Avague calendar event appears in your inbox. There’s an urgent need for breakthrough thinking, and you’re invited. It’s got something to do with the big sales conference next week. Or a major new client. Or that recent wave of negative Yelp reviews. Doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you show up. An organization’s desperate, last-minute scramble for ideas is always democratic. Everyone is welcome to contribute solutions—as long as they sound feasible and involve zero risk to anyone with power at the table. It’s time to brainstorm.
Inevitably, the big session gets squeezed into an awkward afternoon slot, when everyone is running on empty. Or, worse, near the end of the day, when people are anxious to head home or rest their Zoom-weary eyes.
If anybody knew how to solve this—stalling sales, escalating costs, a PR disaster—it wouldn’t be a problem. It would just be a project, delegated to the appropriate individual or team. You call everyone together only when you don’t see a clear path to a resolution. Forget answers. No one’s even sure of the question. Ultimately, the corporate brainstorming session is an act of desperation: “Somebody’s got to know how to handle this—I sure don’t!”
Is anything more demoralizing than being forced to “innovate” this way? Considering the odds of looking foolish or ignorant while weighing in on an unfamiliar problem, it feels risky to say anything either ambitious or unusual. Safer to stay quiet and take a free ride on the contributions of others.
If you’re really eager to get out of there, your best bet is to point out the lack of perfect and complete data on every aspect of the entire situation and its five-year outlook. This is a classic delaying tactic that can prompt leaders to punt the problem back to some poor soul for More Research. That’ll be the last anyone hears about this particular problem for a while.
If freeriding or delaying doesn’t work, you’re out of luck. You’re on the spot. You’re going to have to generate a bunch of ideas if you ever want to see your loved ones again. Buckle up.
Rule one of the corporate brainstorm: nothing negative. You know better than to point out the flaws in an idea or say what can’t be done. The CEO is
