Let's look at two recent quotes we found in the media:

"Here's the screw up: You made a promise that you'd deliver this and you missed three weeks later,"

"You've got to believe in Dave. Dave has a plan. Dave knows. You've got to believe in the plan."

The first one was recently made by Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric. The second one was made over a year ago by  Francesco Aquilini, owner of the National Hockey team the Vancouver Canucks, during an informal conversation with the newspaper The Vancouver Sun.

What makes these remarks so interesting is the current context in which we can reflect on them.

First of all, a few days ago Aqulini fired th man he referred to in his comment, Dave Nonis. Apparently he did not believe in the plan anymore. Aqulini said that the reason for firing Nonis was that the team had missed the playoffs.

Secondly, GE had just reported an unexpeted loss. About a month ago Welch's successor had actualy told the world that GE would hit its mark.

A lot of organisations use group brainstorming as part of the strategy formulation process. The problem with group brainstorming is that, unless the group is not larger than 1, the outcome is not the best possible. There is a lot of research done on the effectiveness of group brainstorming vs nomial group (alone) brainstorming. The results show that in most cases the nomial groups produce a larger number of ideas and also produce a wider variety of ideas.

The reasons for these under performing groups are:

Evaluation apprehension⁽¹⁾: Group performance is impeded by the members' fears of being negatively evaluated by the other group members
Free-riding⁽²⁾: Interactive group members suffer motivational deficits due to the members' feeling that their ideas are not necessary for the group to succeed
Production blocking⁽³): The decrease in group performance results from the inability of group members to state ideas freely and without interruption
Social influence⁽⁴⁾: Individuals match their performance to that of the other group members

Since it is important that at the initial stages of the startegy process, or any other process that requires new ideas, the greatets number of ideas is generated how can organsations improve their brainstorming results?

Use a highly trained facilitator! Research ⁽⁵⁾ has shown that trained facilitators can reduce all of the above reasons for under performing groups. The trainers need to be trained and experienced. That will lead to more ideas being recognized and also more fully explored.
Use anonymous group brainstorming software! Group brainstorming software gives participants the oportunity and the abaility to enter ideas, votes, comments independently and anonymously.