Brainstorming: A Changing Art
I feel Brainstorming was to invent new ideas and develop those ideas into something productive related to the challenge or opportunity brainstorming is done for. The article https://www.fastcodesign.com/3060573/how-brainstorming-questions-not-ideas-sparks-creativity gives us an insight to whole new level of thinking and practicing brainstorming for not only getting new ideas, but to develop as many questions related to the topic as possible. This is the new trend in brainstorming which can also lead to better results and deeper analysis of the situation a group is working on. Business consultant Matthew E. May calls this type of brainstorming as “Frame-Storming” which suggests to frame as many questions as possible. Hal Gregson, the executive director of MIT leadership center calls it “Question-Storming” and meanwhile the non-profit Right Question Institute has developed its patented “Question Formulation Technique” or QFT. Different people may call it with different names, but that is not important. What important is how this technique is implemented to get better results. This article gives us a useful opportunity in brainstorming as it allows not only to ask fundamental questions but also questions about each and every aspect related to the topic. Kristi Schaffner, a Microsoft executive who conducts question formulation exercises at the company, says that when people are offering up questions rather than ideas, "they don’t feel the pressure to sound brilliant." This statement motivates the people present in the group to think out of the box even if it is stupid and generate questions and ideas. No one is perfect and everyone have their own opinions and perspectives looking into a problem differently no matter if it really stupid or really brilliant. Even a stupid question can raise an important issue. Also, talking about the QFT model, it lays down several steps which involves the following:
Design a “Question-Focus” which basically means identify the ultimate issue. This is the first and the foremost step. One needs to focus on this step look forward to develop questions.
Generate Questions is the step where the actual development of question regarding the issue should take place by all the members of the group.
Improve Questions is the step in which one needs to focus on quality of the questions and look at the different aspects of each question developed.
Prioritize Questions is a step where you need to select some of the best questions from all the questions developed.
Decide on next steps is a step in which the group needs to decide how to implement these steps and take it forward.