How To Brainstorm In Japan

Japan can only copy! This once upon a time was what we heard about Japanese innovation. It was used disparagingly as a dismissal of Japanese capacity to innovate. Well Japan is excellent at copying for sure. There is a level of attention to detail here that is mindboggling. Part of the issue was that over centuries of isolation Japan had become incredibly skilled in kaizen - small steps of improvement. The breakthrough ideas were happening somewhere else. This is an important observation, because when we are trying to come up with new ideas, we have to remember that we don't want just ideas that improve on what we did in the past, if possible, we want to leap past our competitors and go on to the next stage of development.
 
Japan is not the only place where we have seen this phenomenon. Nokia was innovating by producing better and better phones. Steve Jobs introduced an innovation, the smart phone, that killed Nokia off and let Apple dominate the global market. The rental market for DVDs is getting killed by streaming services like Netflix. Maybe we cannot come up with a game changer on a global scale, but we can certainly do better in pushing the innovation capacity within our firms.
 
There is no doubt that the way we do brainstorming does impact the success of the effort. The standard model is for the boss to wield the marker pen and write the ideas up on the whiteboard. The ideas are requested and here is where a fatal error is often made. The boss starts to comment on the ideas as they arrive: "we tried that before and it didn't work, next", "that is a silly idea, totally impractical, next", "no I don't like that idea much, next". All of these comments are crushing the perpetrators and they will retreat deep into themselves and take no further part in the brainstorming. They will be lost as part of the team generating ideas.
 
Japan doesn’t handle personal criticism very well, given the drive for harmony in this high density living environment. Shredding someone’s ideas publically is the death warrant for further idea generation for that individual. We will eliminate a lot of potential good ideas this way and have the noisy few, who agree with the boss, monopolise proceedings. I hope they are really, really smart.
 
The key point here is to not do it this way. Instead let the ideas flow freely without any critique, judgment, evaluation or appraisal. The objective is to get as many ideas out as possible. Now of course some totally impractical and crazy ideas will pop up. Well they must pop up in these circumstances, where we have said anything goes. The joy of a crazy, unusable idea is when it gets changed slightly and is transformed into a genius idea. This wouldn't have happened though unless the first crazy idea had been proffered.
 
Also don't ignore the deep thinkers. They will be digesting an idea, not say anything and find the airwaves are dominated by those around them who can think fast on their feet. This pushes them even further into the background because they consider it a crime to be putting up flakey, half thought through ideas. We are always time poor so we push the session forward unaware we are dropping ideas off the table at a rapid rate of knots. The session is ended and these deeper thinkers are left sitting there with a bunch of quality ideas which are never captured.
 
Japan has plenty of great ideas and the key is to creating the right environment where these ideas can be nurtured. Fairly simple thing you would think but pen wielding, critiquing bosses still rule in Japan. Let's change that down at your shop! We need to eliminate the instant idea critique, the hierarchy of who started at the company earlier than the others, who is older, who is more senior. Japanese staff will always defer to others they consider their “betters”, because that is how you get on in Japan. To get change in Japan you need enormous energy, discipline and patience.
 
If you want innovation, you have to give people the freedom to put forward their ideas. To do that you need a system that allows ideas to be generated in silence to shut down the idea bullies, that go through multiple rounds until all the deep thinkers ideas have been captured and which separates generation from the judgment of ideas. We have to keep telling everyone we are after idea volume in the first instance, not perfection.
 
Old habits die hard though, so you need the session facilitated by someone who can keep everyone in line. When the critique comes too early that person needs to be told to hold that thought and remind everyone how this works. Others can’t bear the silence, because they have gotten all their ideas out quite quickly and now they want to talk. They need to be told to stay silent, no matter who they are, and allow the others to get their ideas out too. This is a new way of doing things, so expect resistance. If we want better ideas, then we need better idea generation technologies and this new methodology represents a change. Expect detractors, but push on because this will be so much more powerful than what is currently masquerading as idea creation, you will never go back.
 
So get the ideas out first and then do the selection and judgment in the second phase.