Ten minutes! 100 ideas! I’ll show you

Are you a manager, consultant, coach, or executive? Do you work for a company and wish to create a new product or service? Do you require assistance in clarifying your next actions or defining your road map?

You have a lot of bright brains, creative individuals, and change makers in your network. They can provide you with unique perspectives!

It's true: you become an expert by combining your own knowledge with that of your network.

Today I want to dive into the ability to find a lot of ideas in just 10 minutes. This is not only important in business, it’s also useful in life. The ideas you come up with matter a lot. The work you do matters a lot. The way you live your life matters a lot. The goal must be clear, and the time must be right. If you want to achieve something, you will have to work for it. There are no shortcuts and no quick solutions to any problems.

However, there is one thing that will help you doubly: the cooperation of others. Together, you can accomplish much more than alone. This is what we will discuss in this article. So I’d like to show you a method you can use to find a lot of ideas in just 10 minutes.

Situation:

You definitely need to first identify the main cause of an issue/challenge you are facing before moving on to rephrasing it into a solution-oriented inquiry (question) or;

You can go right into solution suggestions if your topic is basic and does not require extensive analysis.

If you want to try something new with your team and know they are receptive to it, this might be the route to take.

If your team enjoys talking a lot and has no problem with it, this technique may not be for them.

Things you have to keep in mind and check for in the process of ideation:

In a group of people within a team are a good mix of personalities, hence you will get varying perspectives. Thus, as a leader you have to understand and be ready to remedy certain scenarios that can crop up.

a) Usually there might be rivalry among members of the team, but it is not always constructive.

b) The individual with the loudest voice is adamant that his or her idea is the greatest.

c) During the brainstorming process, individuals argue about whether an idea is excellent or bad.

d) Ideas are judged shortly as they are expressed or written down.

These situations and scenarios come because of various factors which a leader has to be aware of and see that they are resolved quickly.

So, the simple steps one can follow to get those 100 ideas in just 10 minutes include the following:

a) Show the participants three examples of how the thoughts may appear so they understand what you expect from them before they begin writing.

b) Inform them that you will have a limited amount of time to jot down several thoughts. Don't be concerned with quality; only with numbers. You simply write thoughts without judging them. Following this discussion, we will pick some of the most compelling ideas.

c) Instruction: Please limit yourself to one idea per sticky note and keep your handwriting legible (if you are doing this in person)

d) Create ideas: Request that everyone come up with at least 10 ideas in 10 minutes.

Remind individuals that they don't need to come up with good ideas, just a lot of them. Encourage those who have stopped writing to keep coming up with ideas until the deadline.

e) Ask participants to post all of their ideas on the wall/surface. If you use a virtual whiteboard, you may skip this step because the sticky notes are already present. Don't classify the concepts; simply delete duplicates without debate.

f) Vote by giving each participant ten dots.

Allow them to read silently and vote on the concepts they like most. Inform them that there are no voting procedures. They may vote on their own ideas, place numerous dots on one concept, and so on.

g) Revisualize: Remove the top ten concepts with the most votes from the board. Next to the board, arrange the ideas in the order of most votes.

The above activity is called "10 for 10" - a basic, quick, yet effective Note and Vote exercise all about developing and curating ideas.

You may change it to "5 for 5" or "15 for 15" depending on how much time you have... you get the point.

You may divide your group into smaller groups (3-4 people), and each group develops ideas, then votes on the ones they like most, and then brings the top voted ideas from the smaller groups together onto a large wall and votes with the entire group. In this manner, you proceed one step at a time, limiting the quantity of ideas by selecting the most relevant ones.

The actions in this workout are completed in quiet. This implies no speaking. Express this as a part of the session's defined expectations and inform your team that it may be uncomfortable for them to work without chatting and develop ideas in a given amount of time. Tell them you want to save hours of discussion and that this is a quick approach to reach an agreement.

Conclusion

This strategy is excellent for quickly gathering a large number of ideas from your team without engaging in lengthy conversations. It is intended to be used for generating ideas and then picking which ones to pursue further. This strategy employs quiet work, which implies that everyone will work together yet independently on the same issue.

In Summary

To find with 10 people a lot of ideas in just 10 minutes, you'll need to have a clear goal in mind. Make sure everyone understands the objective, and then set a timer for 10 minutes. Once the timer starts, each person will need to come up with as many ideas as possible related to the topic. At the end of the 10 minutes, each person will share their ideas with the group. The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible, so don't worry about quality, just quantity. With a little brainstorming, you should be able to come up with plenty of great ideas in just 10 minutes.