by Jason Keath | Mar 2, 2024 | Creativity
I’ve seen this one simple rule create better brainstorming sessions in a few minutes. Have you ever had to sit through a bad brainstorm meeting? Yes, yes you have. We all have. And the 3 horse rule can help.
In this post, I’ll explain this simple rule and how it can make a big difference in the quality of your next brainstorm meeting and its ultimate success.
Better brainstorming starts at the top
When I come in and help an organization with its creative culture or brainstorm, one of the biggest things I have on my side is being an outsider. I can reset what an organization normally does in their brainstorm meetings or culture without as much resistance.
A quick way to ensure your brainstorm sucks is to put the wrong person or an untrained person in charge of it.
A common pitfall is coming to the meeting with a solution, or the direction of a solution, already in mind. It can be hard for a project manager NOT to do this, it’s human nature. But it is important to try.
I call this the Horse-You-Rode-In-On effect.
The result is a meeting that has less freedom of thought, produces fewer ideas (and fewer unique ideas) and in general becomes less fun for all involved. And it kind of just wastes everyone’s time.
Don’t get me wrong, there should be clear criteria for what success is. I recommend having 3-5 brainstorm clear success guidelines, but they should not be locked in so narrowly that they completely control the meeting results.
Your brainstorm (and the entire company culture) will thrive and be more creative when they have guidance on the problem and ideal result, but not a roadmap or detailed directions for how to get there.
Don’t define their journey for them. Just create the process that helps them find the best journey. Better brainstorming is more about teaching to fish.
The 3 horse rule to better brainstorming (2 thoroughbreds, 1 unicorn)
In addition to making sure your facilitator is not too specific with instructions and giving clear guidelines for success, you want to create a process that allows for a ton of interaction and idea connection.
You can encourage this early in the process a number of ways. Requiring bad ideas, focusing on scaling the initial number of ideas. starting with anonymous ideation, and having your team learn how to start brainstorming on their own – and the value of that.
But there is one small adjustment you can make to the goal of your meeting that improves the entire process. And that’s the 3 horse solution.
In simplest terms, the 3 Horse Solution helps you avoid focusing on one final solution as the output of your brainstorm meeting.
Instead of having your brainstorm group agree on one final solution, the 3 Horse Rule requires 3 solutions. Two of those solutions should be thoroughbreds, the safer more conservative solutions. And one should be a unicorn, which is a bigger idea (or a bad idea) that stretches your thinking.
You’ll see a variation of this with a lot of agencies who will try to come up with one safe pitch for a client and one off-the-wall pitch. If the client thinks the first pitch is too dry or dull, the agency has an off-the-wall example of where else they could take it to help secure that project.
When I come into an organization to help with creativity or brainstorming, I highly encourage and require unicorn ideas. These solutions are the ones often labeled too expensive, too dangerous, too silly. Unicorn ideas usually get shot down because they seem unrealistic.
Why it works
There are a ton of benefits to the 3 Horse Rule.
It improves the entire meeting because it allows your team to stick with unicorn ideas through the whole creative process. These are usually a little more fun to work on.
The rule also forces at least a subset or two of your group to work a little harder on long shot ideas and how they could be made more realistic. Which helps produce more unique options in the end.
It forces your team to break out of their comfort zone and stretch their creative instincts, especially at more conservative organizations.
And it helps your organization start building a creative idea database. Archive the ideas you do not use in a spreadsheet or intranet and come back to them for inspiration.
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Consider using the 3 Horse Rule for your next brainstorm meeting and let me know about your results. It is one of the methods I teach as a creativity speaker, and there is a longer version of it in my book, The Case for More Bad Ideas.
by Jason Keath | Jan 4, 2024 | Creativity, Marketing
“How do you find what you’re good at?” is the wrong question.
The hard truth is we all suck in the beginning. And that’s ok. It is a default status you cannot control.
We are not typically born with talents or gifts. We may be born with access or with good parents. We may be born without these things. What we are born with is the ability to decide.
To choose.
To commit.
You don’t find what you are good at. You decide what you want to be good at, you do it, and you never stop doing it. You focus on what brings you joy or opportunity and you simply start.
Not everything you start will come easily and the things that are easier for you to learn are probably the best things to lean into. But to find out what you’re good at, you simply have to do it for an extended period of time.
Good comes from doing.
I wrote a whole book about starting before you are ready. It is called The Case for More Bad Ideas.
by Jason Keath | Nov 29, 2023 | Creativity
Creativity is the performance drug of corporations, writers, and artists alike. Both in hiring talent and in squeezing the most value out of that talent. Becoming more creative is one of the best investments you can make.
The most popular creative process in the world is brainstorming, and unfortunately, brainstorming is broken. Most businesses, artists, and writers work very hard to be more creative with limited results.
A lot of that energy is misplaced. The research and science behind creativity has come very far in the last 10 years. Becoming more creative, as an individual, group, or organization, can be accomplished through some very actionable steps.
Consider this your recipe for better ideas. Like any skill, creativity takes planning and practice.
With these steps your ideas, or your organization’s ideas, will improve. Your brainstorming will get better. And you might find your friends and coworkers calling you “creative.”
1. Spend More Time With Firestarters To Become More Creative
I don’t know how precise the estimate is, but Jim Rohn is famous for saying that ‘you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”
Examine your 5 people. See the influence? Where we spend our time, and with whom we spend our time, builds — to a large degree — our future selves.
So if you want to be more creative, you should be spending more time with other creative people.
Instead of simply spending time with people you might label as “creatives,” I challenge you to spend more time with firestarters. Hanging out with pop culture “creatives” like painters, writers, or the neighborhood hipsters might look interesting, but your brain needs more substance. It needs more than a semblance of creativity. It needs the actual meat, the substance of thinkers.
A firestarter is a doer. A maker. An eccentric. A problem solver. A thinker.
Your brain needs to be challenged. It needs to be surprised. It needs to be tipped on its edge, poured into a raging fire of passion, evaporated into a sky full of wonder, and rained down again. Softly. Soaking you with curiosity and drive and the devastating, unquenchable need to sew flowers of inspiration into the earth.
And by that, what I mean to say is, that your brain needs to be surrounded by interesting thinkers. If those thinkers happen to be writers or painters…
Take stock of how many firestarters you have around you. In your circle of friends. Spend more time with them. Seek out new firestarters. And strive to be a firestarter for those around you.
2. Brush Up Against Life To Become More Creative
Great ideas happen when expertise brushes up against life experience.
I call these moments happy collisions.
Let’s assume you already have the expertise. Because you do NEED to be an expert in something to maximize your creative abilities. You need to develop a deep knowledge of a subject matter, skill set, and industry. That is your toolbox. That is your armory of weapons at the ready. Ready for you to wield at incoming enemy charges.
Life experience is what makes that arsenal of expertise really useful. It is what takes your awareness of a problem and matches it with new directions for solutions.
The likelihood of finding a new solution to a problem increases exponentially with each unique point of view you can bring to that problem.
So how do you increase your life experience? The sexy answer to that question is – the wild living of artists in history – drinking, drugs, danger.
These activities do not expand our thinking.
To truly evolve your life experience, and your perspective, you need to take in the world. This falls into two categories: consuming and creating. Here are a few easy examples:
- Read more
Read fiction. Read topics outside your industry. Read interesting magazines on topics you would not normally spend time on. Read poetry. Read plays. Read opinion articles from writers that challenge your existing point of view. Read deeply.
- Write more
Write daily. Write notes as you read. Write love letters. Write thank you cards. Write original pieces of small observations from the world around you. Write down your dreams. Write out your future. Write on the train, on a plane. Write about strangers you see and characters that have never been.
- Travel more
Explore the city you live in, from the corners, alleys, and fields near your home to the museums, history, and landmarks in your region. Travel to see family and spend time with them. Travel to see and make new friends. Travel to see cities. Travel the world. Live abroad. Watch documentaries. Talk to friends about where they have been. About the most interesting places they have seen. Travel both with your feet and with your mind.
- Challenge your mind
This is the big one. There are plenty of examples that show when we put our brain to a challenge, something it has not done or learned before, it gets better at meeting other challenges. Think of this as halfway between our comfort zone (where we learn nothing) and our panic zone (where we are overwhelmed). You do not need to take up nuclear engineering, but look for opportunities that match your passions and interests. Learn to speak a foreign language. Sign up for an improv group. Learn to play a musical instrument. Learn to be a better public speaker. Lead a team or organization. Take a class in nutrition, photography, or programming.
3. Lastly, Do Not Subscribe To False Creative Idols
You do not need to become Andy Warhol, Maya Angelou, or Steve Jobs to become a creative person.
People do not need to break out of the box to become more creative, sometimes you can simply focus on making the box better.
Becoming more creative does not mean you need to become an eccentric, bi-polar painter. Creativity is not an excuse to escape responsibility or a means of restarting your life.
It is ownership over ideas.
Within every task, company, team, and organization — creativity — or really just better problem-solving — can be a powerful tool for improving life for everyone. For making everyone happier. For making a better product, a better work environment, and a better ecosystem for all.
Look at your world. Your work, your hobbies, your passions. Discover where you can do the most good and focus there. If you end up leaving your company and starting the next world-changing startup, so be it. But, don’t set bars according to someone else’s expectations. Maybe what you really want is to become a better third-grade teacher, a better writer, or a better friend.
When we rely on the expectations of others, we build unnecessary walls of creative repression.
Discover where you can do the most good and focus your creativity there.
*Bonus
Remember, more times than not, the most creative person in the room, the best problem solver, is the person who is willing to put in the most time. Persistence is a key secret to creativity.
Creativity can be taught. Anyone can be more creative, but it is still a process. It is the argument I make in The Case for More Bad Ideas, and the one I bring to stages as a creativity speaker. And any process requires work. These three rules, if subscribed to, will make you more creative. But you still have to put in the time to come up with amazing ideas.
by Jason Keath | Mar 8, 2015 | Creativity
Too often, modern brainstorming is a watered-down clone of what it once was. But it can be saved.
We don’t teach people to be creative or a creative process. When I go on stage as a creativity speaker I always ask the audience who has been taught HOW to be creative at some bpoint, less than 10% of the audience raises their hands.
We teach art. We teach creative writing. We even teach business leaders how to “cultivate innovation”. But we do not teach people how to be creative.
And the crutch most people use to prop up their need for new ideas is the iconic brainstorming meeting.
Or worse yet, they assign 30 minutes to brainstorm as an agenda item within another meeting.
You’ve probably been in more than one brainstorm that sucked.
Many great businesses start off with one great idea. One great spark of genius. And then in the name of efficiency, begin to kill off creativity one cost savings and quality assurance meeting at a time.
Turning out a quality product is aided by boring, repeatable, uncreative work. These are the facts of the corporate slog.
And yet, we all recognize the power of that spark. The power of the story. Of marketing. The power of that one great idea. And the real competitive advantage of a company that can consistently churn our those great ideas over and over again. See Apple, Google, Lockheed Martin, GE.
So, what’s the solution?
Diagnosing Why Brainstorms Suck
Here is a common scene. The boss steps up to the head of the conference table, next to a whiteboard, with a table full of his or her subordinates. His or her assistant brought snacks and manned the whiteboard, ready to scribe a bunch of awesome new ideas down for the record.
“Ok team, we need a new solution to this same old problem for Client X. In the next 15 minutes, let’s shout out a bunch of our best stuff. Try not to reject any ideas from each other. Then we will whittle down the list to our best stuff. Go!”
Let the great sins of creative lusting be laid bare for all to see.
A creative company culture is powerful. And there is nothing wrong with trying to be more creative. But creativity cannot and will never be built into a company in a single meeting, as we so often demand.
Creativity requires real work. Real time. And real effort.
And it requires, wait for it… a plan.
Tip #1: Write Down A Simple Plan
The original brainstorm meetings were a product of BBDO, an NYC ad agency, back in the 1940s. It was one of many techniques they used to generate new ideas for their clients. And they were really good at it.
BBDO New York brainstorm meeting (late 1950s), photo by Philippe Halsman. Poster on the right wall reads “Brainstorm Ground Rules”
But it was not a cure all. And it included a few important features that MOST folks do not incorporate into their brainstorm meetings today.
The first of these forgotten features is a well formed plan. Several key elements exist in this plan.
- Define The Problem — Every brainstorm should seek solutions to a problem. Define, on paper, the scope of the problem being attacked.
- Give Background — Ensure your team has a clear understanding of how things got to this point. Where the problem came from, past attempts to solve it, client details, timelines, etc.
- Define A Goal—Define what the final solution will accomplish as well as how many initial ideas are sought (50 is a good minimum).
- Give Examples—Give at least three examples of the types of solutions being sought.
- Detail Instructions — Write up and print out a one-page brainstorm plan that includes your problem, background, goal, examples, and team. Include the step-by-step process of your brainstorm sessions and any rules to play by.
This simple planning doc should be sent to your team well in advance of any physical brainstorm meeting. Too often we give too little info with too little notice and expect big ideas from uninformed and unprepared teams.
Put in the planning and in return your team will deliver you with better, more informed solutions to the problem you seek to solve.
Tip #2: The Power of Anonymous Ideation
The cardinal rule of brainstorms, surviving from the days of BBDO, is “no judgement.” Early in the creative process negative feedback kills any potential for great ideas.
It silences individuals. It reduces the volume of ideas. Which reduces the opportunity for happy collisions.
It is a great rule. And many brainstorm meetings produce a modicum of good ideas because of it.
But, it does not eliminate all of the negative pressures that a team meeting creates. The complex social dynamics of our human nature is incredibly difficult to overcome.
So instead, let’s just preempt it.
Before the actual meeting portion of your brainstorm meeting, assign each member of your team the task of coming up with 10, 20, or 30 solutions to the problem at hand. Give them the planning doc that you spent so much time creating and let them loose.
On their own. Alone. In whatever setting they choose.
With your team working on their own to kick off the creative process, you will see several benefits.
- Potential negative impacts from an in-person group dynamic will be minimized.
- Time will be saved in the meeting itself and the group can focus on augmenting, combining, and improving the best ideas collectively.
- The sources of inspiration for each team member’s ideas will vary greatly. Some will work from home, some on the plane, some at their child’s soccer game. Unique environments help create a more diverse set of ideas.
- More initial ideas.
- More obvious (aka bad) ideas will be produced.
- More absurd (aka big) ideas will be produced.
- The boss, and any unintentional bias he or she may produce, will not inhibit the beginning of your creative process.
Once you have the list of ideas from every team member, combine it into one list, remove duplicates, organize them under similar topics and then redistribute back out to the team before your meeting.
A key step here is to anonymize the ideas before redistributing them. This emphasizes the quality of the ideas and removes personal biases toward who came up with the idea.
More Work For You, Better Ideas For All
Each of these steps creates more work for whoever owns the brainstorm meeting and allows the brainstorm team members to more efficiently contribute their best ideas to the effort.
That is how every meeting should work. Whoever calls a meeting should not be looking to pass along the burden of their workload, but rather, they should work hard to make it easier for a team to contribute in constructive ways.
Having to work this hard in order to host a brainstorm meeting will likely mean fewer brainstorm meetings as well. You’re welcome.
These two simple processes will make your meetings more organized and produce better ideas more often.
by Jason Keath | Nov 22, 2013 | Creativity
Updated: Dec. 2, 2024
If you want better ideas more often, happy collisions are the secret.
But before I spell out the cause of happy collisions and how to have more of them, let’s talk about creativity a little. It will help, I promise.
How often do we sit and wonder “Why didn’t I think of that?” How often do we struggle to find solutions to problems that don’t seem that hard?
Creativity flows around us like a raging river. Art, music, television, technology, journalism, philanthropy, on and on and on.
So where do ideas come from?
The most common answers to this question are 1. creative people and 2. random inspiration. Ideas sometimes come from strange places, or at least it seems that way. Or they come from people that are “creatives.”
These assumptions are wrong. Many of our assumptions about where ideas come from are false. And these false assumptions, unfortunately, make creativity less approachable for most people.
Creativity is simply a process.
The more often you repeat that process the better you will get at it.
It is not a gift handed down on high from silver-lined clouds to a magical set of people called “creatives.”
People become more creative when they:
- Are given (or demand) the freedom to be creative
- Commit the time to put in the work
- Develop the core ingredients involved in happy collisions
Happy Collisions happen when expertise meets life experience, repeatedly.
If you can generate more of those two ingredients (expertise & life experience), you will generate more big ideas.
Classic Atari game Asteroids where you pilot a triangle-shaped spaceship, dodging and shooting drifting asteroids.
Ingredient 1: Expertise
The hard work part is something we tend to skip over.
JK Rowling built the world of Harry Potter for 5 years before she started to write the first book. She put in the work to make something great, something new, something creative.
But she was also an expert. She’d been writing stories since she was 5 years old, developing her own fantasy stories and reading them to her younger sister.
That expertise is an important element of creativity. Knowing one subject very well gives you a platform of confidence and problem-solving experience from which new ideas can sprout. And the value of expertise can translate to many other subjects.
But it is only half of the happy collision concept.
Ingredient 2: Life Experience
Friction, when any two objects come into contact and affect or augment one another, creates the opportunity for more ideas. This can result in the acceleration, deformation, or energy transfer of one object. Simply put, friction creates change.
Ideas work the same way. The more ideas we have access to, the more raw material our subconscious has to work with, and the greater the opportunity for friction and for new ideas.
This raw material comes from living life, from learning new things, from new experiences. It sounds simple, but building up your life experiences is one of the most important aspects of encouraging creativity.
Macro Life Experience
We see this in unending studies. People who have lived abroad or who travel a lot, on average, are more creative. People who speak multiple languages are more creative. Even people who live in big cities, where there is more happening, more diversity, stimuli, are more creative.
I’ve personally found public speaking to be a great set of macro life experiences that allow me a high-level creative outlet. Keynote speaking opportunities where I get to share my details expertise on marketing, creativity, and other topics are great for building confidence and critical thinking skills.
All of this raw material is crucial to build up, both on a micro and macro level.
Micro Life Experience
Within our day-to-day lives, we see this same concept. When we are actively focused on a problem, that creative spark can fail to surface. But when we step away from the office or the desk, go out into the world, and let our brain breathe a little, life experience will often show us new solutions to the problems we are trying to solve.
This concept is really on display, if not exaggerated, in books and TV. Sherlock Holmes, Gregory House MD, Don Draper. They all work tirelessly to solve problems, from crimes to diseases to advertising, and they almost always have their big aha moment when they are not actively working on the solution.
Whether it is an innocuous conversation with a stranger or something they read in a newspaper, the insight that closes the story out usually comes from a surprising source. That source is the life experience.
Getting away from focusing on the problem, and upping the raw materials your brain has to bounce ideas off of, gives you a continuous unique source of friction. Upping the chances for inspiration.
You can’t very well move to a new country or learn a new language every time you have writer’s block. But you can get out of the office, read a book, watch an old movie, or take a walk in a different part of town.
“Big ideas come from expertise brushing up against life experience.”
If you’re struggling… If you have writer’s block… If your team is really hitting a roadblock on a brainstorm…
The solution is often to step back, to take a break, to take a walk… Step back and look for opportunities to brush up against life in new ways and more often.
The Happy Collision That Brought Us Velcro
George de Mestral was walking home from a hunting trip one day in his home country of Switzerland when he noticed the burrs (seeds) that kept sticking to his pants.
Once he was home, he examined the burrs more closely under a microscope and discovered the hundreds of hooks that helped them attach so easily to cloth and fur.
Over the next ten years, he worked to replicate and perfect the effect as a fastener that would become known as Velcro.
That hunting trip that George took was a life experience.
His expertise? George was a talented engineer who created his toy airplane design at age twelve (and patented it). His dad, Albert de Mestral, was an agricultural engineer, specializing in technology used for farming.
Keep working on your expertise. Keep building your life experience. Creativity will follow.
