February 5, 2016

Griggs: Brainstorming is dead; try rolestorming

The marketing team stared at each other, the engineers clammed up and the chip designers simply looked stupid, even though they weren’t. Another Silicon Valley brainstorming session had failed. This idea-generating tool might have been hot with Alex Osborn back in the 1950s but it wasn’t looking good approaching the 2000s.

Rolestorming to the rescue! Give them a role and ask them to brainstorm from that role. Back with the marketing team, I got answers. The engineers actually looked up and showed brilliance. And those designers? I knew they were geniuses; all I needed was to ask them to be someone else.

Back then, no one cared about my graduate degree or thesis topic; they demanded answers. As productivity manager for National Semiconductor Corp., the job was to increase yield, reduce defects and create reliable integrated circuits. We needed solutions so engineers could bring our chips to life. We’d see the NSC logo as manufacturers used them in toasters, scanners, watches, cars and space shuttles.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Ways to thank a caregiver

If you have a caregiver or know someone who has been serving as a primary caregiver, March 3rd is the day to reach out and show them how much they are valued!

It ticked me off that smart people who cashed the company’s paychecks froze when asked for creative solutions. After work they’d gather at Lawrence Station, a local bar we named “Building L” to mock each other for crazy things said during the latest brainstorming session. I noticed that bright, well-paid people were afraid of two things: ridicule and loss of standing. The way brainstorming had evolved opened the door to both. I was guilty of milking Osborn’s brilliant tool past its illustrious lifespan.

At NSC and Intel, we tried quality approaches such as Nominal Group Technique, Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagrams, Quality Circles and the Delphi Method. Like most facilitators, I relied on role playing. They hated the limelight but loved the result. Tired of coloring inside the lines, I added role playing to brainstorming with these rules:

  • Decide if the issue is an opportunity, a prevention or a problem (profile-statement).
  • Get into the assigned or chosen role (saint, sinner, winner).
  • From that role, offer ideas or solutions for the issue (three to four rounds).
  • Hold critique until after ideas are generated (voting and implementation).

Results were shocking. Fear and ridicule evaporated. Roles of Emperor Napoleon or Madonna produced savvy solutions to product marketing roadblocks. I could hardly scribble fast enough hearing what Muhammad Ali or Eleanor Roosevelt might suggest about employee turnover or what Abraham Lincoln or Elvis Presley might offer on succession planning. Rolestorming on employee engagement produced double the ideas of similar brainstorming sessions.

Today, useful roles would be Elon Musk, Lady Gaga, Alex Bezos, Amy Winehouse and various politicians, heroes and even criminals. A huge revelation was that these ideas were already in each person’s head, the “role” dug into their brains and scooped out pearls. People said things they never knew existed inside them.

How rolestorming boosts innovation:

  • Event boundary: When you leave a room and promptly forget why, it’s called an event boundary. A role helps the brain reset for a new task.
  • Professional relevance: A worthwhile feeling you get when valued and compensated for something you do with ease. Rolestorming puts you in that space.
  • Confirmation bias: Here’s where we pay attention to what we already believe while ignoring what we don’t. We get around this by assigning saint, sinner and winner roles.
  • Saint, sinner, winner roles: Widely different roles stretch attendees’ thinking and dig up data from deep inside their brains. Examples are Mother Teresa, Charles Manson and Steve Jobs.
  • Humbling down: When fresh faces and Father Time knock at our cubicle, we notice slippage in skills, boldness and connectedness. No need to add to it with fear and ridicule.
  • Imaginary plagiarism: Similar to unconscious plagiarism, where we hear an idea and later think it’s our own, imaginary plagiarism is a deliberate exercise to build on ideas from others.

Rick Griggs is the inventor of the rolestorming creativity tool and founder of the Quid Novi Innovation conference. Contact him at rick@griggsachieve.com or 970.690.7327.

Sign up for BizWest Daily Alerts