Page 223 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

214 STORMING THE BRAIN

process, it’s a good idea to save qualifying criteria until later as well.
When you announce the criteria by which the final idea(s) will be cho-
sen too early (some groups do this at the beginning), you narrow the
playing field too soon. Remember what we said about planning and
getting attached to the outcome and how it limits the possibilities?
Well, articulating the success criteria too soon not only limits possibil-
ities, but it also tends to eliminate that valuable fertilizer that is so cru-
cial to the creative process.
Bringing criteria into the process when final or near-final judg-
ments are being made also eliminates much of the subjectivity from the
evaluation. It become less a matter of whether people like it or don’t
like it (which you can never fully eliminate, nor do you want to), and
more an exercise of whether it fits the bill or not. This keeps the
process less personal. It’s hard to make a subjective judgment on an
idea and not offend the person who thought of it.
Use numeric scoring. When getting to the short strokes, I like to use a
silent voting system. Again, you eliminate debate, which is rarely a fair
fight between people of differing ranks, and you make the process
more quantitative, which brings in a little, not a lot, of science. The
simplest numeric scoring system is to allot each player on the team a
finite number of votes, which I do by simply having the individuals
place a checkmark on the sticky note where the idea is written.
Let’s say we have five players on a team with five votes each. That
puts 25 points into play. Ask people not to be persuaded nor dissuaded
by one another’s votes. Then simply rank finalist ideas according to the
math. In this example, the highest score could be a five, the lowest, of
course, is zero. Afterward, I ask people to rearrange the stickies with
the highest-scoring ideas on the top of the page. This usually results in
a pyramidal effect, with people agreeing on just a few ideas at the top,
which is most often a fair representation of what all parties really think.
Save the final list for a later date. If at all possible, I recommend you
save final judgment for a later date, if only until the following day.
Even a period of as little as 24 hours will help give you a fresh, more
objective perspective.
If you don’t have the time, do something to change the dynamics
from the brainstorming session proper. I like paring the group down
for this phase. Whereas 30 to 35 people, in groups of 5 or 6, is ideal for
the brains-against-the-wall portion of the process, I prefer 4 to 6 peo-
ple for the final distillation.
Bring in fresh minds. For the final selection process I like some fresh
perspectives. Bring in people who are not at all close to the project for
the clearest opinions. This is also a good time to include people you