Brainstorming
June 12, 2013 in Our work
So, there is Margot, the rubber duck, who normally lives in a whirlpool in the sky, but now in Rome. There is Frity, her “flatmate” who, after an argument with Margot, finds himself on top of Mount Kilimanjaro, borrowing the fur coat from Gertrud, a Namibian tourist. Not to mention, his meeting with King Louis, the Lion. There is the black cloud, transformed into a whale, now safely housed in the Colosseum. And somewhere, there are undefined Aliens floating an an UFO.
Just another normal day at the office?
The “Never Ending Story” has progressed. The group of people who are developing our little ….fantasy….. come from two different parts of the same organisation. That is the only thing they have in common.
The rules of brainstorming are that no idea should at first be rejected. Whatever comes to mind gets aired. Another one of those business speak words. Some ideas are better than others. But I was heartened to see another analogy in an article where the qualities of a Miami basket ball team are compared with the team spirit of a company.
The analogy is important – it combines two worlds, two environments and which complement each other. Out of the box thinking. Our story is a little more extreme perhaps and it pursues a few other goals. The 8 authors currently involved in this group exercise are naturally separated – what combines them is our environment in which they can write story. Already, there was an element of competitiveness – we want to use bigger words! The story is beginning to gain traction, some dynamics are slowly appearing on the horizon.
People listen in amazement when the story is read out to them, they laugh, they are relaxed, their minds open up. The pressure falls away and eventually the ideas flow. Eventually, some bonding will take place, some identification might happen. And maybe, somewhere, someone other than me, will be proud of what was achieved.
This, against a backdrop of efficiency programs, project milestones and the fact that nobody had bothered to clear the empty coffee cups, empty bottles etc from the meeting room next door led to a more unpleasant discussion.








