Brainwriting

How effective are your brainstorming sessions? Do all participants have a chance to share their opinions or do the people with the loudest voices dominate the discussion?

When only the loudest voices are heard, it can limit your team's creativity and cause less loud colleagues to go unnoticed.

One way to ensure full participation by all is to use brainwriting.

Like brainstorming, brainwriting is a great way to share new ideas, encourage creativity and develop innovative ideas. The method was developed by German marketer Bernd Rohrbach in 1969.

It is often the case that shy or withdrawn team members may be reluctant to speak up in group brainstorming sessions. Brainwriting overcomes these limitations by allowing them to write down their ideas instead, giving everyone an equal opportunity to participate.

The 6-3-5 Structure

The popular form of Brainwriting is known as 6-3-5, which stands for six participants writing down three ideas in each round for five minutes.

Let's take a closer look at the basic steps for organizing Brainwriting.

The moderator makes sure everyone sticks to the rules throughout the session.

Additionally, the moderator can write the title of the meeting topic on the blank sheets at the top or ask participants to do so at the beginning.

Strive to give people enough time to come up with their ideas and respond to others' ideas. Consider how long people can focus, and make each round short enough that everyone has energy.

The default suggested time is 5 minutes, but you can shorten or increase it.

The moderator hands each participant a sheet of paper and asks everyone to write down three ideas. A timer is then started.

There's no need for any discussion at this point. Everyone writes down ideas in silence.

Ideas can be completely different, even absurd.

When the time is up, each participant hands his piece of paper to the participant to the left.

The timer is reset and started again.

In each subsequent round, participants write down three more ideas. They can be completely new ideas or based on ideas that other people have already suggested on a worksheet. At the end of each round, the worksheets are exchanged.

There can be as many rounds as you like. As a rule, participants begin to feel that there is nothing more original to get out of them.

After the last round, the moderator collects the sheets and puts them on the board so everyone can see the results of the joint work. Afterward, participants start discussing ideas and then decide which ideas are worth trying as a group.

Try an online collaboration tool such as Miro or Mural if you meet online.

Regular brainstorming, where everyone makes suggestions out loud, is a proven way to generate new ideas. If everyone is confident to participate and is willing to consider suggestions from others, it can be an energizing, engaging, and effective way to solve problems.

In practice, many teams have the opposite problem: people are afraid of negative comments or worry that their ideas might not be appropriate.

If you encounter situations like this, try brainwriting next time. It allows people to generate ideas they would usually have considered in a brainstorming session.