Brainstorming is For Losers
I've always hated "brainstorming" -- both the teeth-rattling stupidity of the word and the act itself, which has always seemed to me to a kind of free-form goofing off. Sure, there's a lot of collaboration in my work as a writer, but there's also a lot of useless time-wasting in groups and meetings. In other words, sometimes many brains are worth less than one. From a piece by Susan Cain in the NYTimes:
SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.
But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
And this just seems spot on to me:
...brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity. The brainchild of a charismatic advertising executive named Alex Osborn who believed that groups produced better ideas than individuals, workplace brainstorming sessions came into vogue in the 1950s. “The quantitative results of group brainstorming are beyond question,” Mr. Osborn wrote. “One group produced 45 suggestions for a home-appliance promotion, 56 ideas for a money-raising campaign, 124 ideas on how to sell more blankets.”
But decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” wrote the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”
Which makes this alarming:
Our schools have also been transformed by the New Groupthink. Today, elementary school classrooms are commonly arranged in pods of desks, the better to foster group learning. Even subjects like math and creative writing are often taught as committee projects. In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question.
Underpinning all of this collectivist, brainstorming groupwork, is, I think, something nasty and totalitarian. All thoughts must be produced -- and vetted -- by the hive. Squirreling away in silence and solitude is condemned for being "anti-social" or, worse, ego-driven. When you're alone you have interesting and (maybe) revolutionary thoughts. When you're in a group, you naturally tend to fit your thinking into the prevailing pattern.
No wonder our public schools love this kind of group thinking so much.
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Comments:
Oct '10
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
david foster: Real work in organizations, especially real innovation, generally requires an *alternation* between group work and individual work. If we're creating a new commercial aircraft, we're going to need to draw on the ideas & opinions of salesmen, aerodynamicists, structural engineers, regulatory attorneys, etc, and this is going to need to involve considerable interaction among people with these skill sets and experiences. But it is also necessary for the aerodynamicist to be able to go do modeling and experimentation on his own.
And almost certainly, we're going to need a "product champion," an individual who is willing to put his career on the line, make hard decisions that will not be to everyone's liking, and fight the internal and external battles required to make the product a reality. The idea that innovation can be achieved by a group alone is a chimera. · Jan 17 at 8:32am
This is a good description, I think. You do need both, but I don't think we put enough emphasis on the skills needed for group interaction.
Dec '10
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
Misthiocracy
Problem. One is not necessarily guaranteed by the other.
I'm one of the privileged few that has an office with a door. I spend most of my work time enjoying inordinate levels of privacy.
Too bad that doesn't translate into freedom from distraction. There's always SOMETHING vying for my attention, even if it's squirrels outside the window being merry. · Jan 17 at 7:33am
And, if you are concentrating on something, the phone is going to ring. See Dilbert
Aug '10
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
The King Prawn: Before I even read the whole post... · Jan 17 at 7:32am
Funny. Because it's true.
May '10
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
This may simply be stating the obvious, but basically, the more you deviate from the (group) norm, the more of an impediment it is to have to work with the group. Whether you are below or above the group is a different question--why I've never been able to know and feel with any confidence whether I'm especially bright and clever; or developmentally disabled. Seriously!
May '10
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
All things in moderation. Every kid should learn to work both alone and in groups. Every person will eventually have to be productive both ways. And the ability to adapt is a necessary skill for everyone.
Loners benefit from editors and co-creators. That doesn't mean they must accept group input and produce only group works. But alternately spending one's time alone, then in a group, then alone again (and so on) is a useful habit for anyone.
Aug '10
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
I remember from my days writing music for TV commercials that in meetings with the creative teams at large ad agencies there was a whole lot of "What do you think?" tossed around the table. And decisions were slow and safe.
But working with small agencies, where the owner was likely the creative director, things happened. Fast. And, in my experience, the smaller agencies took more creative risks.
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
I don't know if I agree, Rob. Some of Ricochet's coolest features were results of brainstorming sessions. Someone in the group (often you or The Logo) will throw out some inchoate idea, all of us will argue about it and mold it and redefine it, Busy System Admin will tell us if it's even possible, and then for the next few months we all work on making it happen.
Brainstorming can be an essential part of progress, I say.
Mar '11
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
An interesting article that--in my SOLITARY opinion--misses the real point: teams (groupthink) were NOT put in place by institutions in order to make better decisions. Groupthink has as its genesis the desire/need for decisions to "bought into", a byproduct of our new national belief in egalitarianism vis exceptionalism. Similarly, Groupthink makes it difficult to point fingers, assess blame when the group decision produces execrable results. Again--a byproduct of the new egalitarianism that insists that credit goes to all and blame goes to none. If any creativity comes out of this practice, it is but a happy co-incidence, a piece of good luck.
Sep '10
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
Diane Ellis, Ed.: I don't know if I agree, Rob. Some of Ricochet's coolest features were results of brainstorming sessions. Someone in the group (often you or The Logo) will throw out some inchoate idea, all of us will argue about it and mold it and redefine it, Busy System Admin will tell us if it's even possible, and then for the next few months we all work on making it happen.
Brainstorming can be an essential part of progress, I say. · Jan 17 at 8:56am
See my Disney link for the difference between Brainstorming done poorly (what Rob is referring to and how most people do it) and done well.
Mar '11
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
The coordination that needs to go on is sort of separate, at least to me. It isn't brainstorming, it's communicating. A little bit of give and take is going on in those meetings. The group projects I was forced into in school bear very little resemblance to these.
Creative brainstorms, to the extent they happen, are informal, between 2-3 people who have worked together before, and fairly open-ended things. Everyone is free to laugh at each other's ideas -- in fact, sometimes the solution can be found lurking in the jokes. These bear no resemblance whatsoever to what we did in school.
Apr '11
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
I'm not so sure it convinces the lazy kid to do anything. It teaches the motivated kids to avoid being dragged down by the lazy ones if it teaches anything.
Feb '11
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
Percival--"Creative brainstorms, to the extent they happen, are informal, between 2-3 people who have worked together before, and fairly open-ended things."
Agree that effective "brainstorms" are usually informal. Quite often, they are the result of chance encounters.
One example: The first computer-based airline reservation system, SABRE, was the result of a conversation between an IBM sales rep and the CEO of American Airlines when they happened to be sitting next to each other on the same flight.
Jan '12
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
Cooperative learning is a sacred cow in the education world. I'll never forget one course in grad school when the professor, in a misguided application of cooperative learning idea, put us into groups where we were to discuss the mission statements we had written for our various organizations and come up with a composite statement! Huh???
Apr '11
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
It's easy to see a collectivist component in group work. But to be fair most of the problems that people have expressed in this thread are due to poor design of a group project and/or poor execution of it.
In school projects a big problem is that there is not an equal motivation or incentive for success, and often you have a bad mix of personalities. Everyone has been in the group with the slacker but what about the group with the tyrant, who anoints themselves group leader, and expects everyone else to do their bidding with little input of your ideas. And the tyrant often sees the rest of the group as slackers unwilling or incapable of seeing the project through without their direction.
Society is the product of a healthy collaboration where people bring their individual gifts, talents, and skills to bear on a problem. Everyone's role is not always equal but but meets the requirement for successful collaboration.
May '11
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
Sorry Joseph, I couldn't disagree more. Training kids to be dependent on the group is the antithesis of what America is all about. Yes, Americans are generous and are willing to help BUT, Americans are (or were) rugged individualists. (Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Henry Ford, Cornelius Vanderbilt)
Two thoughts regarding learning in groups:
First, it was invented by lazy / incompetent / socialist teachers. The idea of letting the students teach each other while the teacher oversees is lazy.
Second, how are students going to learn personal responsibility and risk / reward? If you do the the work well, you can stand out. If you get lazy, you fail.
Not to long ago I signed up for a graduate level on-line business course. Upon finding that it was a team-concept class and that I would have to collaborate with 5 others to get a grade, I cancelled it. I wanted to be graded on what I learned not how well I "played" with others.
As for learning to cooperate in the workplace, That's learned in K thru 3. After that, you do what you have to do to survive. (Maintaining ethics and morals as you go.)
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
Pilli
Sorry Joseph, I couldn't disagree more. Training kids to be dependent on the group is the antithesis of what America is all about. Yes, Americans are generous and are willing to help BUT, Americans are (or were) rugged individualists. (Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Henry Ford, Cornelius Vanderbilt)
Rugged individualism has always been a part of American culture, but so has group agency. In no other country or culture in the world do you see so many charities, volunteer organizations, clubs (Rotary, Lions, Elks, etc.), and advocacy groups. That's something Tocqueville saw and admired in his tour of America, and it's something that's made America strong and exceptional.
Mar '11
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
I'm shocked that anyone who claims to be a conservative disagrees with Rob on this point.
Dec '10
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
Hey! I resemble that remark. I prefer the term "benevolent despot" to tyrant though.
May '11
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
I couldn't resist.
Mar '11
Re: Brainstorming is For Losers
Diane Ellis, Ed.
Pilli
Sorry Joseph, I couldn't disagree more. Training kids to be dependent on the group is the antithesis of what America is all about. Yes, Americans are generous and are willing to help BUT, Americans are (or were) rugged individualists. (Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Henry Ford, Cornelius Vanderbilt)
Rugged individualism has always been a part of American culture, but so has group agency. In no other country or culture in the world do you see so many charities, volunteer organizations, clubs (Rotary, Lions, Elks, etc.), and advocacy groups. That's something Tocqueville saw and admired in his tour of America, and it's something that's made America strong and exceptional. · Jan 17 at 9:32am
What Tocqueville admired was the ability of American communities to band together over a point of contention or need that was obvious to all concerned. He didn't get misty-eyed over brainstorming.