Coaching practices for Idea Generation Phase
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Idea Generation Phase, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I grab the first idea that pops up and start poking holes in it immediately, so I never get more than two or three options on the table
- I keep dragging the big-picture dreamers into the tedious finishing work and asking my finishers to brainstorm wild ideas, and everyone’s miserable and the handoffs are a mess
- The moment an idea forms, this critic in my head pounces and kills it before I’ve even written it down, so I end up staring at a blank page with nothing because nothing was ever allowed to survive long enough to grow.
- We fill the whiteboard with dozens of ideas, the energy is great
- The second an idea pops up I’ve already told myself why it won’t work, so it dies before I’ve even finished thinking it
Practices that may help
- Ideate — generate options before judging
Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
Design Thinking, Step by Step - Assign project phases to genius-matched people
Route early ideation to Wonder/Invention geniuses and execution phases to Tenacity geniuses.
The 6 Types of Working Genius (Patrick Lencioni) - Defer all judgment during ideation
Separate the generating phase from the evaluating phase — they cannot run simultaneously without killing output.
Creative Confidence, Made Practical - 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 - Defer judgment during generation
Generate ideas with no criticism, then evaluate in a separate pass.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - 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 - The obvious veto: reject the first three ideas before keeping any
Force yourself to generate more by vetoing the first plausible ideas — they are almost always the most obvious ones.
Deliberate Constraints, Made Practical - 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 - Start from the constraint, not the goal
Define the hardest boundary first, then generate within it — rather than generating freely and pruning to the constraint.
Deliberate Constraints, Made Practical - Balance divergent with convergent thinking
Treat creativity as two phases — open up to generate, then close down to select.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas
Related concerns
- How To Generate Ideas
Aim for a high number of ideas; the best ones tend to come later in the list.
Go for quantity first
- Idea Generation Technique
Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
Ideate — generate options before judging
- Idea Generation Techniques
Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
- When Divergent Thinking Defer Judgment
Generate ideas with no criticism, then evaluate in a separate pass.
Defer judgment during generation
- Creative Process Stages
Break your creative output into small, reusable units — outlines, summaries, frameworks — that can be combined and repurposed.
Express work in reusable intermediate packets
- Defer Judgment Brainstorming
Separate generating ideas from evaluating them — criticism comes later, never during.
Defer judgment during ideation
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.