The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 56 - Brainstorming

Transcript:

Jen: Hi, Peter.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: I can see you.

Pete: Well, I mean, you can always see me.

Jen: But I mean, you're sitting in my office in New York City.

Pete: I am. I am, I am. Here I am.

Jen: And we're crowded around one microphone because I forgot mine at home.

Pete: I think it still works, though. We just, you know, kind of head-butt each other as we lean in to talk.

Jen: Okay, well, earlier today, here in my studio in New York City, you lead some of the people in my community through a really great brainstorming exercise. And I would love to share some of that experience with our listeners.

Pete: Perfect. I love to brainstorm. I spend almost every day in some form of brainstorming. So, let's unpack it. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Listeners, before we dive in, I just want you to visualize this: We're sharing a mic. [laughter] I'm five-foot-one, and he's six-foot-seven. So you can imagine the see-saw effect that is happening every time one of us speaks. So, you're welcome for that. So today, Peter, you lead us through a brain dump. And I thought, maybe you could share what questions you asked. Because the experience from our end (from the participants end), was just amazing.

Pete: Thank you. I appreciate that. I think it's...I think we might have spoken about this once upon a time, maybe it was the whiteboarding episode. Where, it almost surprises me to hear you say that, because it didn't feel like it was a particularly rigorous framework, or anything. It was very much a fluid exercise. But anyway, the first thing we did, just to share, is we talked about this question of, "What do you love about a certain thing?". So the idea was- we're unpacking a certain topic. And so I started with, "Let's talk about what you love about said topic.". And I was the scribe, and there were about fifteen people in the room. And basically, everyone was yelling out ideas. And the constraint was: There were no, there are no constraints. There are no bad ideas. I just want to know absolutely everything that you can think of, both physical and mental, and feeling-based, that you love about this particular place. And so that was how we kicked off.

Jen: What I found to be fascinating...because my role was to be a fly on the wall. Although I did jump in a couple of times, because I could not help myself. But for the most part, I stayed silent. So I was really in observation mode. And the thing that I noticed was there was an immediate burst of ideas. And the burst lasted for quite some time. And then when it came to what seemed like its natural end, you didn't ask another question. You, you just let that sit. And then a second burst came. And the second burst felt like maybe it contained things, not even that people were consciously holding back, but things that had, like, some pretty deep meaning to it. Is that a typical response?

Pete: I think so. Yeah. I think that silence is so, so underrated. And what I think silence does is it creates tension. And I think of this as very generous tension. That most of us, extrovert or introvert, benefit from time, and space, and silence to essentially process our thoughts. And that what usually happens, in my experience in a brainstorming session, is everyone comes out of the gate hot. Everyone's got ideas, everyone's flowing, it's great. And then you hit this point of like, "Oh, well, there's all my six ideas.". And we got to that point. And so, the tempting thing to do is to keep talking, as the facilitator. But the, I think the magic that can happen is if you're willing to just sit in that discomfort, sit in that tension, sit in that silence, what will usually happen is- it might be that an introvert speaks up, that they really benefit from that silence. Or it might be that people have had time, and permission to think a bit more, and, I guess, go a layer deeper in their thinking, and come up with another burst of, "Oh, I hadn't thought about this? And what about this?". And then, like, another tangent occurs, which is really cool. So yeah, it's, it was very deliberate. And I think goes to so many things around coaching, goes to so many things around making change happen. Which is generously creating tension, using silence.

Jen: I also want to just zone in for a second on the words you used in the question. You didn't say, "What do you like about this?". Or, "What is good about this?". Or, "What are we feeling happy about?". Or any sort of, like, mild words. You used the word "love". "What do we love about this thing?" And so, a room full of people talking about what they love...it sort of like, it generated a sense of togetherness, and inspiration that made the next question you asked become easier to answer. Because everyone had somehow agreed, like, it's okay to talk about what isn't working (which is going to come next), because we've already agreed we, we love this thing in so many ways. So now there seemed to be, like, a commitment to making it better, after agreeing on the love. So that was a very smart choice of word.

Pete: Thank you. Which, yeah, I think I wrestled in the moment about the next question. Which was, I was trying to think about what's the...is it the inverse of love that we need to talk about next? Is it, "What are the things that you don't love?". Some people frame these as, "What are the opportunities?". And in the end, I settled on just calling it out, of what it is. Which is: annoyances. Like, in any situation, in any project, in any community that we're a part of, I think it's human nature to have things that might grind us, or annoy us, or irk us in some way. So, now that we kind of leveled the playing field, which is- "We all agree that we love this place. And these are all of the reasons why. Now let's get honest, and talk about, 'What are the things that annoy us?'.". And that was kind of a fun, an interesting conversation.

Jen: I got so much out of that conversation. Including the way you framed, "Why call out what is an annoyance?". Because you said, "This is your opportunity to shape the future of the thing you love.". Which was just so brilliant. Because it helps people see how calling out the things that annoy them, actually, is a form of caring, is a form of generosity.

Pete: Yeah. And I mean, I have to shout you out for this. I think this is a really interesting dynamic, in the sense that- if you were to go into a company and get a bunch of leaders together, and their boss was in the room, and ask them to talk about what annoys them about their boss, I think a lot of people would struggle with that. I suspect there would be a level of fear there. There would be a level of insecurity there. There would be a level of, "Oh, I don't want to share what I'm annoyed about, because you're going to use that as bait against me.". And so, what was unique about this community is- because I knew you deliberately asked me to facilitate this session, that I knew you were comfortable going down this path. And, it felt like because we talked about what we love, everyone was happy to share what they're annoyed about, even though you were in the room. So like, I feel like that was a hat tip to you, as the person that's sort of in charge of creating this space in the first place, which I don't think is always the case. That, talking about what annoys you can be risky, in a certain group. But that for really productive brainstorming sessions, if you can create a space where it's like, where people felt, feel comfortable talking about what annoys them, then yeah, you can frame it as: The reason we want you to do this is so that we can make your life better. Is so that we can make this thing even better. We can make that list of things we love even longer.

Jen: What you're describing is psychological safety. Which is, of course, vital to trusting teams. And I think is often misinterpreted to mean sharing all sorts of deep, dark secrets at work. When instead, psychological safety is really about relevant candor. Speaking relevant truths in moments when it matters.

Pete: Just on that, can you tell me...did you deliberately not say, "Radical Candor"? Which is a very popular book, I know, in a lot of circles.

Jen: Yes, that's correct.

Pete: Tell me more.

Jen: Whatever the thing is that is being shared has to be relevant. That's it, period.

Pete: Okay, good. I feel like in certain circles, this book "Radical Candor" has gotten a lot of attention. And I think often being misinterpreted as, "Oh, that just means I can be an asshole, and tell everyone what I think about the life, or their, you know, situation, and like, just give my opinion on things.". So, I think what's really interesting about the way you framed it is, it's relevant candor. So like, it has to have some context, and some intention behind it. It's not just because I could just say whatever I want.

Jen: No. Saying whatever you want, when it's irrelevant, actually damages psychological safety. [laughter]

Pete: [laughter] Yes, it does. Alright, so, we did that for a little while. And then the third part of this brainstorming session was...so what was interesting, actually, is- what happened towards the end of the annoyance section, is people started being like, "Yeah, so what we should do is this.". And they actually started coming up with solutions to their annoyances. And so I had to, like, tame them a little bit and say, "Let's park that for a second.". And we did some more annoyances. But then we went into, "What are some solutions? Or things you would like to see change? What are some ideas that you have on what we could change?". And that sparked a whole bunch of noodles.

Jen: Those noodles tasted real good. The ideas were amazing, because the setup was such that when we got to the ideas, everyone was in agreement about what we were building toward, even though we didn't really know what exactly we were building yet. So, we had established what we love- the things we wanted to enhance, and do more of. We'd established the annoyances- the things that were getting in the way of the thing that we love. And then these solutions were ways to bridge the gap between the annoyance and the love, and also the bigger vision, the, the Why.

Pete: Hmm. Yes. What I really loved about this particular session, too, was...I don't know if you were thinking this. But as the, as the participants were shouting out their answers, I was like, "Oh, these are so easy for you to implement.". Like, these ideas? You could make these happen overnight. What an amazing opportunity to make the lives of this community even better. And these are, like, such quick wins.

Jen: Well, I think what that pointed out...and, I agree with you completely. Like, 80% of the ideas were things that I hadn't thought of, but if someone had brought them to me, I would have done them already. So, what it says to me as the leader of my own community here at the studio, is that I need to be able to offer space for people to bring their ideas to me. Like, it's a shame that they felt they had to wait until they were offered a facilitated brainstorming session to share an idea that is so easy to implement. So that's on me, as the leader. And my, my hope is I can figure out some mechanism for that, and then come back on to the podcast and share how that went.

Pete: Yes, I love it. So that was, like, an idea that didn't even get written down, but like a takeaway for you. That's really cool. So, ideas were flowing. And they were all good. But like I said, I feel like they were ideas that you could just implement overnight. And so I wanted to finish with the last question. Which was, "What if we 10x it?". And we've done an episode, I think, on 5x-ing/10x-ing at some point, on this podcast. And so I said, "Alright. Think bigger. Like, blow this right up. What does 10x all of this look like?". And that was a particularly fun conversation as well.

Jen: The thing that was amazing...you had to keep reminding everyone to really 10x it, because the impulse was to retreat to playing it safe again. But looking at the very long, two-pages worth of, you know, those, like, wall-sized sticky notes that were generated, there are basically only a couple themes that can be extracted from it. Like, they're great ideas. I look at the list that was generated today, and I can basically break the whole list down into three themes, that are what my community here at the studio sees as their ideal future. Is putting more love, and care, and resources into these three things, which came out of dozens of grandiose ideas that all boil down to something very human.

Pete: Very cool. Very cool. Okay, so that was, like, the process. That was essentially what happened over the course of an hour and a half. We basically spent an hour and a half discussing four questions. And, before I throw to you for any takeaways that you had in general...I was talking to a few people afterwards, that were in there. And they were like, "Oh, wow. That was really productive. That was really amazing. And, you know, I'm really interested in this idea of how you create change within groups of people like this.". And I was like...the thing I love about it, as the facilitator, is- it doesn't feel that it's that difficult to pass on the skills, or the knowledge, or the framework for how we structure these things. Is...all it was, was questions and space. And a couple of bits of butchers paper, essentially. And that what came out of that is this amazing list of actionable (and some grandiose) ideas that I have no doubt will be implemented, and will make this an even more amazing space for all the people involved.

Jen: Yeah, I was really blown away by how ninety minutes could bring a group of people together like this. And it has made me commit to the idea of having groups of people come together with questions, and space more regularly. And I think it would be easy, even in an environment that is super structured (like a corporate environment)...maybe not to take ninety minutes. But you could do what we did today in thirty minutes. You could ask those four questions of: "What do we love? What are the annoyances? What are the ideas? And what are the 10x ideas?", in thirty minutes, and completely realign a group of people around a common purpose. And, uh, I recommend it. It was amazing. So, thank you for doing that, Peter.

Pete: 'Course, it was a lot of fun. And I was just noodling now on how, in a very meta level, it was the culmination of a number of other podcasts that we've recorded before. Like, it was whiteboarding, which we've done an episode on. It was 5x/10x thinking, which we've also done an episode on. And it was, in a way, reflection scripts, which we've done an episode on. Which was: "Can we pause for a moment, and reflect on what we have in front of us? What's working? What's not? What we love, what's annoying us? And then, how we might make it even better.". So, it all came back to things that we'd spoken about on this podcast before. So, that's pretty cool.

Jen: Well, there you have it. Humans, questions, and space. That's how change gets made.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.