Free-form brainstorming is great, provided you only want ideas from confident people.
Unfortunately, it leaves many good ideas unspoken.
To involve everyone, structure is needed. Here are two fantastic approaches you can leverage.
Brainwriting gathers ideas through writing. Everyone spends five minutes silently writing ideas on an index card. When the timer rings, cards are circulated to the left. Over the next five minutes, you read the card you received and add more ideas to it. This process repeats until the cards are filled.
The 1-2-4-All method is a more collaborative approach. Participants start by writing down ideas, before forming pairs for joint brainstorming. Next, groups of four work together to compare notes and narrow down to a few interesting ideas. Finally, everyone joins together and shares the top ideas. This approach works well over Zoom using breakout rooms.
If you haven’t tried structured brainstorming before, you’ll be amazed at how many more ideas have surfaced.
Last week, a fire crippled Heathrow’s power supply, and every flight was cancelled. Passengers were rebooked for the next day, doubling the foot traffic at Europe’s busiest airport.
This was a disaster for my friend, who had assumed his Saturday travel plans would be calm and quiet. He struggles with crowds even at the best of times, and now everywhere he turned there were hundreds of people. His stress levels exploded.
What happened next was a rare act of customer service.
A concerned staff member saw my friend melting down and offered to escort him to a quiet space, away from the crowds. She shared her phone number and told him to call if he needed anything.
The relative peace and quiet made the next few hours bearable. And yet, as my friend made to leave for his flight, our heroine stepped in again. Sensing he was still overwhelmed, she made a few calls and arranged a chaperone to help him onto the flight. He was able to board ahead of the other passengers, avoiding the stress and the crowds.
These thoughtful actions rescued the day and won my friend’s lifelong loyalty.
I love this story as a reminder that when culture sets the right tone and people have the trust and freedom to act, wonderful things happen.
When you eat in a Wagamama restaurant, the food arrives when it’s ready, rather than all at once.
This disrupts the dining experience. Starters often arrive after the main courses. You might sit for five minutes with no food while everyone around you eats ramen.
Somehow, Wagamama turned a bug into a feature. They’re unashamed to operate this way – it’s positioned as trendy and kooky.
I try to channel Wagamama when I’m thinking of product ideas. You never know what’s off the table when messing with user expectations.
I’ve learned to stop saying “That couldn’t work” and acknowledge I have no idea.