Brainstorming without the BS: 4 Creative sessions that actually solve problems

It’s another dreaded quarterly brainstorm session.

John is butting in at every sentence. Maria is chewing her pen. George is scrawling the words ‘scaleable’, ‘thought leadership’, and ‘synergy’ on the whiteboard. 

What should be an energy-filled session always seems to end up in an ouroboros-style debates where extroverts dominate the conversation. The result of most brainstorms is a feeling of lost opportunity. There are ideas waiting to come out in that session—diamonds in the dirt—but they are never brought to light because of the brainstorm’s structure.

With over 8 years working in marketing teams I’ve been in countless sessions like this. But I’ve also encountered and run creative brainstorm sessions that do work. Some sessions capture the neuro-and-cultural-diversity in the room, and allow us to imagine in open-minded ways before thinking more practically. They give you focused time to collect ideas, choose them, create them, and commit to them. 

Whether you need a creative brainstorm to bring the best out of brilliant minds in the room or you need to generate ideas alone, you can rely on these four magic brainstorm sessions time and time again.

1. Lightning Decision Jam

The Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ) is a problem-and-solution-oriented workshop that can be used to solve just about any issue. I’ve used it for campaign and content ideas, quarterly planning, and to brainstorm initiatives we can run as experiments.

Importantly, its structure means that usually-dominant voices do not tower over the rest, and all ideas are judged equally. Step-by-step, you narrow down the problems, ideate solutions, and decide how to take action. Most of the brainstorming is conducted in silence and timed by a moderator.

The session takes a maximum of 1 hour and all you need are a whiteboard (virtual or real), sticky notes, sticky dots, a timer, sharpies, and a moderator. The session is for a minimum of 3 people, and a maximum of 8.

Here's how it works:

• Step 1: Problem capturing - 15 mins: Participants silently write down what's working (10 mins) and what's not (5 mins) in their strategy, product design, life, whatever. Example problem: The engagement rate of our social videos is very low. 

• Step 2: Prioritise problems - 3 mins: Vote (with 3 voting dots each) on the most problematic challenges.

• Step 3: Reframe problems as challenges - 3 mins: These sentences often start as ‘how can we’. Example reframe: How can we boost the watch time on our videos?

• Step 4: Ideate without discussions - 6 mins: Everybody (in silence) writes ideas that can solve this problem on sticky notes. Example idea: Test working with prominent influencers for three videos.

• Step 5: Prioritise solutions - 5 mins: Another round of voting (6 dots each) where the moderator prioritizes the solutions by the most votes.  

• Step 6: Decide where to execute - 10 mins: Take your most voted ideas and add them to an Impact-Effort scale. You’re ideally looking for ideas that are high-impact and low-effort. The moderator will place the idea in the middle of the scale and ask the group, for each prioritised idea ‘Is the impact/effort higher or lower’?

• Step 7: Make ideas actionable - 5 mins: Take the ideas in the high-impact, low-effort corner of the scale and ask the team for three actionable steps to test the solution. The person who wrote the solution can start. 

The result of this session? A clear set of prioritised ideas that the entire team has contributed to and agreed upon, and concrete actions to make them happen. Here’s the Miro template if you want to run this workshop virtually.

2. The Disney Creative Strategy

Despite this simple brainstorm’s visual similarity to Mickey Mouse, it—to my knowledge—was never used by Walt Disney and his crew. Instead, this brainstorm was created Robert Dilts in 1994, where he proposed that the three separate stages of thinking we need to form an actionable idea should be treated separately. 

This brainstorm makes use of both divergent and convergent thinking to move us from the ‘most creative’ mindset to ‘most critical’. In this respect, it ensures we dream big first before figuring out the practicalities of our idea. 

It works by spending approximately 15 minutes at each of the three stages:

• The Dreamer: Encourages wild, innovative ideas without judgment. Throw realism and budget out the window. 

• The Realist: Examines how to implement these ideas practically. What do you need, with your current resources, to make them a reality?

• The Critic: Identifies potential obstacles where you scrutinize the details. Why might these ideas not work? 

With this brainstorm, you find that some of your biggest ideas are still achievable, even if you impose some creative constraints.  

3. The Six Thinking Hats 

We’re often told to ‘put our thinking hat on’ to solve a problem. But which hat should we wear and when? 

Dr. Edward de Bono, the creator of the 6 Thinking Hats, observed that people tend to argue and defend their position in traditional discussions instead of exploring ideas in collaboration. He believed this approach limited creativity and problem-solving. To overcome this, he created exercises that used ‘Lateral thinking’, a term he coined to solve problems via reasoning that is not immediately obvious.

One of these exercises was that the Six Thinking Hats method encourages different perspectives and modes of thinking, helping your team (or yourself) focus on one type of thinking at a time to make more balanced decisions. 

Each "hat" represents a different style of thinking:

⚪ White hat: Logic and information-gathering mode. 

🟡 Yellow hat: Optimism and considering what could go right. 

⚫ Black hat: Critic and thinking why this won’t work.

🔴 Red hat: Emotion and what your intuition tells you about the problem.

🟢 Green hat: Creativity and considering new approaches to solve the problem.

🔵 Blue hat: Managing the process with the other hats in mind, focused on the next steps. 

You can run this exercise with your team to analyse projects or new ideas (with each teammate playing the role of a different “hat”). However, it can also be run independently to know how to approach a project from a different perspective. 

Want to give it a try? Here’s a template I created. Just make a copy and let me know if it works for you!

4. IDS: Identify, Discuss, Solve

This problem-solving brainstorming structure is part of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) a business management framework designed to help entrepreneurs and leaders effectively run and scale their businesses. It comes from the book "Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business," which, if you’re running a small business, is worth exploring if you feel meetings and structure are a mess.

When I worked for a small marketing agency, we used the IDS session in our ‘Level 10 Meetings’. Why ‘Level 10’? Because in the book Traction, they found, on average, leaders rated their meetings a 4 out of 10. To solve the problem, they developed a new way to hold meetings that always rated a 10. 

Level 10 meetings are weekly 90-minute sessions that start and end on time (no matter what). The IDS portion plays the biggest role of 60 minutes for a reason: it’s a chance to talk about the biggest issues and what you’re doing to solve them. 

Here’s what IDS stands for and how it works:

• Identify: Surface and rank issues in order of priority. Take the three most significant issues you need to tackle that week. Ideally, these will be written down beforehand, so everyone knows what will be discussed.

• Discuss: Open the floor. Brainstorm, discuss, and extract all necessary information behind the problem so everyone understands it. As the discussion develops, use the conversation to start writing problem-solving action items for the to-do list.

• Solve: The team decides how to move forward. Typically it’s an action item for someone to do post-meeting.

This solves issues at the root and avoids the looping discussion typically found in a problem-solving brainstorm. 

From ideas to action

When creative brainstorming sessions work they do more than just generate ideas – they solve the core problems of traditional brainstorming. 

They ensure equal participation, structured thinking, and clear action items. By implementing methods such as those above teams can transform their brainstorming sessions from frustrating free-for-alls into productive, fun, open-minded, and solution-oriented meetings with tangible outcomes.

The result? More innovation, more engaged teams, and efficient problem-solving processes.

If you want to learn more about the types of sessions that shift ideas into action, check out how divergent and convergent thinking works and how you can use it for your projects and writing.