How do you break out of stale, established patterns of thinking? What’s the best way to develop new ways of looking at things? And how on earth do you overcome the many issues that can make group problem-solving unsatisfactory processes for all involved?
Through fun brainstorming sessions of course! 
What you need:
- Any writing utensils you are most comfortable with
- Highlighters, colored pencils, markers, or crayons
- Blank sheets of paper – could be lined, graph or plain
- Laptops/computers (if available, you never know when you’ll need to Google something.
- And most importantly, a subject/problem to brainstorm
Best brainstorming practices:
- Take lots and lots of notes
- Use a white board
- Record conversations
- Draw pictures
- Encourage Participation
- Ask questions – there is no such thing as a stupid question!
- Clarify everything
- Sometimes people view things completely differently than what you have in mind.
- Draw out your ideas, make graphs or charts – anything to help you get your point across.
- Do not judge -
- There is no such thing as a stupid idea, so be open to everything
- Don’t force people to participate
What to do with all your notes:
- Categorize
- Once you have lots of ideas written down, it’s time to categorize them all and group them into similar groups.
- Reduce
- Now that things are categorized, take out all of the groups that don’t make much sense at all to the subject you are brainstorming.
- Analyze
- Now take a look at what you have left! I guarantee you’ll have some pretty unique, fresh ideas.
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