OFF-MUTE 🔈
🗓️ You’re invited to a brainstorm.
😓 No one speaks, the energy is flat or everyone has wild ideas that don’t apply to the meeting.
🙋♀️ We’ve all been there.
👀 That’s because a productive brainstorm requires focus and structure.
💡 Our Executive Vice President of Story Crafting Samantha McGarry shares her 7 tips to get the creative juices flowing that lead to new ideas:
🎯 Know your goal. What are you actually trying to accomplish? Include the right people to help and ensure they each bring different skills and backgrounds.
✍️ Do prep work. Prime yourself and others to get the most out of the meeting by providing some advance materials, but not too many — just enough to give context to what you’re trying to get out of the brainstorm.
💬 Set the tone. Let everyone know that all ideas and voices are welcome. If someone is hogging the air, diplomatically invite everyone to share the time. Read the room to see if people are bored or uncertain. In these cases, ask a “what if” question to change the energy and tone of the conversation.
🖼️ Think big. Don’t get distracted by limiting thoughts like, “there’s not enough budget,” “no one would ever agree to this” or “we tried it before and it didn’t work.” Imagine what’s possible!
👂 Be an active listener. Hear other points of view. Pause before you speak and ask lots of open-ended questions.
✅ Reflect & make a decision. Select a small group of people to assess which ideas are strategies and which are tactics. For example, a new strategy might be the realization there’s an entirely new audience worth exploring or a new story worth crafting. The tactics would be the channels used to execute the ideas.
⏰ Give it time. Ideas need to ferment, like yeast or good wine. Sometimes you need to sleep on it.