Don't Overlook This Valuable Resource in Your Organization

In every organization there is an enormous amount of untapped wisdom and knowledge. If you have 30 people on your staff there are 30 different points of view.  This amounts to a wealth of man hours of learning, experiences and wisdom that could be tapped into to solve organizational problems or dream up innovate opportunities. Collectively your team may just have that idea your organization needs for the next big breakthrough. So if you can't afford a consultant, why not capitalize on the wisdom and experience of your team?  Pull them together for a brainstorm session and see what happens.  Here is a simple outline to get you started.

• Write out the objective of your brainstorming session.  What do you want to accomplish?
• Set a time limit for the meeting.  Usually it takes at least 2 hours to get some good thinking going.
• Gather your team, state the objective clearly, define the problem/challenge clearly and invite them to give honest and open input.I like to follow this format:
  • WHAT is?  Let's work to describe our current reality.
  • WHAT could be? Let's dream together and think of all the possibilities.  Capture, evaluate and prioritize the ideas to determine which ones you need to act on.
  • HOW do we get there?  Brainstorm a list of action steps that will help you move from What is to What could be.
• Assign follow up action steps
• Get back together within a few weeks for evaluation and follow up.

Give it a try, you never know where your next big idea will come from.