Launch your own “thinking campaign” - and put a ZING in your marketing - with these awesome brainstorming tips
January 25th, 2008 by Lani Voivod
I like Mike Levy.
I don’t know this guy. In fact, I just “met” him here at my kitchen table, while I was drinking my coffee, breastfeeding my 3-and-a-1/2-month-old baby boy, scanning my email, and thinking about my day. You know, the usual.
But from this brainstorming article I just read - combined with a hasty scoot over to his own company’s homepage - I can tell he’s a guy with a signature style, a can-do spirit, and a deeply rooted reverence for the power of brainstorming.
Mike advocates “private thinking campaigns” as a way to make business brainstorming sessions far more productive and successful than what they become when a group of people show up assuming someone else has done the preliminary brain work. Or worse, when they think an hour of cross-yapping is supposed to give birth to the one single shining idea that’ll then be shoved into the turn-key marketing system and expected to perform by a certain date and time, or else its plug is pulled forever.
Now, don’t get me wrong, one single shining idea CAN be born in a typical corporate petri-dish brainstorming session (”The Petri Dish Method,” I call it)…IF the planets are properly aligned, or else the room is filled with consummate brainstorming pros who know how to play, trust, focus, jibe, bounce off each other, loosen up, accept-and-add, and go along for wild-toad ride that is a kick-butt brainstorming session. (*Or, if a good, strong, seasoned brainstorming coach like myself or Mike comes in and leads the team to brainstorming victory. ;-)*)
But Mike knows and respects the real rules of the game. Which is to say, creativity can be fluffed and optimized, but it plays by its own rules - NOT those of the linear-thinking majority.
As the owner of a company that champions brainstorms - and as the “Chief Scribbler” of the Wild Quills Blog, and thus an active champion of writing and creativity and its power to transform lives - I know Mike’s recommendations work.
Laying the groundwork. Clarifying your goal(s).
Setting your intention(s). Voicing expectations. Using a timer.
Obeying the rules of “free writing.” Riffing off your writing’s “center of gravity.”
These tools work. They may sound simplistic, but they’re not. They take commitment, discipline, belief, trust, and the ability to LET GO and TRUST THE PROCESS.
So thanks, Mike. I enjoyed our time together this morning. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to paste an excerpt from your article, including your rules of free writing.
Whatever the goal, fix it firmly in mind, and start the timer. You now have seven minutes to talk to yourself about the goal.
Delve into it any way you see fit. If you want to write about your company’s history in pursuing the goal, great. If you want to write about the people involved in reaching it, do it. If you want to talk about your dreams or fears surrounding it, here’s your chance.
The only thing you must be sure to do is obey the simple rules of free writing:
And with screaming baby on my lap, I say to you and the world at large: PEACE OUT!
