- As anyone who generates ideas for living can attest,
the creative mind doesn't keep work hours.
The subconscious just keeps churning out possibilities.
That's its job, to keep putting something of value
in the on-deck circle of the conscious mind,
which means that there's a good chance
that the best idea to come out of a brainstorm session
won't actually come out of the brainstorm session at all.
It'll come hours, even days later.
And these ideas have a tendency to be more fully formed,
as the participants have had more time
to work through the nuances.
As stormers are processing everything that happened
in the brainstorm,
it's a good practice to build in a mechanism
for capturing residual ideas.
It starts by letting your stormers know
that you're looking for residual ideas.
Otherwise, those ideas will come to the surface
and disappear.
But, if they know you want ideas
that emerge after the brainstorm,
they're more likely to record them in some way.
Next, communicate how long they have
to generate residual ideas
and what mechanism they can use to communicate them.
It can be email, digital repository, or paper.
Even though we live in a digital world,
you may even prefer to stop by their desk
or hop on a call with them to collect those residual ideas.
And while you're at it,
thank them for their participation in the brainstorm.
Many times what you collect here
will become the idea moving forward.