Marketing Secrets
Marketing Secrets
The Lost Art of Brainstorming
Brainstorming Defined
I feel like brainstorming gets a bad rap. Either it’s categorized as a wasted hour of sitting together and defining what you WON’T be doing or an ethereal and gray half-day exercise that yields little to nothing but a free lunch and some time away from your desk.
In an emerging professional culture of crowdsourced, money-first decision-making and top-down directives to make the business more purpose-driven, there is a growing need for true brainstorming to help determine the path for growth and definition in your marketplace. But before I get there, let me be clear about my definition.
defined
Brainstorming is an event attended by a group of individuals at all levels and areas of an organization with the intent to answer a question about the business that can only be answered by using experience, understanding, and applied knowledge at every corner of an operation.
purpose
You have a question (or questions). It’s a perplexing question for your business that you, your leadership, and maybe even your employees cannot answer fully or consistently. It could be anything:
- Brand and Brand Position
- What is our brand?
- What do our customers want from our brand?
- What’s our value proposition?
- What is our customer experience and what are our pressure points?
- How do our customers see our company, individually and against competition?
- Product Offering and Growth
- How should we adapt our product offering?
- How do we compete better?
- Where do we go next? What categories or services complement our current portfolio?
- Does our selling approach match our operational ability?
- How do we maximize our current customer base?
- How do we get more, better customers?
- What is our goal for growth over the next year, 5 years, 10 years, and beyond? And how will we get there?
- What research do we need to complete to get a better understanding of our business, customers, areas for growth, and position in the market?
- Operations
- Something is broken. What processes need to be fixed for everyone to operate more efficiently?
- How can we collaborate better?
- How does our organizational structure need to change to match our operations?
- Talent and Culture
- Do we have the right people to make our business great (again)?
- Our culture is shot. How do we create and reestablish something that keeps and attracts people?
- How do we develop our workforce?
- How do we come out of our growth spurt/lull/stunt with the best people and purpose for the business?
- We are about to make some changes. How do we communicate it effectively and not create a culture of fear and distraction?
- We just went through a tough transformation and everyone is on edge. How do we get back on track, culturally and operationally?
- What questions should we tackle first?
Once you have your Big Question, you should be mindful of the 5 major rules for getting the most from your brainstorming session.
3 Responses