4 Crazy Tips for Awesome Brainstorms

As an entrepreneur, you most likely began your business based primiarily on your own thoughts and ideas. Even if you asked others for their opinions, most entrepreneurs are pretty committed to their own vision.

As you grow your business, you will most likely make the shift from being the entrepreneur as the sole creative contributor to developing a team of creative thinkers who can help propel your business forward.

Taking in different perspectives through regular brainstorming allows small business owners to:

1. Increase growth rates
2. Increase in-house creativity
3. Recognize new opportunities
4. Capitalize on untapped skills
5. Engage team members 

Brainstorming has great value to the entrepreneurial business, but conducting great brainstorms requires trying different ways of tapping into your team's creativity. Here are some non-traditional ways to improve your brainstorming sessions:

1. Go for a Walk - when you are literally facing the same direction together, focusing your body on something external, you tend to get a better flow. Some of the most creative entrepreneurs regularly take their meetings outdoors while walking. Team members quickly learn to wear comfortable shoes, and a lot of work gets done while circling the office or street block.

2. Get Out of the Office - often when we meet consistently in the same room or location, we get stuck on the same ideas. Many business owners conduct all brainstorming sessions in the same conference room in which they meet clients, discuss employee reviews, and meet with their lawyers. The conference room itself becomes associated with "doing business," but what you actually want is for the people with whom you're brainstorming to think in a totally different way. Rent someone else's conference room, go to a park, or meet in a clients' conference room to stimulate new ideas.

3. Bring in an Outsider - it's impossible to avoid the groupthink that develops within any organization. Bringing in an outsider ensures different ideas. Entrepreneurs, with their strong personalities, are at high risk of engendering groupthink in their organizations. The employees decide they can turn off original thought because the entrepreneur has so many of her own. To tap into your employees' creativity, bring in an outsider who will challenge them (and you!) to think in fresh, new ways.

4. Welcome Discomfort - the really good ideas feel really uncomfortable. They often elicit feelings like "we can't possibly do that!" Those are the ideas that we really need to sit with to see if we are rejecting them simply because they are uncomfortable vs. genuinely impossible. Next time you hold a brainstorm, assign someone to pay attention to every time the group shuts down an unconventional idea. Take special note of the "sacred cows" that team members vociferously assert should absolutely not be changed. There is usually gold (not always the obvious kind) in there.

Virginia Ginsburg is founder and chief consultant at Swell Strategies. She is passionate about supporting small business owners and entrepreneurs in starting and running successful enterprises. An avid reader, in this blog she reviews books and articles and relates specific learning points back to entrepreneurial businesses.