If you think you suck at Ideation, that’s a signal that you’re doing it well.
You’ve probably brought ideas into meetings that your team didn’t like, or customers didn’t like it during prototyping, or even launched a feature or product that the market didn’t love.
My acting coach once told me to “embrace the suck”. There’s truth in that because to get to an innovative idea, we have to get really comfortable developing, acting on, and measuring ideas that end up sucking.
This article is centered around the Ideation curve.
Here’s the TL;DR of this article:
The Art Behind Ideation
To have an imaginative and fun Ideation session, embrace these 3 key concepts from improv: Atmosphere of Play, Radical Acceptance, “Yes, and…”The
Structure Behind Ideation
Ideation sessions can benefit from some “hard rules” to add structure to play. I offer 5 rules to keep your team from wandering off into an Ideation dead zone.
The Art Behind Ideation
Let’s start with the Art. Art is something intuitive, imprecise, and subjective, a skill cultivated through practice and imagination. In short, ideation is the art of the possible – problem solving with no limitations.
And in order to untether yourself and your team, you’ll have to embrace a few concepts from improv. Here are 3 creative cornerstones of improv that can be applied to Ideation:
- Atmosphere of Play – Kids are always playing and they are always just trying to have fun. They make jokes about things, they laugh and ask silly questions. Remember and embody these qualities of kids when Ideating.
- Complete Acceptance of Ideas – It’s really hard to not be judgmental, especially when a silly or stupid idea gets thrown out. There will be a time to use your critical thinking skills but that’s not during Ideation. Take off your thinking hat when Ideating so that Ideas and the people pitching them, can flourish.
- “Yes, and…” – You’ve heard this one. Once you’ve accepted someone’s idea, just say “Yes, and…” and finish the phrase with something that builds on their idea.
At first, these will feel uncomfortable, but you’ll be surprised how easy they are to pick up.
The Structure Behind Ideation
“Structure” . Ideation sessions can benefit from some “hard rules” to add structure to play. After all, the team is seeking to generate ideas and structure guides everyone towards the goal.
Here are the ways that I structure Ideation sessions:
- Set the environment – Play music, even if it’s virtual. Lay out all the markers and post-its so it’s easy for people to pick up. And remind everyone that this is a judgment free zone, this isn’t about any 1 idea or any 1 individual. It’s about the team winning.
- Time Box – Ideation can’t go on forever. It’s high intensity and needs to be with fixed time intervals. 30-45 minutes is probably the sweet spot, but depending on your team it could be up to 60 minutes. Going too long can be exhausting. You will inevitably come back to Ideation.
- Use Prompts – I’m recommending these prompts because they are easy questions that spark discussion quickly (you can even casually drop them in meetings). After one or two questions, ask the team to share their ideas. Note there are a plethora of exercises out there and I’ll write another post about that but if you’re looking for some – check this out.
- “If we had to spend $1 Billion on building the solution, what would it be?”
- “What is the absolute worst way to solve this problem?”
- “What is something we could implement tomorrow?“
- “Look at the absolute worst ideas and flip them – what comes up?“
- Go for Quantity, not Quality – The goal is to put as many ideas out there as possible. Go for 20 “bad” ideas instead of 2 “good” ideas. To unlock Quantity, let go of perfectionism or any judgment that may come up from sharing a really silly idea (that’s why I love asking the “worst idea” question early on).
- Switch between Silence and Out Loud – For some exercises, ask people to say their ideas out loud when they add their sticky. They shouldn’t give a description, it should just be a tagline, such as “hire monkeys to help us learn how to play”. And then other times, ask your team to ideate silently. This allows for those who are less outspoken to throw their ideas out, without fear of judgment. At some point, you’ll ask everyone to share a few of their ideas.
Using these structures will help run a High Fun, High Quantity Ideation session.
Conclusion
When you and your team run an Ideation session – you should have no idea where it is going. It should feel absurd, fun, stupid, exciting, risky. There is an Art and Structure to everything; apply some of the principles above to run your Ideation sessions. Hopefully, the principles will sneak their way into how your team operates moving forward. Even a 1% improvement in less judgment can dramatically increase confidence, creativity and risk taking.
Although Ideation is often what comes to mind when people think about design thinking, it is just one mode of thinking out of 5. Ideation comes in the middle of design thinking sprints. It never really stops, after building a Prototype and Testing it, you’ll most certainly return to Ideation. When you do inevitably return, you’ll have an Art and Structure in place to turbo charge your team’s output.