Don Clark’s article called, “Brainstorming,” makes the process sound like fun and the goal should focus on solving a problem and coming up with many solutions as possible (Clark, 2011). Four great aspects he mentions about this is that there should be no criticism in this part of the process, this is a chance to welcome new and usual ideas, the more solutions the better and that with a combined effort from the barnstormers the ideas will improve and the result will be a list that can be worked off to solve a problem (Clark, 2011). Everybody thinks about things in a different way, some people may be liner and others may be outside of the box, those liner people will be able to pull those outside of the boxers in to help solve a problem. Deciding on a solution is up to the group and it will take time and patience to come up with a good solution, Clark suggests keeping a flip chart or having people take notes and giving people a place voice their suggestions in a safe environment. This could be very fun and a solution can be made that the participants may have never thought of this is also a good time to build teams skills and improve communication. Has anyone ever worked on a project that required a group to do brainstorming first?
The Nominal Group Technique as suggested by John Sample in his article, “Nominal Group Technique: An Alternative to Brainstorming best used with a group of people usually about 5-6 works good for this technique and all should be sitting (Sample, 1984). He suggests starting off by asking an open-ended question for all to answer, give people some time to make a list of all their ideas, go around the table and each person will read something off the list and this will continue to the last idea has been spoken this is fair way to get ideas across (Sample, 1984). Like brainstorming he believes that this should be a criticism free zone so that everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas, sometimes these sessions may be hard at first just because people may need time to get used to the process. If this technique is used consistently I think it would be useful but for some it may seem too structured if a person really enjoys the excitement of a brainstorming session. Next each person gets to anonymously vote for the best idea using a number value and then the group discusses its findings and hopefully an agreement is made and a problem is resolved.
Tryggvi Thayer's wrote a research article called; “Icts and Leapfrogging Development,” the Delphi Technique, is a type of survey method developed by Rand in the 1950’s-1960, the purpose of this technique was for, “Structuring communications using anonymous multi-round surveying that is intended to generate consensus among a broad range of subject-area specialists on issues of concern (Thayer, 2011)”. What happens is a group of specialists are asked to justify the responses given by the people who have taken the survey and the purpose is to generate agreement between the specialists, a series of rounds are a part of this process and the goal is two part, see what the results are and to have a time for self-reflection (Thayer, 2011). The great aspect of the Delphi Technique is that the information is gained by using a survey that gives a person the anonymity to respond how they would knowing that no-one else would judge them as the possibility might be during a face-to-face meeting.
Lastly we have computer aided decision-making, our text book tells us about two types that help people make decisions which are chauffeur driven and group driven. I really like the first example the authors of our textbook gave because I just started watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire again and when the contestants asks the audience for help this is an example of chauffeur driven. Everyone in the audience is given a hand held device so that their answers can be quickly added to the other members of the audience and usually the contestant goes with the answer that is ranked highest in percentage. Group driven meetings can be done in a couple of ways, managers can use email or the internet to gather information from others using the same system, or there can be an internet conferencing system that all can use (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009). When I applied to another grad school we were able to meet the teachers in the program via the internet, we were able to log in and shoot the leaders of this web-based group questions and we could even listen to them speak about the program, it was really cool because many people were connected at once and for me this was the first time experiencing something like this.
Clark, D. (2010, March 9). Brainstorming. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/perform/brainstorm.html
Kinicki, A., & Kreitner, R. (2009). Organizational Behavior: Key Concepts, Skills & Best Practices (customized 4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Sample, J. (1984). Nominal group technique: An alternative to brainstorming . Journal of Extension, 22(2), 1. doi: 2IAW2
Thayer, T. (2011, May 30). Icts and leapfrogging development. Retrieved from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/thay0012/leapfrog/2011_05.html
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