The goal of brainstorming

Simply put, the goal of brainstorming is to generate as many ideas a possible without excluding anything immediately. This is not as easy as it sounds because our natural tendency is to evaluate ideas at the time they are presented. But that's not the purpose of brainstorming.

In order to accomplish this goal, it's important to have the right people in the room. During our discussion about status meetings in Chapter 2, Regularly Scheduled Status Updates, we didn't focus much on who should attend the meeting because the participant list is often implied by the meeting itself (for example, the participants for the weekly department meeting are the department staff). With brainstorming, the participant list doesn't have to be tied to position, title, or department. In fact, it could be beneficial to invite people both directly and indirectly connected to whatever situation is up for discussion.

Brainstorming meetings must have diversity in thought. I'm not referring...