Brainstorming completely pointless: study
Just adds more noise
A new study published by Bristol University has found 87% of brainstorming sessions are completely pointless. According to the research, the overwhelming majority of these meetings serve no concrete business purpose, simply acting as stages for the noisiest members of a team to gas-bag, while achieving very little.
"There's a real expectation gap between what people want to get out of a brainstorming session, and the result," said study author Joe McSweeney.
"Senior management expect results, and yet most of the sessions we studied descended into either name calling or passive-aggressive name calling. None of the brainstorms we observed actually delivered a meaningful result."
The study identified the four top reasons why brainstorming session fail:
A management consultant got involved. Most consultants couldn’t manage a piss-up in a brewery, so it’s no surprise their involvement is the kiss of death for many brainstorming sessions.
Team-building exercises. Nothing poisons the well of collective creativity like engaging in a series of pointless exercises to exacerbate and deepen the existing tensions within a team.
Janice from accounts won’t shut up. Every brainstorm has a Janice. The anecdotes. The stories about what worked in previous roles. Janice kills brainstorms.
Brainstorming is just a shit idea. Seriously. Whoever thought that putting a bunch of people in a room together with a whiteboard was actually going to achieve anything productive? The best result you can hope for is a half-baked idea that’s been watered down by collective group-think.