Mitch Ditkoff, Idea Champions, The Heart Of Innovation Blog
February 05, 2011
Want a Brainstorming Breakthrough? Get the Right Question!
Want a Brainstorming Breakthrough? Get the Right Question!
There's a simple reason why so many brainstorm sessions are a waste of time. The problem statement being pitched to participants is the wrong one.
This is not surprising -- especially when you consider how little time most facilitators put into preparing for a session.
Here's what happens: The person who calls the session is usually scrambling -- overwhelmed, over-caffeinated, and running from one meeting to the next. Out of breath, they pitch the topic to the group, but the topic is either vague or secondary to a more essential challenge that remains unspoken.
G.K. Chesterton, one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century, distilled the phenomenon down to 13 words. "It's not that they can't see the solution," he said. "They can't see the problem."
Then, of course, there's also the phenomenon of perception bias.
Pitch a challenge to an IT person, and it will be seen as a technology problem. Pitch it to a CFO, and it will be seen as a financial problem. Pitch it to a marketing person and it will be seen as a branding problem.
Or as a wise man once said, "When a pickpocket meets a saint all he sees are pockets."
If you plan on running an ideation session any time soon, don't just stumble into the room and pitch a vague topic to the group. Do your homework. Make the effort to identify the REAL issue before asking for ideas. If it's the WRONG QUESTION you present, no amount of idea generation is going to make a difference.
--------------------
Who Are We?
Idea Champions is a consulting and training company dedicated to awakening and nurturing the spirit of innovation. We help individuals, teams and entire organizations tap into their innate ability to create, develop and implement ideas that make a difference.
Mitch Ditkoff is the co-founder and President of Idea Champions, a highly acclaimed management consulting and training company. He specializes in helping forward thinking organizations go beyond .business as usual. and establish dynamic, sustainable cultures of innovation.
Educated at Lafayette College and Brown University, Mitch has worked with a wide variety of Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies who have realized the need to do something different in order to succeed in today's rapidly changing marketplace. These clients include: GE, Merck, Allianz, Lucent Technologies, NBC Universal, AT&T, Goodyear, Pfizer, A&E Television Networks, General Mills, MTV Networks, Duke Corporate Education, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Dominos, and a host of others.
At the heart of his work lies the fundamental belief that a company's most important capital asset is the collective brain power, creativity and commitment of its work force and that this asset can be significantly leveraged when people are provided with the appropriate setting, systems, tools and techniques to think (and act) out of the box.
Prior to his work with Idea Champions, Mitch was a principal in Ki Learning Systems and a Senior Consultant with the Inner Game Corporation — both organizational development firms dedicated to catalyzing superior performance in the workplace.
In addition to his consulting work, Mitch is also an accomplished public speaker and writer. Author of Awake at the Wheel: Getting Your Great Idea Rolling (in an uphill world), Banking on Innovation, Free the Genie, Thirst Quench Thirst, and the very popular Heart of Innovation business blog. In addition, he is the founder of Face the Music (the world's only interactive business blues band) and co-founder of Ingenuity Bank (enterprise-wide idea management software).
Mitch lives in Woodstock, New York, with his wife, Evelyne, and their two children, Jesse and Mimi.
--------------------
Acess Content Source: http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2011/02/want_a_big_idea.shtml
********************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
No comments:
Post a Comment