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

[tOM Trottier]

On Saturday, June 24, 2006 at 2:32,
Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote:

> tOM Trottier:
> 
> > If your "brainstorming" converges to a vanilla "solution", that's not
> > brainstorming. 
> 
> So you are saying that there's no unsuccessful brainstorming?

Judge a year later.

> > 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. 
> 
> Homogenous groups, almost by definition, don't tend to generate wildly
> divergent ideas. And I'm not sure why one would try to extract "mostly
> impractical" ideas from such a group either.

Homogeneity is overstated. Your balding accountant may be a paintball warrior or closet sea 
kayaker. There is no Normal.

> > If people are shy or invested, change the value system from "most practical"
> > to "most ridiculous" to get everyone imagining.
> 
> If brainstorming is not a therapy session, encouraging participants to
> generate "most ridiculous" ideas serves what purpose?

Getting "off track." Tracks confine.

> > Give candies or halloween kisses for each idea which is wilder than the one
> > before.
> 
> Other than raising triglycerides, what would this do?

Change the group dynamic. Replace reward/punishment shibboleths with dynamic rewards.

> > Introduce randomness with randow words from a thesaurus or dictionary, eg,
> > "How does "aardvark" relate to "handling customer complaints" when you get
> > stuck.
> 
> Brainstorming is a means to an end: solution of a problem. While enhancing
> interaction, communication, participation, etc within a group is worthwhile,
> in the end, the point is to find relevant, effective, imaginative and,
> hopefully, competitively advantageous solutions. Otherwise it's very easy to
> get sidetracked.

So long as the problem is the focus, the most impractical and ridiculous solution may be the germ 
of a great solution. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

> Brainstorming is akin to what an actor does with his voice and body
> exercises, getting into character before the curtain goes up. But we care
> about what he delivers on the stage, not what goes on behind the curtain.

The actor need the rehearsals to see what doesn't work.

> Groupthink is NOT the result of not having enough impractical, ridiculous or
> wild ideas but, despite all that, it's gravitating towards solutions that
> are perceived to be comfortable, conventional, risk-averse, etc. It's that
> gravitational force and the desire to be part of the team that impedes
> out-of-the box thinking.

Agreed. So how do YOU dissolve box walls?

tOM

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