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In this Live Session, we do a whistle-stop tour of 5 Workshop Tactics to create an Idea Storm.

👉 View the Miro board for this session

What is an Idea Storm?

A bunch of different tactics put together to create a larger workshop. In our session we used the following 5 tactics:
How Might We
Mind Mapping
Crazy-8’s
T-Bar Format
Rose, Thorn, Bud
A session that lasts 90 mins where you can take a problem and come up with a solution for it really quickly

Tactic 1 – How Might We…

Tip: Before starting you should have run a diagnostic session to find out what kind of problems you need to solve. Choose one of these problems for your Idea Storm Session.

If you haven’t already seen the How Might We tactic Session, please do watch this here.

Step 1: Write your problem on a post-it note and put it somewhere for everyone in the group to see.

During this session, we gave ourselves the following fictional (or in Charles’ case, very real) problem:

“How might we get Hughie to sleep all the way through the night.”

It’s alluring to start coming up with ideas straight away, but you need to make sure you are following the step-by-step tactic.

Tactic 2 – Mind Mapping

Step 1: Place your problem in the middle of your workspace

Step 2: Start “brain dumping”/writing your thoughts and ideas around the problem. If new ideas stem from something you have just written, try linking these so that your mind map is easy to follow.

Brain Dumping: Free associating words and ideas, it really is a dump of everything that is going on in your mind when you think about a certain word or problem. Allow your mind to wander and put down any words or ideas that come up.

Tips for facilitation:

For smaller groups, timebox this tactic to 10 minutes – 30 minutes is advised on the card but this is the time you should allow for when you have larger in-person groups.
Let your participants know that they can look at other people’s mind maps to help draw ideas from each other.
On Miro, prompt your participants to move their mind map to an area that has a bit more space to work.
You can get people to do this on paper, photograph it and upload it on to the Miro Board or whatever system you are using. Make sure that your participants are tech-savvy if you are going to do this.

Tactic 3 - Crazy 8’s

Step 1: Draw 8 identical boxes, side-by-side, that are big enough to draw/plot your ideas in

Step 2: Using your mind map to help you, allow a minute and a half (if running the workshop virtually, only allow 1 minute for in-person workshops) to draw or produce an idea in box number 1 that helps solve your chosen problem.

Step 3: Repeat this process a further 7 times until you have 1 new idea per box.

Step 4: Once everyone has finished – go through some of the ideas that people have come up with. If you are running a smaller workshop, you should have time to go through all of the ideas.

Tips for Facilitation:

To save time, on Miro, have the 8 boxes already drawn out beforehand, then copy and paste these for your participants.
If you are running this workshop in person, give everyone a piece of A4 paper and ask them to fold it until the paper is split into 8 boxes.
Emphasise to your participants that these ideas can be as crazy as they like!
If people aren’t confident in drawing, let them know that they can use images/emojis/text to help form their idea into something visual. It doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as the essence of the idea is there.
If you are using Miro for this workshop, there is a pen tool that your participants can use to draw their ideas
On Miro, click ‘P’ for pen
On Miro, click ‘T’ for text
When presenting the ideas at the end, give your participants a limit of 3 sentences of explanation per idea so that people don’t talk for a long time

Some of the suggestions we had were:

White noise/heartbeat sounds
Soundproofing
Trial ideas and evaluate what works and what doesn’t
“Rent a Granny Storytelling”
Mindfulness – can Hughie be picking up on the stress of his parents?
“Scarecrow Dad”

Tactic 4: T-Bar Format

Step one: Ask your participants to create a T-bar table like the one below

On Miro, you can draw this and copy it like you would have done for the Crazy-8’s tactic. Make sure you ask your participants to move their table into space where they have room to work.

Why use the T-Bar tactic?
The T-bar tactic helps articulate an idea in a particular way that is easily explainable to others. It gives your participants a level playing field because everyone’s ideas are in the same format.

Step 2: Choose one of your ideas that you came up with during the Crazy-8’s exercise. At the top of the T-Bar put a catchy name for your idea.

Step 3: On the left, copy your illustration over (virtual)/quickly redraw your idea (in-person).

In the big space on the right, write 3 or 4 bullet points about your idea. Make sure you’re precise with what your idea is. Below are some prompts to help people with this part:

Brief but precise info on what the idea is
What it does
Any additional features you want people to know about

Step 4: Set a 5-minute timer for everyone to complete the information in their T-Bar table.

Tip: Sometimes it’s beneficial to have silence in a group as it allows your participants to have the time to focus on articulating their ideas properly.

Tactic 5 – Rose, Thorn, Bud

The rose, bud, thorn tactic is a great way to give constructive feedback to one another. It’s a great way to get thoughts written down without having a stop and start the conversation that usually happens when giving feedback - especially if you have a lot of loud voices or big personalities in the room.

This tactic emphasises that the ideas in this workshop don’t have owners - they’re all there to share and build on. Any idea is the group's idea, and it’s there for people to steal, use, adapt.

Step 1: Make some post-it’s on Miro (virtual) / give out post-it’s (in-person) in the following colours:

Red/Pink (Rose) – something you like about the idea
Yellow (thorn) – things to look out for/problems/ things that might not work
Green (bud) – areas for opportunity, growth, and improvement

Step 2: Ask your participants to individually look at each idea (not just their own) and give feedback using the rose, thorn, bud system. Before you begin, really emphasise what each colour represents to ensure that there is no confusion.

Ask participants to place their feedback post-its accurately on the T-Bar. E.g. if you are giving feedback on a specific part of the idea, make sure the post-it is placed next to that part.

Tip: Remind your participants that it’s helpful to review their own idea as well. It’s easier to be objective about your own idea after already critiquing the others.

Step 3: Go through the feedback together as a group. Ask the person that wrote the post-it note to explain why they put it.

Tips for Facilitation:

You can use the Rose, Thorn, Bud tactic as many times as you like during the workshop – it fits in well after the Crazy-8’s tactic.
Remind your participants that the “thorn” feedback is not necessarily bad, just something to watch out for and consider rather than being a direct negative!
Other tactics you could use during this part of the session are Round-Robin or the STIR method
At this point, it’s useful to put these ideas into some sort of matrix, like an Impact Effort Map

Why should we hold idea storming sessions?

The process takes you from having an initial problem to a bunch of interesting ideas that you can start adapting and trying out
You can straight away take some ideas and see if they are viable, using assumption and risk, and start moving these into some kind of prototype.
It’s an incredibly flexible framework – you can use it with any type of issue. Can add more tactics on to the end of rose, bud, thorn
You’ll start to notice that the idea storming sessions follow a diverge/converge diamond pattern that helps to form a robust idea

Psychological Safety and why we should be aware of it during workshops

When giving feedback, it’s important to create an environment of rewarded vulnerability. Allowing people to say “I don’t understand” or “I don’t like” without people jumping in to defend their idea will make the session more positive and inclusive of all participants. People shouldn’t fear giving their critique to the rest of the group.

To create this safe space, you can use a method called “Stones in the Pond”, where everyone can throw an idea into the mix without any judgement.

Be aware that psychological safety can also be used as an excuse to not include certain members in your sessions. E.g. someone might not be invited to a meeting because they might jeopardise the psychological safety of the meeting.

You can anonymously test the psychological safety in the room by doing exercises like the “Fist of 5” which is a great way to gauge how safe your participants feel before starting the workshop properly.

The Theory of Inclusion

Sometimes there is a tendency to include the same kind of thinkers in a group, so you start to get the same types of ideas forming because the participants all think the same.

No matter your expertise and background, creating these inclusive teams are important because people from different cultures and backgrounds will generate different ideas and your output will be better.