Grant McCracken has an outstanding critique of Jared Sandberg's "Cubicle Culture" column in today's Wall Street Journal. (No link to the article yet, but here's Sandberg's archive--it should be up soon.)
Sandberg derides brainstorming sessions as useless exercises in "blamestorming" or "coblabberation." I usually enjoy his columns, but he's badly off base here--Grant concisely lists eight errors in Sandberg's thinking and sets him straight. From Grant's conclusion:
It is hard to imagine that an institution as smart at the WSJ should be capable of generating so many stupidities about brainstorming. And this at a time when the corporation is having to flourish in an innovation economy where creativity is the new name of the game.
But I guess this tells us that the corporate culture has yet to absorb the most important lessons here. What did Gibson say...that the future is here, it's just badly distributed.
Update: Johnnie Moore weighs in with a thoughtful critique of both perspectives:
Some brainstorms have been satisfying to me, others haven't. Sometimes they generate a pile of post it notes that no-one wants to do anything with, sometimes they generate new ways of thinking. I think sometimes people go away on their own, and have some bright actionable idea partly inspired by the group. Sometimes they come up with something out of pique because they found the group frustrating. Sometimes, not much obvious happens at all. As a fan of complexity, I'd also suggest that it's not always easy to know if they "work" or not.
I think sometimes the fast-pace implicit in the "storming" part of the title is a refreshing change for participants, sometimes it leads to overstimulation and a shortage of reflection. I think between Grant and the WSJ we can see both the up and downsides.
Personally, I like methods that allow us people a flexibility to work at different paces and using different ways of interacting. I tend not to use the word "brainstorming" as for me it's too suggestive of a relentless fast-pace. With more time for reflection, people sometimes generate ideas that are somewhere in the fascinating gaps between one point of view and another. And I like rules-of-thumb more than absolute instructions for how we might all choose to play together.
tags: brainstorming grant+mccracken jared+sandberg cubicle+culture johnnie+moore
