You are not sure how to approach solving a problem? No worries! The brain comes handy. Brainstorming is coming!
Brain might be considered as a muscle of the creativity. As everybody knows muscles should be trained to remain fit. So, maybe you start wondering why on earth are we tackling this topic. The answer is simple. Brain is still uncovered organ full of mysteries. We are not aware of its complete potential and for sure we don’t know how to use its capacity. Nevertheless there are techniques helping to boost creativity, problem solving and enhancing working with team towards finding the best solutions. One of them is simple brainstorming. But brainstorming can be not that simple at all.
Brainstorming as a quibble
What for are we gathering together a group of people of various types in one room? And what for are we making them to “storm” for ideas? Brainstorm means to use brain to storm a problem! All of the effort is needed to get the ball rolling with creativity and problem solving. Thanks to this setup, ideas are flying, people can build on these ideas and create new ones and what is more important it can end up with finding the best way for solving the specific problem. Generating ideas leads to interesting discussions even to mentioned “storm”. And all of this is required to stimulate our brains.
Taste of history
It all began in 1939 with Advertising Executive – Alex F. Osborn and the lack of ideas of his employees. Frustrated Osborn, especially with the inability of generating proposals, was made to host specific sessions during which he observed unbelievable results of the teamwork. The outcomes from these experience are documented in How To Think Up and How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas. Osborn found out that during group-thinking-sessions specific conditions should be met. These conditions are: friendly and safe environment, no criticism rule and openness to ridiculous ideas.
“It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one”
– Alex F. Osborn
Criticizing is easy! It is obvious! The challenge and main principle of brainstorming is to withhold criticism. It is worth implementing this statement into your daily life within your team. You will not achieve a success when your people will not feel free with their conclusions. Still brainstorming is method of set up new concepts and thinking up solutions. In order to conduct brainstorming in the right way you have to assure good atmosphere in which people are willing to suggest solution without fear of being criticized. If the problem will be very difficult you need to be patient and wait for the best idea to come. Every idea counts. The most important at this stage is the quantity not the quality. Crazy ideas are welcome. Even if, in the beginning, they might seem absurd at the end, after some improvement, they might surprise you.
Crazy ideas!
It is worth to mention about wild ideas that were implanted in the real life, which changed our lives forever. We replaced horses with cars, candles with bulb, letter with e-mail. Even if today you cannot imagine existing without them, probably they were all considered as wild ideas some time ago and were met with criticism. Nowadays companies focus on generating crazy ideas which might end up as the real ones. Examples? ECG in smartwatch (Apple) or self-driving car (Tesla). For that reason many organizations develop Idea Hubs to support creativity and making ideas real. They also serve as core of strategy and innovation which decide about the success.
Golden rules!
Good brainstorming consists of three stages: preparation, generating ideas session and ideas evaluation. If it comes to preparation it depends on the problem you are going to solve. On the one hand you can provide problem statement to participants in advance so that you give some time to people to reflect and think over the problem. On the other hand it can be communicated during the session. In that case people generate ideas without preparation on the spot. It is important to set up the meeting with various types of team members from experts to amateurs in specific topic. The best team size is from six to nine members.
Thirty circles exercise
This is the example of easy warmup before the brainstorming session. All you need is a piece of paper with thirty circles drawn on it with pen handed in to each participant The main goal of this exercise is to trigger the creativity and the imagination to change the circles into recognizable objects in three minutes. Then you can discuss and compare results within the team. You might be astonished with the outcome. Added value is to make people more comfortable and willing to share ideas at later stage. This challenge could be a good ice-breaker too.
Golden ideas
Triggers to providing ideas are clear instructions like: there are no bad ideas, there is no idea evaluation during the session, and statement that everybody can submit any idea. In order to be compliant with the above you might consider using sticky notes to guarantee lack of criticism and which allow to speak up to people who are not vocal enough. This method boosts the ability of active listening withholding from judgment of the teammates. People need to feel free to put their ideas into play. It is important to underline that ideas have to be differentiated from their quality. At this stage there is no evaluation to the given ideas not to block emerging of the wild ideas. What is more we need audacious solutions.
Golden judgment
The clue of good evaluation is finding appropriate people with outstanding ability and openness towards various ideas. We might consider experts with such characteristics like: open-minded, deep understanding of the problem, ability to decide what is feasible to implement and well-orientation in company’s requirements.
Ideas Prioritization Grid
Not only people are important whilst evaluating ideas. The tool which might help with ideas assessment can be the Prioritization Grid. All you need is the whiteboard, large sticky pad, or virtual whiteboard, draw two axes: “Importance to the user” (low to high) and “Feasibility for the team” (difficult to easy). Then you can ask everyone quickly to evaluate each idea on their own, and roughly plot them on the grid where they make sense. Once many items are on the grid, start discussing with your teammates and reposition them in relation to each other.
Design thinking likes brainstorming
When it comes to solve some problem you can use design thinking method. Ideate is the third stage of design thinking and what is more it uses brainstorming as one of the techniques. After empathizing with the end user and definition of your user’s problem – it can be approached by generating ideas. Implementation of all above mentioned rules can definitely help in providing the best solution to defined problem statement. After expert judgment you can prototype your solution and test with the end user.
Brainstorming is always on the top
Even though definition of brainstorming is so old, the technique is still alive! We can risk the statement it is the new black. It is not out of date and people always try to adjust this method to solve problems in creative way. It is used widely in many organizations and appears as a standard for finding solutions, share ideas and exchange points of views without fear of being criticized and judged.
Aneta Wereszczak od ponad dekady działa w obszarze zarządzania projektami, koncentrując się na ludziach, komunikacji i przywództwie opartym na relacjach. Z PMI Poland Chapter związana jest od 2017 roku, gdzie jako wolontariuszka, liderka i członkini zarządu współtworzyła wydarzenia, inicjatywy i doświadczenia dla społeczności. Działa także międzynarodowo jako Europe Lead w sieci Women Power Up. Od 1 lipca 2026 roku pełni funkcję Redaktorki Naczelnej Strefy PMI. Prywatnie miłośniczka gór, planszówek i dobrej kawy.
Aneta Wereszczak has been active in the field of project management for over a decade, with a strong focus on people, communication, and relationship‑based leadership. She has been involved with PMI Poland Chapter since 2017, where as a volunteer, leader, and board member she has co‑created events, initiatives, and meaningful experiences for the community. She is also active internationally as Europe Lead in the Women Power Up network. As of July 1, 2026, she serves as Editor‑in‑Chief of PMI Zone. Privately, she is a mountain enthusiast, board game lover, and devoted coffee fan.
[PL] Właścicielka Magenta Business Consulting. Zawodowo Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Project Portfolio Manager. Wspiera transformacje zwinne i organizacyjne. Autorka tekstów, mentorka, prelegentka, trenerka, wykłada na podyplomowych studiach „Advanced Project Management” wrocławskiego Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego. Certyfikowana Project Manager, Executing UX-PM, PPO, PSM, KMP II, moderatorka Design Thinking.
[ENG] The owner of Magenta Business Consulting. Professionally Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Project Portfolio Manager. Supports agile and organizational transformations. Author of articles, mentor, speaker, trainer, lecturer at the post-graduate studies „Advanced Project Management” at the Wrocław University of Economics. Certified Project Manager, Executing UX-PM, PPO, PSM, KMP II, Design Thinking moderator.