Coaching practices for Brainstorming Solutions

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

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

• Every time we get the team in a room to brainstorm, the loudest two people steer it and everyone else goes quiet
• In our group sessions I have a thought, but by the time it’s finally my turn to say it out loud it’s slipped away
• We fill the whiteboard with dozens of ideas, the energy is great
• I’ve got maybe two ideas for what to do about this and both feel hopeless, so I shoot every other thought down before I even finish it
• I treat every idea on my list as its own separate thing, judging each one solo, and it never occurs to me to mash two of them together

Practices that may help

1. Brainwrite instead of group brainstorm
   Have people generate ideas silently and individually first, then pool and build.
   Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas
2. 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
3. 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
4. Generate solutions without premature evaluation
   List as many potential solutions as possible before judging any of them.
   Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical
5. 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
6. 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
7. Reverse brainstorm: solve the opposite problem first
   Ask "How would we guarantee the worst possible outcome?" — then invert every answer.
   Lateral Thinking, Made Practical
8. 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
9. Use morphological analysis for wicked problems with many interdependencies
   The method shines on problems too complex for brainstorming to cover adequately.
   Morphological Analysis, Made Practical
10. Sample inventive principles to generate solution directions
    Apply one or more of TRIZ’s 40 inventive principles as generative lenses, even without the full contradiction matrix.
    TRIZ: Systematic Invention and the Logic of Contradictions

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.