The Ultimate Brainstorming Exercise! (10 Minutes Long)

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One of the most common types of workshops that every designer, PM or consultant will have to run in their lives is the plain and simple Brainstorming Workshop.

There are literally billions of Brainstorming workshop styles out there you can choose from…

But, many of them are completely broken because of one big thing:
They end up being big, messy discussions where the loudest person wins... or where the boss wins.

This is because many Brainstorming techniques don't take human-nature, implied hierarchies or even varied personalities into consideration.

Well, in this simple, 10-minute Brainstorming exercise, you can be sure you're going to get some great ideas on the table without a lot of pointless discussion and tension.In this video AJ&Smart CEO and Workshop expert, Jonathan Courtney, shares a step-by-step guide on how to run one of the most effective brainstorming workshops around, the ’10-For-10’!

(00:16) - Introduction
(01:18) - Overview of the Process
(05:31) - How To Run

Workshop name:
10 for 10

Workshop reason:
Brainstorming

Workshop outcome:
A curated list of solutions and ideas for a challenge...

Time: 10 minutes

Materials needed:
A block of Square Sticky notes per person(any colour)
+ A sharpie per person
+ a Time Timer or similar visual timer
+ Voting Dots (any colour)

Minimum participants: 2
Maximum participants: 10 per table

10 for 10 is the fastest, easiest and most commonly used brainstorming method at AJ&Smart!

It's lightweight, fun and super useful! The only thing you need to start a 10 for 10 session is a topic. Since you can use this method to brainstorm almost anything, there are very few limitations, still, it's always better to give some examples:

- Generating ideas for a company event

- Generating ideas for new features for an app

- Generating ideas for new facebook ad copy

- Generating headline ideas for a new landing page

- Generating ideas to improve your office environment

All you have to do as the facilitator of a 10 for 10 session is turn the topic you want to Brainstorm into a "How Might We" phrased challenge.

This is very simple. Essentially you are rephrasing whatever challenge or topic you have into something that is actionable!

Check out our FREE 1.5 hour free training on the Design Sprint here:

Thanks for watching!

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The Ultimate Brainstorming Exercise! ( Ten For Ten)

[AJSmart]

How do you generate ideas? Will you try the 10-For-10 exercise to cut through busy meetings? Let us know in the comments below!

[danielvincent]

Love this.
Big fan of your vids - both the content and delivery. You're super bright, likeable and authentic. So many content creators are bright but agonising to watch because they try too hard. You've found magic.

[zma]

This is very inspiring! I tried this yesterday with my team yesterday. As we all do remote work, so we used Figma to simulate the whole process. First, I created some sticky note templates, let the teammates create an empty page to write things on the notes. The Next step, the facilitator, which is me myself, collect all the notes and put them on the main page. (we call it brainstorm lobby). Now, the funny part is to put dots on the notes. We end up with accidentally someone else's dot, kinda messy but finally, it turned out well! Though it took us 40 minutes to complete the first session. Guess next time we can do better than this.

[MinhNguyen-ncjm]

That's amazing!!! I have a very very shy class, I tried to encourage them in a debate before and it was a failure, they work much better in non-spoken tasks. I will definitely try this next time.

[sindysacoman]

love this type of hands-on video! Please continue making more.

[patrickstallings]

Great stuff. What makes these work best is a great cohesive culture. IE having fun working together or social times together etc. Because if the culture is quicksand, any collob session only highlights that. Im a HUGE fan of quick and sharp energetic meetings that don't last an hour. So much more gets done in very little time. Keep up the great work.

[cloudsh]

I love how Jonathan does presentations. He is one of my favorite. Your videos always help alot. Thank you for the video!

[raylenechardon]

GENIUS! Pure, simple, highly efficient, genius! I've SUBSCRIBED ALL! Thank you!

[JenSutherland]

I like to add the task of each person reading out their ideas as they post them. If the team has the instruction to cluster like ideas as they post, it forces them to listen to the other ideas rather than just waiting for their turn to speak. Voting can then be done by cluster rather than individual post-it.
Additionally, the reading out loud of ideas could stimulate other ideas (or "yes ands" related to an existing idea) and these could then be added to the wall. My 2c :)

[barbaramoriel]

Loved this approach mainly because people sometimes try to impose their ideas. It's an elegant way to deal with this problem.

[karltonpeterson]

I am in love with this note and vote concept! It's stupid simple, you think that people would be using it more. I am a big fan of these workshop videos and really enjoy the case studies!

[tylergust]

You should share what you think your worst ideas are first, and make sure they are crazy and ridiculous, as an opener. It relaxes the team, they get a good laugh, and people can see that everyone can have some bad or crazy ideas. It might be more efficient in new teams as just an ice breaker...

[JonMarkSearle]

Great job, the post'n'vote is a great alternative to endless circular misaligned discussion, plus it quickly aligns people with distributed embarrassingly parallel efficiency.   My only question, how best to do it in ms-teams, google-meetings, zoom, etc.

[gabrielalmanzar]

I rally like the concept of working alone together. Eliminating pointless and endless discussions is key. You talked about the next step ( executing) and it would be awesome if you do the video for that workshop. 🙂🙂

[robertojl]

I have a few questions:
1-) When people are sticking their own posts, all the participants are watching he(her) doing it? In this case, all participants will know which idea is from. This will kinda influence the result s. Or is it done ins a way participants cants see it?
==> Maybe turning the flipchart can partially solve this.
2-) When goes to voting I guess that the follow the crowd effect can happen.When people tend to choose the winner to follow. So hugely interfering on clear results.
===> Maybe giving each post-it a code (number), and each voter notes for himself on a papel the ideas numbers they liked the most and the number of its 10 votes desired for each. And after that the facilitator can put on board the voting results.

Does that above makes any sense or have any value?

[huntermorgandavis]

This is a great video. I'm curious to know what are the other add on workshops to do in order to prioritize action and align on the work?

[mathewskiran]

This session was incredibly relatable and easy to understand ❤️

Question: Is it beneficial to include the client in brainstorming sessions? Could you also share the pros and cons of having the client participate?

[waseemtaj]

I like the recommendation of capturing ideas in a visual way and the dot voting to prioritise. However for me this structure is missing the core element of brainstorming - collaboration. Brainstorming meant to be a collaborative exercise that allows the participants to talk and build on each others ideas and inspires someone to come up with a truly new amazing insight that came from hearing what everyone else was saying earlier. This is how you end up with whole being greater than sum of the parts. I can easily see small adjustments to the meeting structure described in this video to make it collaborative. I would be interested to hear your views on this concern?

[sarayesteban]

Loving the camera effects! thank you for making it so easy to follow! <3

[MaoGenesiss]

I was looking for more videos about this and I recently made a comment of brainstorming but apparently, u already made it hahaha I came from this video "What Is Design Thinking? An Overview (2020)"