Page 224 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

The Benefits of Chaos 215

may have liked to see participate in the brainstorming session but for
some reason couldn’t make it.
I also like to use fresh minds to go back to the outtake pile(s) to
make sure nothing got lost between the cracks. Often some of the best
ideas in a brainstorming session don’t even make it out of the early
rounds. If not the best ideas, they are often the freshest ideas, in part
because they “didn’t make sense.” (See Chapter 15, page 155.)

THE BENEFITS OF CHAOS

With all the do’s and don’ts and other guidelines outlined here, you
may be thinking, “Boy, Monahan is proposing a lot of rules to help me
break the rules.”
Well, you’ve pretty much figured out the method to the madness.

When left to their own devices, most people use little discipline in their
creative thinking, only to yield totally predictable results.

This is particularly true of groupthink. This chapter (in fact, the entire
book) is aiming to impose an order—or, perhaps better stated, “ordered
disorder”—to the process to better ensure a less predictable outcome.
When I run a brainstorming session it is my objective to create such
a discord of thinking that it causes participants to be constantly off bal-
ance. I look to constantly create an effect not unlike the first shot in bil-
liards when all balls scatter every which way, when anything can
happen, and something often does. When most people think through
an issue, it’s more like calling a shot, lining it up and sinking it, which
might be good when shooting pool, but it’s the worst way to try to find
a new idea.
At one session I ran a few years ago to brainstorm a new name for
a company, we had the typical chaos, the antithesis of Robert’s Rules
that characterizes the groupthink meetings I conduct. In a session like
this, there can be only one winning ideating team. However, after-
ward an executive came up to me and said, “Everyone’s happy. They
all think it’s their idea,” implying that the chaos had an unexpected
benefit.
Sometimes to keep your thinking unpredictable you need to create
a little orderly chaos. I say, do whatever it takes to get to fresh ideas.
The rewards are worth it.