The Nominal Group Technique Will Instantly Fix Your Team Dynamics, Brainstorming, and Candor

QUESTIONS TO PROMPT NOMINAL GROUP DISCUSSIONS

If you want to try the nominal group technique but you're stuck for what questions you should pose to team members, use this starter list of idea generation questions. Chances are that every participant will give you a new idea (because they'll have developed these ideas independently).

• <To each member> How would you answer someone who asked about the other ideas we considered but didn't choose?
• <To each member> Are there any circumstances under which our current decision won't work?
• <To each member> If you could create a solution from scratch, would this be it? And why or why not?
• <To each member> Who would have concerns about what we just decided?
• <To each member> How would our biggest/smallest customer feel about what we just decided?
• <To each member> Which of our customers/stakeholders would be concerned about what we just decided?
• <To each member> Which of our customers/stakeholders would be thrilled about what we just decided?
• <To each member> If everything we've created thus far was destroyed, which parts would you rebuild?
• <To each member> What pieces have we already decided that you wish you could undo or redo?
• <To each member> If you were ten times bolder, what big idea would you recommend? What first step would you take to get started?

CONSENSUS

When we ask leaders to describe the best decision making process for teams, we almost always hear “consensus.” From the Latin consentire (which means to act together or share in the feeling), consensus in a team context basically means that everyone agrees. 

And it is true that, compared to other decision-making processes like majority rule or bargaining, consensus generally offers the greatest amount of buy-in, emotional commitment and thoroughness. But while that’s a general rule, there are people and cultures where consensus is a very poor choice.

Consensus is typically a much slower decision-making process than other methods, like taking a vote. And some people really dislike the lack of clearly defined processes involved in achieving consensus; it often requires a messy and sometimes chaotic interpersonal back-and-forth to get everyone truly in agreement.

Consensus typically involves the team leader saying, “Bob, I don’t feel like you’re fully bought in, would you share your feelings with the rest of us?” Then, after Bob shares his hesitancy, the leader asks, “Who else feels the same hesitancy as Bob?” And this continues until all reservations have been resolved or everyone’s too tired to care. For people who like a defined group process, clear rules and order, this is an amazingly frustrating and fuzzy decision making process.

And the problem with forcing a consensus in a larger group where team members struggle with ambiguity is that a consensus-driven group process creates a level of stress and responsibility that employees don’t want. 

Here’s the bottom line for every facilitator: Ask your stakeholders how they would like your team to make decisions. Do they truly want consensus? Would they like to put everything to a vote? Or do they want the boss to decide? There’s no a priori right or wrong answer, but if you want your teams to run more smoothly, you should probably listen to what your team wants.

Getting Your Project Team To solve Problems With Better Ideas

As every organizational behavior expert knows, problem solving is very much about loosening up your brain and getting more open to different ideas. So to generate more useful ideas, we need to do a different kind of solution generation and we're going to call it brainstorming in reverse. 

Step one, describe the problem you're trying to solve. Now step two, reverse the problem and ask yourself, "How can I possibly cause this problem?"

Then brainstorm ideas about how you could cause the problem and then reverse those causes into solution ideas for the original problem. 

Let's look at an example. Imagine that the problem I'm trying to solve is ultimately how do we make our customers more delighted? Let's say we've gotten some data back, and our customers are not delighted right now. Rather than trying to attack this directly, let me reverse the question: "How could we make our customers less delighted?" 

Well, what could we do to really irritate our customers? What could we do to make our customers less happy? We could cancel their orders without telling them. We could not notify them about shipping changes. We could not answer the phones when they call about problems with their order. We could send them four plus emails a day, right? All of those things would probably go a long way to making our customers less delighted, more irritated, et cetera.

Now that I have brainstormed some ways that I could make our customers angrier, reverse that around again and now I'm going to see some solutions start to emerge. Number one, we could create notifications about any canceled orders and we could get better in stock info. Number two, maybe we could improve our shipping charge accuracy. Three, we could put backup phone coverage in place. We could send fewer than four emails a day. 

The cool thing about brainstorming in reverse is that it unclogs the brain and forces us to look at the problem from a completely different angle. And for a group participant, it provides a fun an unusual way to solve problems while still giving a structured method.

One of the reasons why most problem solving doesn't work that well, and why people still get frustrated with problems they face is that they keep looking at the problem through the same lens. If we keep trying to solve problems by looking at those problems the same exact way, no wonder we're not going to be able to solve these problems.