So, I was continuing the campaign for the Revolution, and wanted to expand the audience interaction. I could’ve used the tired ‘turn to your neighbor’ technique, but I had a thought (dangerous, that). Could it be improved upon?
As I may have mentioned, there has been a backlash against ‘brainstorming’. For example, the New York Times had an article about how it didn’t work, saying that if you bring people into a room, and then give them a problem or topic, and then get them to discuss, it won’t work. And they’re right! Because that is a broken model of brainstorming; it’s a straw man argument.
A real model of brainstorming has the individuals thinking about the problem individually beforehand, before you bring them together. When you have them not have a chance to think independently, the first person to speak colors the thoughts of the others, but if people can come up with their own ideas first, then share and improve, it works well. The room is smarter than the smartest person in the room, as the quote has it, but the caveat is that you have to manage the process right.
So how does this relate to the ‘turn to your neighbor’? It occurred to me that a clear implication was that if you thought to yourself first, before sharing, you’d get a better outcome. And so that’s what I did: I had them think for themselves on the question I presented, then share, and then stop.
Now, to be fair, I didn’t have time to ask for all the output, instead I asked who had come up with ‘formal’ for a question on what supports optimal execution, and who came up with facilitating the flow of information as a solution for supporting innovation. So we have practical limits on what we can do with a large audience and a small amount of time. However, I did ask at the end of the first one whether they thought it worthwhile. And I asked again of a subset of the audience who attended the next day workshop (“Clark Quinn‘s workshop on Strategic Elearning is awesome” was a comment, <fist pump>) what they thought.
Overall the feedback was that it was an improvement. Certainly the outputs should be better. One was “energized”. The overall take of the large audience and the smaller one was very positive. It doesn’t take much longer, because it’s easy to do the quick thinking bit (and it’s no easier to get them to stop sharing :), but it’s a lesson and an improved technique all in one!
So, now you know that if you see anyone doing just the ‘turn to your neighbor’, they’re not up on the latest research. Wonder if we can get this to spread? But continue exploration is a necessary element to improvement, and innovations happen through diligent work and refinement. Please do try it out and let me know how it goes! And, of course, even just your thoughts.
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