Buzzing Can Help

Buzzing is not just the sound of bees; it is also a type of group brainstorming. Depending on the culture of your business, it can be an extremely productive exercise that taps into your employee’s creativity. There are few ways as effective as buzzing to eliminate which ideas are groupthink and which stand out. Buzzing works best in large groups but can be modified to fit any type of brainstorming session.

The first thing to do is to break up your group into smaller groups of 4-5 people. Have each group elect a facilitator and a secretary to record all the ideas. Then deliver the content you want them to discuss. Give each group 30-40 minutes to exhaust every idea and then have them, one group at a time, call out their ideas as you write them on a chalk board. Some ideas will be repeated; put a check next to these. You will soon have a plethora of ideas; choose the original ones and discuss as a large group.

You can mix this procedure up and try some different concepts. One idea would be something like speed dating where participants jump around from group to group. There are many ways to implement this process, but the ultimate goal is to stimulate the way your people think, to get original concepts. This type of format could help to alleviate the monotony of daily meetings. I believe that meeting behaviors should be altered every couple of months to keep at bay the monster named mediocrity.