![]() ![]() The longer offices remain half empty, the more some executives glorify face-to-face get-togethers as fountains of innovation. Other firms maintain that our screens are the real problem, and creative sparks will fly if we convene in person. Microsoft research shows that many people spend the equivalent of an entire workday in meetings every week (and another day’s worth of time reading and sending emails). Some such as Shopify and Wayfair have slashed meeting times, part of the working world’s re-examination of checking in, touching base and catching up in the hybrid era. They still get together virtually to discuss and refine what they’ve come up with, but these revamped meetings are tightly organized and tangent-free.Įlsewhere, companies like Alphabet’s Google try to encourage innovation by letting workers spend part of their work time building on their own ideas for what could benefit the business. ![]() He discovered that his 16-person team, now fully remote, thrives when people develop ideas on their own and can share them in writing. Himel says bantering around a table fits his outgoing personality, but the pandemic and an executive coach led him to a humbling realization: He talks too much. “I’ve gone from being the biggest brainstorming proponent to feeling anxiety if a meeting doesn’t have a clear agenda,” says Drew Himel, chief executive of Fireside, an e-commerce strategy firm. Mostly, though, grumblers have accepted such meetings as an inescapable office reality, like elevator Muzak and bad coffee. Longtime Wall Street Journal readers may recall a 2006 “Cubicle Culture” column that skewered the popular practice, and Harvard Business Review published a research-based case against the usefulness of brainstorming in 2015. Plenty of people have always bemoaned brainstorming. She argues that the ethos of brainstorming-reserve judgment and build on what others say-is better applied to polite conversation at a dinner party than to key decisions in a conference room.īusiness teams ought to collaborate, of course, but she interprets the evidence to mean that colleagues should compare notes after extensive, independent thinking. Pitfalls include blabbermouths with mediocre suggestions and introverts with brilliant ones that they keep to themselves. Iyengar has compiled academic research on idea generation, including a decade of her own interviews with more than a thousand people, into a book called “Think Bigger.” It concludes that group brainstorming is usually a waste of time. ![]() “You will do your best creative work by yourself.” “You do not get your best ideas out of these freewheeling brainstorming sessions,” says Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia Business School. ![]() The value of gathering to swap loosely formed thoughts is highly suspect, despite being a major reason many companies want workers back in offices. This brainstorming exercise is, in fact, a terrible idea-not only because I can’t hear you. Annoying co-workers you would like to replace with artificial intelligence? Office wardrobe malfunctions? Bosses’ secret TikTok accounts? Go ahead, shout ’em out. OK, people, let’s spitball some topics for this column. ![]()
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