RTV# 30 - Have you tried the chicken-scratch napkin approach?

A Year of Raising the Village, Week #30.

Group Brainstorm: the chicken-scratch-napkin way! Ideas becoming collaborative!

You are about to hold a brainstorm session and expect a real free-for-all in the idea generation department. You're armed with multi-colored pens, energy galore and loads of flipchart paper. You open the space, ask for group guidelines and cheer “let’s brainstorm”. A pin drops...and you hear it. Yikes. In idea generation, this happens from time to time. We have facilitated boisterous brainstorm sessions and the slower, quieter kind.

Here’s one way to boost creativity and expression in your next group brainstorm session:

Hold a chicken-scratch napkin idea festival! Hand out napkins to all participants (possibly several per person). Ask each person to chicken-scratch down all of their ideas for the topic/issue/project at hand. Go around the room and ask people to share their chicken scratch ideas and then toss the napkin into a basket in the centre of your room.

Why would this help a brainstorming session? It invites...

• The sharing of undeveloped thoughts
• More full-bodied uninhibited responses
• Open feedback – both to receive AND give (really, the ideas are quickly jotted on a napkin, how attached are we going to be?)
• A “letting go” of our ideas and the collaborative gathering of many ideas.
• Many great innovative ideas start as a chicken-scratch kind of note - so be open to great potential here!

We are busy writing our RTV activity books which are overflowing with group process ideas, including other ways to extend brainstorming. Can’t wait to share them with you! In the meantime, help fuel the collaborative idea-fire and share YOUR ideas with us: e-mail, facebook or tweet your favourite brainstorming technique.