Coaching practices for Bad Ideas Brainstorm

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Bad Ideas Brainstorm, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• When I try to brainstorm how to make this work I freeze up and self-censor every idea as not good enough
• We fill the whiteboard with dozens of ideas, the energy is great
• Every time we get the team in a room to brainstorm, the loudest two people steer it and everyone else goes quiet
• Every time I try to brainstorm, the critic and the dreamer are talking over each other
• An idea barely forms in my head before I’ve already torn it apart

Practices that may help

1. Reverse brainstorm: solve the opposite problem first
   Ask "How would we guarantee the worst possible outcome?" — then invert every answer.
   Lateral Thinking, Made Practical
2. Harvest and cluster ideas after the session
   The generation phase is worthless without a systematic harvest: sort, name, and prioritize the output.
   Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical
3. Brainwrite instead of group brainstorm
   Have people generate ideas silently and individually first, then pool and build.
   Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas
4. Separate divergence from convergence sessions
   Keep idea generation and idea selection in separate sittings — never mix the modes.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
5. Defer judgment during ideation
   Separate generating ideas from evaluating them — criticism comes later, never during.
   Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical
6. Deliberately generate bad ideas first
   Start with the worst ideas you can think of — bad ideas are faster to generate and reveal hidden assumptions.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
7. Use brainwriting to defeat production blocking
   Have everyone write ideas silently at the same time, then share — this is the group brainstorm that research actually supports.
   Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical
8. Go for quantity first
   Aim for a high number of ideas; the best ones tend to come later in the list.
   Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas
9. Combine and build on others’ ideas
   Treat every idea as a building block — the best ideas in a session are usually hybrids.
   Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical
10. Maximize quantity of ideas before evaluating
    Set an explicit quantity target — generate at least 20 ideas before reviewing any of them.
    The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection

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