ZCOPE Blog

Thinking abstractly when brainstorming

Brainstorming is a cool thing. For some time you may throw around the most absurd ideas you‘ve ever had. Then you take the best of them and build something new, innovative, cool, useful…

A very important thing thereby is, that there are not too much boundaries right from the start of the process. Okay, there might be only a small budget – but who knows, also big ideas can sometimes be realised in a small setting.

Other limits are people who can‘t think abstractly. I‘ll show you, what I mean:

People who can‘t take examples for what they are – examples
In a meeting with a customer I came forward with a concrete proposal that only should illustrate a certain type of examples. As I learned at once, exactly this example was not well chosen (not my fault, I didn‘t know about the corresponding internal problems). So I changed some parameters and presented the example again.
But it was too late – one of the meeting attendees had bitten into the story and didn‘t want to release. Although I tried to reword the idea completely different, I had to finally completely drop it. It simply should have been an example but my opposite fought as if it was a fixed intention that must be prevented.

People who take tasks personally
„Cool, and then you could…“ – the counterpart becomes pale and gets narrow eyes. Oops, another person that panics light-years away from the moment when the action points will be frozen. You should await this moment… and there is still the word „no“.

People who don‘t see ideas as developing possibilities
The first scope of an idea is only the starting point: big thoughts can be scaled down afterwards, expensive thoughts often can be realised with less money. One of the best things about ideas is their flexibility. So give it a chance and let them develop.

People who don‘t see the big picture
A real showstopper are comments like „So do you think that‘s the big bringer?“ – no, surely not – it‘s just one idea in a set of many: the strategy, also called the big picture. If you want to thwart someone, ask for this one big idea – it probably won‘t come in a limited brainstorming session.