It’s amazing the number of “brainstorming” meetings I’m in that fail to inspire any truly creative solutions at their conclusion. And it’s a big problem.  Brainstorming meetings are expensive.  Take the hourly rate of the people packed into the meeting space multiplied by the amount of time spent, and you have yourself an expensive session with a negative return on investment.  If you’re like me you’ve probably felt that same underwhelming feeling when you walk out of another one of these lackluster meetings.  And if you’re like me, you’re probably trying to figure out how to fix them.

I think you fix brainstorming sessions by hanging in the question.

We’re often in too much of a hurry to reach a decision. To solve the problem. To find an answer which everyone agrees on.  To get on with our busy work lives and out of another meeting. And this, in the instance of brainstorming, actually hurts our results.  Because our desire to solve the problem hones our focus to the most visible solution.  The low-hanging fruit, if you will.  And because it’s readily visible other people reach the same point quickly too, creating consensus and forming a decision.

But is that the right thing to do?  What if we hung in the question longer? What if instead of accepting the most visible solution as the consensus pick, we put it aside and kept pushing?  What if we truly brainstormed in an environment where all ideas were welcomed and more solutions were proposed?  What if there was more discourse, different ways of looking at things, and more spontaneity? I believe we’d get higher-quality thinking, and more often than not, we’d end up with higher-quality solutions to our problems.

So the next time your’e in a brainstorming session challenge yourself and your colleagues to hang in the question a little while longer. Even if you all agree to the obvious solution, put it aside and explore other possibilities.  Even if you come back to the first choice it will be good practice.

The idea of “hanging with the question” comes from Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking (affiliate link).