A Visit with the Brainstorm
 by
Phil Bartle, PhD
Notes for the Facilitator

How to use the brainstorm session as a tool for obtaining
participatory group decisions

Abstract:

 The "Brainstorm" is a key tool in facilitating group empowerment.
 This paper discusses some of the reasoning behind the rules and
 set-up of the brainstorm session. It also shows how it relates to
 the overall purpose of strengthening or capacity building of low
 income communities.

Introduction:

 The two-page handout on "The Brainstorm" is a sketch - a" how to"
 recipe - aimed at trainers learning to facilitate brainstorm
 sessions for capacity increase. It includes no theory or explanation
 of the principles. This paper is intended to complement that
 handout, and to raise some of the questions about why the brainstorm
 session is structured the way it is, and how some of the ground
 rules contribute to the specific objectives of the brainstorm
 session and to capacity building in general.

 The elements of the brainstorm discussed here include the following:
 . participatory group decisions;
 . the role of the facilitator;
 . the "no-criticism" and "no cross-talk" ground rules;
 . the use of a board or paper on the wall;
 . the content and its order of topics;
 . the "prioritisation" process; and
 . the call for organizing and action.

 The brainstorm has a potential to be a very powerful tool in
 reaching the overall goal; strengthening low income communities
 (sustainable development). It helps in empowering the community,
 building the capacity of the community to make vital decisions about
 its own destiny, and playing its rightful role in the democratic
 processes of the nation and world. Like all tools, this one must be
 understood by its users, and must be used in the appropriate manner,
 if it is to do more good than harm.

Creative or Participatory Group Decisions:

 The goal of a brainstorm session is to set up an environment for a
 group, not an individual, to make a decision or set of decisions by
 the group and for the group as a whole. It reduces dominance by any
 individual or faction. It enhances participation of all
 participants, with special pro-active encouragement of participation
 by those individuals in the group who may not usually participate
 (for whatever reasons).The immediate goal of the brainstorm session
 is not "creativity" as such. Innovative, and non-orthodox solutions
 to problems are welcomed and encouraged, but the session has not
 failed if there is no new idea generated. (In the whole mobilization
 process, the breaking down of ideas and convictions which hinder the
 strengthening process, and the introduction of ideas new to the
 group if they contribute to empowerment, are both promoted). Some
 ideas and convictions may be new to the group, eg that they have a
 right and duty to make decisions affecting them, that it is not
 their duty to remain passive, that it is not God's will for them to
 do nothing, that cultural integrity does not mean hanging on to
 dysfunctional traditional practices, that they need not passively
 accept disease, poverty and tyranny. Some ideas may be new to the
 participating group without actually being creative in the sense of
 new to the universe.

 Participation takes precedence over creativity. Creativity of the
 group as a whole takes precedence over individual creativity during
 the brainstorm session. The intent is to set up a training session
 that promotes participation in decision making by everyone in the
 group. The decisions to be made during the session must be important
 decisions that affect the community as a whole, or the group as a
 whole. (This is not just a schoolroom learning exercise).

 The ground rules that are enforced temporarily during the session
 support an environment that encourages participation (in decision
 making) among those who do not usually do so.

The Role of the Facilitator:

 The role of the facilitator in a brainstorm session is essential. An
 unorganised collection of individuals, left alone, would not
 spontaneously organize to make important group decisions, nor ensure
 that the inputs to those decisions come from all members, especially
 those who tend not to participate. Structure is needed; ie a set
 of ground rules and an orderly procedure for this process to go as
 planned. The role of the facilitator first is to ensure that there
 is structure, and that it is maintained. Then, the facilitator must
 demonstrate that the decisions come from the participants as a
 group, not from the facilitator, and not from any faction or
 individual within the group. This is assisted by the structure, and
 is a product of the actions taken by the facilitator in drawing the
 suggestions out of the participants in a group session.

 The facilitator needs many skills and experience of leadership.
 Having these skills, and practising them in mobilizing and
 organizing community groups, it is important that the facilitator
 does not misuse those skills for personal goals and individual
 political gain. The facilitator has a role of leading an unorganised
 collection of individual participants through a process that moulds
 and forms them into a decision making group. Those actions of
 organizing a brainstorm session are "top-down" in that they are
 introduced by the facilitator, not by the participants, but they are
 arranged so as to lead that group into making group (bottom-up)
 decisions.

The "No Criticism" and "No Cross-Talk" Ground Rules:

 In a democratic political system, criticism is allowed, indeed it is
 encouraged, especially criticism by the common people about their
 trusted leaders, as soon as those leaders may be seen to be straying
 form the will of the common people. In the structure and set up of
 the brainstorm, however, overt criticism is suppressed. Encourage
 the shy ones.
 The facilitator must encourage all suggestions, even the foolish
 ones. Some participants may call your bluff and deliberately offer a
 foolish suggestion. No problem. No feedback; no value judgement;
 just mark them up on the board.

 During prioritisation (see below), the less useful suggestions are
 quietly dropped. No harm in their being there, but meanwhile the shy
 participants were encouraged to participate. After they learned that
 they would not be held up to public scrutiny, and not expected to
 immediately defend their suggestion, they were more likely to
 participate. (The facilitator has set up a safe environment). Overt
 criticism may make a person feel threatened. In the brainstorm the
 direct criticism is delayed and defrayed until later when the less
 useful suggestions are quietly dropped. By this method, the
 credibility of those suggestions may be suspect, but the credibility
 of the participant is not questioned. Cross-talk is conversation and
 discussion between participants. When one participant makes a
 suggestion, the facilitator should calmly write it down on the
 board, not offer any reaction, response or feedback, and not allow
 any other participant to do so either. This promotes the important
 conception that the facilitator is non partisan, and is not trying
 to impose any ideas on the group, but bringing out the choices of
 the group as a whole.

 In ordinary (non brainstorm) sessions, cross talk and discussion are
 welcomed, but can be dysfunctional in the brainstorm session. They
 waste precious time; they lead to diversions away from the important
 business at hand; they take the focus off the group's decision
 making process; and they tend to reward the more active and less shy
 members of the group, leaving the quiet ones in the
 background. Beyond the brainstorm session itself, the mobilizing
 aims to encourage more participation from groups and categories of
 people who may have been systematically excluded from community
 decision making practices of the past. The mobilizer has done much
 research on the community and by this time should know much about
 its make-up.

 Often excluded groups and categories of people include: women, some
 age groups (old, young), disabled (physically, mentally), the poor
 and weak, reticent individuals (shy and lacking confidence), ethnic
 and language minorities, illiterates, and other vulnerable and
 marginalized people. During the call for suggestions, the
 facilitator individually calls out such people if they have not
 spontaneously offered a suggestion. The facilitator reminds the
 participants that criticism and cross talk are temporary ground
 rules for the brainstorm session only, and that they are suspended
 only for its duration; both criticism and cross talk are permitted
 outside the brainstorm session.

The Use of a Board or Paper on the Wall:

 The decision making process (during a brainstorm) is intended to be
 a group process. The board assists the facilitator in developing the
 perception that the decision is a group, not an individual,
 decision. The "board" used in the handout and elsewhere in this
 paper, can be many things. At the high tech end of the spectrum it
 could be an overhead projector, the facilitator using a transparency
 marker on clear plastic overheads during the process. The most
 popular, where available, are white boards with dry erase markers.
 In local schools in isolated rural villages, there may be
 blackboards (sometimes plywood painted black, not easy to mark) and
 the facilitator uses chalk to write the participants' suggestions.
 If nothing else is available, use smooth dirt or sand on the ground,
 and a stick to mark it.

 Where groups are illiterate, pictures and symbols are useful. More
 organized facilitators who can invest in the material, use sets of
 photos and drawings that can they can stick onto the board (eg felt
 pictures stick to felt boards; "felt" is a soft kind of cloth). The
 mobilizer should be very familiar with the culture of the community.
 Research has shown that a picture that appears obvious to people in
 one culture, may be interpreted radically differently by people in 
 another culture. Using a board and marker is a necessary part of
 the process; it helps make decisions more objective or "arms
 length," less associated with particular individuals. The process is
 not as effective if everything is verbal. When foolish suggestions
 are marked down but later quietly deleted or overlooked, no one
 loses face. The re-arranging of suggestions, prioritising them, is
 very transparent and public, and takes the focus off the individuals.

 For these reasons, the board and marker are essential elements
 of the structure and process of the brainstorm session.

The Content and its Order of Topics:

 Any set of decisions can be chosen. The three presented in
 this series of modules are related to community projects:

 Version One:
 . What do we want?
 . What do we have?
 . How do we use what we have to get what we want?
 . What will happen when we do?

 Version Two:
 . Where do we want to go?
 . Where are we?
 . How do we get from where we are to where we want to be?
 . What will happen when we do?

 Version Three:
 . What is the problem?
 . Define the goal as the solution to the problem;
 . Refine the goal into a finite set of objectives (SMART);
 . Identify resources and constraints;
 . Generate a set of strategies to use the resources, avoid the
   constraints and obtain the objectives;
 . Choose the most effective strategy;
 . Decide upon organization (structure, who does what, budget,
   schedule); and
 . Decide upon monitoring, reporting, evaluation.

 The first two versions are the essential four questions of
 management training. They are really only slightly different ways of
 saying the same thing. See The Four Key Questions of Management
 Training. The third version is that same set of four key questions
 expanded into a common format for a project design (often used also
 as a project proposal). See Project Design. It is important to have
 some content, or set of topics, about which the group will make
 decisions. It will not achieve our purposes if the group is brought
 together and told well just come up with a bunch of creative
 decisions. They will ask, "Decisions about what?"

 In each of the three versions above, each bulleted line is a
 decision making session. The facilitator poses the question, then
 asks for suggestions from the participants (point out the ground
 rules again if needed). As each participant makes a suggestion, no
 matter how foolish or irrelevant, the facilitator writes it up on
 the board. Writing them up on the board puts them at arms length
 from each participant who has made a suggestion, making it easier to
 manipulate them. All three of the versions listed here lead to
 action, or at least lead to the possibility of the facilitator being
 in a position to organize the group for action. This is a way that
 this "management training" goes beyond skill transfer and includes
 organizing and mobilizing. See: Training of Mobilizers.

The "Prioritisation" Process:

 At each stage of the session, after all suggestions are made, and
 the facilitator has marked them on the board, prioritisation
 decisions must be made. The facilitator first asks the group as a
 whole to help re-arrange the suggestions. Where suggestions appear
 to be just different ways of saying the same thing, they are
 grouped, or the repetitions deleted. Where suggestions are similar,
 they are grouped. Then they are ranked, with the most important ones
 being shifted to the top. The facilitator asks the group to help
 decide which ones have priority ("having priority" minimises the
 notion that one idea is "better" than another, that one
 participant's ideas are better than others, helping save face for
 all who contributed ideas that will later be quietly dropped).

 It is important to note that, at this stage, it is useful to have
 short memories. The author of each decision is not mentioned. This
 helps to minimise anyone seeing any one suggestion as the personal
 property of any one participant. When the foolish ones are quietly
 shifted to the bottom, no one feels hurt or bullied; the focus is on
 the prioritising, and the choice of the most important
 suggestion. This requires skill by the facilitator, who builds up
 that skill through more experience. It is helpful for the
 facilitator to remind the group that the suggestions came from them.
 When the group, in the session, agrees on an order of priority, the
 facilitator then reminds them again that the suggestions came from
 the group (not from the facilitator). The facilitator takes a strong
 leadership role in setting up the structure, the process (the ground
 rules, and how the session is conducted), but also makes it very
 clear that the content (of the group decision-making process) does,
 and must, come from the participants.
 The Call for Organizing and Action:

 The brainstorm, although a type of training session, is not aimed at
 training about group decision making. It is a process of group
 decision making. In question three of the two versions of the four
 key questions listed above, the question "How" is asked. In the
 third version, the second from the last question (decide upon
 organization) is another way of asking "How?" How the action is to
 be done (objectives achieved) is a choice or decision for the group.

 If this were in a school classroom or training institute, perhaps
 the participants would simply state or write down their advice about
 how to organize the achieving of their priority goal. In this
 management session for strengthening the community or community
 group, in contrast, the purpose is to actually set up and organize
 the group so that it can carry out its objectives. Remember, "This
 is training for action." The output of the session will be that the
 group has not only chosen its priority objectives, but has become
 organized in such a way as to be able to achieve them.

Conclusion:

 The two-page handout describing the brainstorm looks quite simple,
 and the ground rules and facilitator's procedures appear straight
 forward and simple, although a bit dictatorial. The reasoning behind
 them is the opposite of dictatorial, but is to empower a group to
 begin making its own decisions as a group, and the sociological
 considerations lying behind them are far from simple. We hope that
 the above explanations make those considerations a little more clear.

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Updated: 2003 May 15