether that solution has quality or not.
It comes down to the fact that brainstorms are still used to do what feels intuitively well. It is a wonderful placebo in the arsenal of a manager. It should work even if there is no evidence that it really works. So go ahead and put that brainstorm in the agenda. You can not achieve anything with it, but your team feels better.
