Quick. Quick. Tell Me What You Think of Brainstorming
Want another way to get high-quality ideas?
We’ve all participated in a brainstorming session. A rapid-fire volley of ideas. Ideas come so fast that it’s hard to record them all.
But what if someone in your group doesn’t like to compete for talk time? Or what if you had an entire group that is reluctant to speak up, doesn’t like conflict, and defers speaking until others (elders and native born) speak first?
That’s exactly what the Community Outreach Program (COP) had to consider when designing three community meetings for San Francisco’s Japantown. How can we get them to be involved and active participants in rezoning their neighborhood?
Don’t just sit there. Write something!
Nominal Group Process at work — Kris Schaeffer, recorder at the Japantown community meetings, sorts the various sticky notes.
Instead of brainstorming, COP used a different way to get ideas and input — Nominal Group Process. NGP substitutes quiet solo thinking time for the noisy group pile-on.
Here’s how you can use NGP works to generate ideas in your meetings:
Start by providing information about the topic.
Ask an open-ended discussion question.
Ask each person to write down his/her input on a sticky note.
Write as many ideas as you want. Just make sure there’s only one idea per sticky note.
Allow 5 minutes for quiet writing time.
Conduct the round-robin report-out session: The facilitator calls on participants one by one to read an idea. If a participant has the same idea as one expressed earlier, ask for another idea.
Display the ideas. To do this, the recorder collects and sorts the sticky notes, or writes the participants’ comments on flip charts.
Take turns calling on participants until each has contributed all of their notes.
At this point, you will have generated a lot of input and heard from everyone.
The purpose of the Japantown meetings was to have community input on the various changes to the rezoning plan. These comments will then be incorporated into a final draft to be presented back to the community before sending it to the Planning Commission. With this objective, COP recorders sorted the sticky notes and captured new ideas on flip charts.
Nominal Group Process at work — Kris Schaeffer, recorder at the Japantown community meetings, sorts the various sticky notes.
In other situations, NPG doesn’t stop when the group has generated its ideas. Depending on the meeting objective and available time, the NGP session could continue. You could continue to use NPG to discuss, refine, revise, vote, or prioritize the ideas. “For a deeper dive into nominal group process and how it compares to brainstorming, check out
http://crs.uvm.edu/citizens/decision.htm.”
You can use Nominal Group Process for other audiences. For example, NPG gives you balanced participation when you have a very diverse group — a large difference in rank, a mix of extroverts and introverts, newer members joining an established team. Use NPG when you’re concerned that you won’t get many ideas or that people will be silent. NPG is appropriate when you have a controversial topic and participants fear taking sides or creating conflict.
Use this “ready-aim-fire” technique the next time you want to get many great ideas — no matter who your group is.
Kris Schaeffer, CPLP, is the In-Service Manager for the Community Outreach Program, a part of the Golden Gate Chapter of ASTD. The Community Outreach Program provides non-profits with customized workshops taught on-site to their people, and designs and facilitates large group meetings.