SolveYourProblem Article Series: Brainstorming
Brainstorming, Where Do I Begin?

What is KnowledgeStorming?

The concept of KnowledgeStorming is a relatively new innovation in training, a dynamic learning methods that incorporates elements of brainstorming, role play, and traditional training techniques. Knowledgestorming helps you tap into your team's collective ideas, experience, and knowledge.

In its simplest form, KnowledgeStorming can be described as Brainstorming plus Training.

The process of brainstorming requires people to push past their usual modes of thinking and stretch their minds in order to think up novel and innovative ideas. Brainstorming also entails cultivating an environment of daring and adventure, one less rigid and formal than is expected in most business settings.

Training involves teaching people skills and giving them knowledge they can use to perform and improve their performance of specific tasks. Traditional training methods include reading, lecturing, hands-on exercises, simulations, and testing. To learn how to do something or how to do it better, there’s nothing better than a good training.

KnowledgeStorming combines the two - brainstorming and training - by sharing ideas, knowledge, and experience in an effort to stretch the participants’ minds and create an organic and customized forum for learning.

With traditional training, the flow of knowledge and information is in one direction - from trainer to trainees. This form of teaching and learning is quite effective in the realms of performing procedural skills (or any activity requiring a precise sequence of steps to be followed). KnowledgeStorming, by contrast, is the far better choice for teaching and learning applied skills.

To give a simple, practical example, traditional training may be perfect for learning how to use a certain tool, while KnowledgeStorming would be better suited for exploring and figuring out how to apply the use of that tool to your specific needs and objectives. Another situation where KnowledgeStorming might be more effective than traditional training is when a sales team receives a steady supply of leads and yet has great difficulty converting those leads into sales.

The KnowledgeStorming process starts by assembling your team and discussing the concept of KnoweldgeStorming with them. Introducing them to the concepts and methods you are about to utilize with them will help them to more effectively participate. Then begin discussing the specific topic about which this particular KnowledgeStorming session will be centered.

Next ask everyone present to start brainstorming about all the problems that confront them when thinking about that issue or topic. Let the participants call out their thoughts and have a facilitator jot them all down. Don’t allow the group to succumb to the temptation to discuss the problems shared. Now is not the time to evaluate, analyze, criticize, mock, scold, or judge what’s suggested.

Let this continue for up to a half-hour or until the room has run out of ideas. Then choose a handful of those ideas you consider most important, relevant, etc. to focus on for the remainder of the session.

If the group is a large one, divide it up into smaller groups and assign each smaller group one of the key problems to brainstorm about. Otherwise, if the group is a reasonable size as it is, simply start with the most pressing problem and go through them one by one as the group runs out of ideas. This is the brainstorming element of KnowledgeStorming.

The training element comes in, then, in having the group, the trainees, help select the best solutions of those suggested and come up with ways together to best implement them.

Once viable solutions are reached, KnowledgeStorming then proposes testing those ideas out in the field and conducting follow-up sessions to evaluate their effectiveness.

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SolveYourProblem.com : 2008

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