Virtual Brainstorming: II

The differences between face-to-face brainstorming and virtual brainstorming depend on the virtual medium you use. Immediacy provides direct interaction between participants, which makes face-to-face brainstorming effective. The more immediate the virtual medium, the lower is the risk of inadequate results. A videoconference is more immediate than a telephone conference, for example.

Virtual brainstorms that rely on less-immediate media, such as email, wikis, or proprietary "joint authoring" platforms, have multiple problems.

Joint authoring platforms are usually asynchronous

With asynchronous media, people might not interact simultaneously, which creates difficulties for monitoring everyone's level of effort. For all their faults, synchronous connections, such as video or telephone conferences, at least let you know that the participants were connected for a definite period of time.

Joint authoring platforms dampen excitement

Although The more immediate the
virtual medium, the
lower the risk of
inadequate resultsthey do support participant interactions, they don't transmit momentum or excitement very well, because they tend to mask the pace and frequency of contributions. Excitement and rapid pace are helpful in brainstorms, because they tend to limit self-censoring, making the ideas flow.

Joint authoring platforms are usually text-based

Text-based systems disadvantage participants who favor spoken interaction, and favor the more skilled writers or faster typists, which can bias results.

Less-immediate connections can produce toxic conflict

Less-immediate connections are more susceptible to the online disinhibition effect, which increases the likelihood of deviations from behavioral norms, such as suspension of judgment.

So what can we do about this? Some suggestions:

Use telephone or video

Even if you use a text-based medium, provide synchronous audio or video connections. Teleconferencing simultaneous with text-based authoring might be difficult, but alternating between the two can be workable: 15 minutes of teleconferencing, followed by 15 minutes of text work, for example.

Schedule multiple sessions

Because things take longer in virtual environments, multiple sessions might be required.

Focus on maintaining attention

Face-to-face sessions are less vulnerable to distractions than are virtual sessions, because the action draws attention. Keep virtual sessions short. To focus attention, display accumulating contributions on virtual flipcharts.

Provide equal access

We can try to apportion talking time fairly in face-to-face sessions. We might encounter difficulties occasionally, when some individuals dominate, but skillful facilitators can address that. In virtual sessions, the problem is more difficult to manage. The "group-of-groups" geometry, in which several different face-to-face groups are connected electronically, is known to be problematic. A central site with most people face-to-face and a few people participating by phone or video isn't much better, because the "remote" individuals tend to have difficulty hearing or participating.

Anticipate these issues. Structure sessions to give everyone equal access to the virtual floor. Favor bridge lines with all participants connected equally. Poll everyone for contributions, in fixed order, round robin style.

With luck, virtual brainstorming can work well enough. But if the issue at hand is truly important, find a way to bring people together.   First issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

Are your virtual meetings plagued by inattentiveness, interruptions, absenteeism, and a seemingly endless need to repeat what somebody just said? Do you have trouble finding a time when everyone can meet? Do people seem disengaged and apathetic? Or do you have violent clashes and a plague of virtual bullying? Read Leading Virtual Meetings for Real Results to learn how to make virtual meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot shorter. Order Now!

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Virtual and Global Teams:

Long-Loop Conversations: Anticipation

In virtual or global teams, conversations are sources of risk to the collaboration. Because the closed-loop response time for exchanges can be a day or more, long-loop conversations generate misunderstanding, toxic conflict, errors, delays, and rework. One strategy for controlling these phenomena is anticipation.

Favor Symmetric Virtual Meetings

Virtual meetings are notorious for generating more frustration than useful output. One cause of the difficulties is asymmetry in the way we connect to virtual meetings.

Disjoint Awareness: Bias

Some cognitive biases can cause people in collaborations to have inaccurate understandings of what each other is doing. Confirmation bias and self-serving bias are two examples of cognitive biases that can contribute to disjoint awareness in some situations.

Attributes of Joint Leadership Teams

The leadership of most teams, business units, or enterprises consists of a single individual. Others have joint leadership teams. What kinds of joint leadership teams are there, and what factors can affect their success?

Fractures in Virtual Teams

Virtual teams — teams not co-located — do sometimes encounter difficulties maintaining unity of direction, or even unity of purpose. When they fracture, they do so in particular ways. Bone fractures provide a metaphor useful for guiding interventions.

See also Virtual and Global Teams for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming August 13: Leaving High-Touch Jobs: How

High-touch jobs require that we work closely with colleagues, teammates, clients, or suppliers. Because choosing to leave such a job affects all these people, and the person departing, we would do well find a path that respects all involved. Here are some suggestions. Available here and by RSS on August 13.

And on August 20: Earned Value and Goodhart's Law

Earned Value Management, widely used approach to project management, is most useful in contexts in which estimators are familiar with the Tasks, the Technologies, and the Teams. But even then, it is vulnerable to the tactics of those who game the metrics. Available here and by RSS on August 20.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenaXXxGCwVgbgLZDuRner@ChacDjdMAATPdDNJnrSwoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info