brainstorming gone bad

Marc Andreessen blogged recently about brainstorming, pointing to research quoted in the The Medici Effect that states that groups that get together to brainstorm consistently underperform groups that split up and brainstorm ideas individually and then come back together later to share those ideas.

It's an interesting insight, and I've certainly had my share of meetings where I've just wanted to go away and think quietly for a while. But I'd say the bigger problem facing most companies is not generating ideas, but rather knowing when to stop brainstorming and start doing.

I think this is especially a problem in the tech industry, where it's easy to talk about all the cool things you could do with a product. Over and over again, I've seen teams come together to solve a problem and walk away with a half dozen other projects to think about, each with their own problems.

One organization I worked for called a meeting to discuss what should have been a fairly simple request to modify a checkbox on its Web site. They wanted the box to be pre-checked when users first saw it, in hopes that it might raise subscription rates to their e-newsletter. Sounds like something that probably could have been handled over email or in a phone call? Nope. The meeting lasted an hour, with six people representing a variety of different departments and levels in attendance. By the end of the meeting, the original reason for "checking the checkbox" had long been forgotten and replaced with eight new "wouldn't it be great if" ideas. And the associate who had initially been asked to make the change was left sitting at the table wondering aloud if she was still supposed to make the change or not. Awesome.

Organizations like these aren't stagnant behemoths in need of new processes to tease out the next brilliant idea. They're teeming with ideas -- and no ability to focus on just some of them. What they need is not someone to say, "Hey, let's change the way we brainstorm" but rather "Hey, we're past the brainstorming phase on this one and into the decision-making phase."