I remember my first “ideation whiteboard experience” as if it were yesterday. I was working as a Director of Marketing for a national IT services firm and we had important work ahead of us: standing up an inbound marketing engine.
This was the height of the inbound marketing zeitgeist — HubSpot, MQLs, and automated workflows were redefining what was possible, and Marketing had its first real shot at being seen as a revenue engine. For a historically events-driven, sponsorship-first team, this also represented a significant cultural shift in how we would need to think.
There were new problem statements to solve for. We had to give ourselves space to ideate and permission to hang in brainstorm, not solutioning. We needed to take the time to explore what could be, rather than getting bogged down by constraints. And to start to think like this, we needed an awesome whiteboard experience!
So I got to work.
I jotted down exciting prompts we could answer. For example, what evidence would exist if we stood this up right? What was our team word of the year, knowing this new charter? How should a prospect feel as they moved through our campaign?
Then I fine-tuned an agenda for our time together. It needed be as thoughtful as it was energizing. Building in “out of your seat” whiteboard time and plenty of post-it-ing. And of course, the right music playlist.
I also thought deeply about how the team should feel. Did we need to be bold and brave? Practice a “yes, and” mentality? Invite a contrarian perspective to challenge our thinking?
With all of that clear, I facilitated my first ideation whiteboard session.
Did it go perfectly? Of course not! Some prompts were genuinely hard. Half the team was energized and craving more, while the other half felt overwhelmed. And in hindsight, I should have ordered in a really good lunch to reward the hard thinking.
But I was still proud. Because I had done the thing that can feel hardest as a leader…
I asked my team to stay in the space of possibility. To resist the reflex to rush toward answers. To accept that we would leave the room without a solution, but with amazing momentum. Ideas were activated and something far more important began to take shape: belief in our collective ability to imagine what didn’t yet exist.
As leaders, the work isn’t always about speed, certainty, or execution. Oftentimes, it’s actually about designing a space where better questions can surface, curiosity can be protected, and teams can think beyond what feels immediately achievable.
Establishing Space for Ideation
Over the years, I continued diving into how to design space for powerful brainstorm — collecting any and all tips, frameworks, and methodologies I could get my hands on. Design thinking, a human-centered, iterative approach to problem-solving, quickly captured my attention. At the root of design thinking sits principles around redefining problem statements, unlocking innovative pathways forward, and embracing the power of prototyping and experimentation, among others. Step 3, which is all about ideation, is especially compelling.
So today, whether you want to use design thinking as your backdrop or simply hang in the larger category of ideation, I want to offer 3 tips for baking ideation into the fabric of your team.
Tip 1: Nail Your Prompts, Before Beginning Ideation
Leaders often jump straight to ideation before they’ve done the harder (and far more valuable) work of nailing the prompts that successfully open the door to innovative thought. In design thinking, this is what is referred to as solidifying your How Might We statements. It can be a subtle difference, like changing the question from…
“What should we do to get remote workers to come into the office more regularly?” to
“How might we make remote workers feel more connected to our office culture?”
But it can lead to a world of impact when it comes to our brain’s ability to expand, embrace creativity, and free flow.
Strong ideation starts with a commitment to coming up with disruptive, creative, energizing prompts that you can put in front of your team. Considering the example above, here’s a way to ease your team into this:
- Start with icebreaker prompts (e.g. what’s one word that describes your leadership philosophy?)
- Transition to a toe-in-water prompt (e.g. think outside our four walls, list any and all trends you’re seeing that are influencing the Future of Work?)
- Slowly ease into the dreamy and expansive (e.g. if we were known as a best-in-class remote-first organization, what would be undeniably true about how our people feel?)
Tip 2: Play the Role of a Facilitator
An underrated leadership skill is the ability to step into the role of the facilitator — especially in ideation. As your team begins filling up the whiteboard (physically or virtually), your role fundamentally shifts. This is not the moment to drive alignment or pressure the room toward resolution. Your job instead is to protect divergent views, build on emerging ideas, and reinforce the conditions that allow creative thinking to flow.
At SQA Group, when we facilitate design thinking Insights Sessions with our clients, we intentionally use techniques that reduce hierarchy and keep possibility open, including:
- Asking participants to call out a post-it that resonated most with them — written by someone else, not themselves
- Building in solo thinking time to minimize groupthink and power dynamics
- Modeling the power of call-backs (e.g. “That connects to what Jane shared a few moments ago…”)
- Inviting participants to respond from someone else’s perspective (e.g. a different role, tenure, or level)
When done powerfully, participants feel heard and ideation transitions from feeling hard to invigorating. Perhaps most importantly, we as leaders start to send a signal to our teams that half-formed ideas are the beginning seeds to something game-changing.
Tip 3: Create a System, Not Just a Session
Ideation can struggle to thrive and influence if it’s treated as a one-off workshop or thing to do. That’s why it’s essential to create a system in which ideation can be repeatable and scalable.
At SQA Group, we help companies leverage next-gen KPIs to fortify ideation as a systemic choice. One of our KPIs, Innovation Pipeline Conversion, is designed to measure the ease and success with which innovation advances within an organization and/or team. A quick teaser on how it works:
- Step 1: define your innovation pipeline stages. For example, you might use Opportunity Defined, Solution Identified, Discussion, Design, Creation, Implementation, Diffusion, etc.
- Step 2: Put a “likelihood to close” value on each stage. As an idea moves through the pipeline, it becomes far more likely to “close,” which in this case means implemented and diffused.
- Step 3: Establish continuous feedback. It’s possible that implemented concepts will end up back in the pipeline if someone dreams up a great improvement idea!
Dive deeper into Innovation Pipeline Conversion here.
When ideation is treated as a system rather than a moment, we close the gap between ideation and execution because we know that the system will ensure that our best ideas gain traction.
Interested in jump-starting a culture of ideation at your organization? Our team would be happy to brainstorm with you! Book some time directly with our team by clicking here.