[compute] Re: [Sigia-l] "Team work" not what's cracked up to be?

[tOM Trottier]

On Friday, June 23, 2006 at 21:29,
Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Christopher Fahey:
...
> > A good brainstorming session needs to be run by a leader whose job it is to
> > encourage as many ideas as possible as quickly as possible, to record them in
> > detail, and to silence all judgements until the session is over.
> 
> If that works for you, great. But if you are suggesting it as "best
> practice," no way. 
> 
> Brainstorming in no way should be considered a quantitative and aggregating
> process. It shouldn't be literal or linear. In fact, I'd argue that the real
> value of brainstorming is the very promise of connecting nodes of thinking
> and POVs of individuals of a sufficiently differentiated group, and thereby
> enhancing the individual value of contributions towards a greater sum. There
> isn't a whole lot of point to brainstorming with homogenous groups, which is
> indeed what (corporate) teamwork often (but not always) ends up becoming.
> 
> So to the extent that brainstorming conforms and coagulates towards the
> perceived expectations of likeminded people it intersects with the adverse
> affects of teamwork. It becomes more normative than illuminating, to say
> nothing of its drain in productivity.

If your "brainstorming" converges to a vanilla "solution", that's not brainstorming. Even with a 
homogenous group, you should end up with a whole bunch of wildly divergent mostly impractical 
ideas which shed new light on the problem and its environment. 

If people are shy or invested, change the value system from "most practical" to "most ridiculous" 
to get everyone imagining. Give candies or halloween kisses for each idea which is wilder than 
the one before.

Introduce randomness with randow words from a thesaurus or dictionary, eg, "How does 
"aardvark" relate to "handling customer complaints" when you get stuck.

tOM

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