VALUE
IMPROVEMENT
LEADERS
TOPIC #11
436 words + 2 activities | 1 hr, 14 min (2 read email, 12 watch video, 1 hour meeting)
BRAINSTORMING
PRINCIPLE
Brainstorming is useful for energizing a team and generating ideas, but it isn’t analysis.

TOOLS
•  Traditional brainstorming 
•  Nominal group technique (sticky notes + affinity diagram)
•  Fishbone diagram

APPLICATION
1. Watch the video.
2. If you’re in investigation phase, facilitate a fishbone diagram session.
3. If you’re in improvement design, facilitate a nominal group technique session (more detail in the video).
Brainstorming as Convivial Confab

Most of us are comfortable with this ancient tool rebranded in corporate-speak. One can envision a group of Homo erectus sitting around an unused Pleistocene fire-pit brainstorming ways to miniaturize forest fires for their personal convenience. This fire-pit problem and Family Feud share the same fundamentals. The energy, fun, and familiarity of pondering a problem in a group…that’s brainstorming.
Brainstorming is Just Brainstorming

Brainstorming is merely one or more people applying their reason, experience, creative notions, and biases to a problem in relatively rapid fashion. Brainstorming is not (NOT!) analysis. Those raw elements (creativity, etc.) are not data. Here’s a pattern we see too often, one that shortchanges the value improvement methodology. 
This pattern turns “Plan-Do-Study-Act” into “Do.” When executed this way, brainstorming merely puts structure around your educated guesses. 
What About the Fishbone?

The fishbone diagram (aka Ishikawa diagram, aka cause and effect diagram) is simply categorized brainstorming. It’s one of Kaoru Ishikawa’s 7 friendly tools* because it is so easy. The hardest part is keeping a group on track. 

Pro-tip: If a fishbone diagram leads your team to broad root causes such as “management challenges” or “poor communication” or “discipline issues” or the classic “inadequate staffing,” the facilitator let go of the wheel and allowed the team to steer themselves into the comfortable hopelessness of “ain’t-my-problem.” Fishbones should produce specific, tangible causes that can be addressed with equally specific solutions. 

Two important points that must be hammered home:
  1. Any causes “identified” are hypothetical until they have been verified with data. 
  2. Keep your team from implementing solutions until the hypotheses have been proven. E.g.: If a brainstormed cause is, “not enough bladder scanners,” don’t buy more scanners until you’ve taken a full inventory of the scanners available.
Go Forth and Brainstorm

So by all means, yes, please brainstorm. Fishbone too. Just don’t ascribe more power to these tools than they deserve. For more specifics on the techniques of traditional brainstorming, nominal group technique, and fishbone diagramming, watch this video (11:38).

* run charts, scatter diagrams, check-sheets (not the same as checklists), histograms, Pareto analysis, and process maps being the other six.
ACTIVITIES


1. Watch the  video.

2.  If you’re in investigation phase, facilitate a fishbone diagram session.

3. If you’re in improvement design, facilitate a nominal group technique session (more detail in the video).
LINKS


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