In the business world, people often hear the term "Think outside the box", with little or no explanation as to how to actually do that. Everyone is just expected to know how, figure it out, or find another job. Brainstorming sessions often lead to a slew of ideas from a group, but with little or no structure, it's difficult to tell what ideas are worth pursuing and which are wasting space.

There is a brainstorming strategy that, when used with a couple of other follow-up methods, will allow for creative thoughts to come from the group and still home in on the ideas that will actually benefit the overall goal. The three steps of the strategy are mind maps, t-analysis and action plan creation. Let's look at the first step, mind maps.

This step does a couple of things for a group brainstorm: it acts as an ice breaker, it gets people's brains pointing in the right direction and it can produce ideas that might not otherwise surface during just a normal call and response brainstorm session. Break your group up into smaller groups of at most 4 or 5. With each group should be a large sheet of paper (lecture board paper will do fine) and several different colored markers. The groups should be instructed to write the focus of your brainstorm in the middle of the paper and draw a circle around it. So if you were interested in brainstorming new ways to market a particular product, you'd write the product name in the middle of the paper. If you wanted to brainstorm on ways to control costs, you'd write Costs in the middle of the paper.

Once this is done, instruct the groups to draw lines branching out from the center and to write down anything that relates to the central thought. Remind them several times during the exercise that it doesn't matter how relevant or not it is, simply write down what comes to mind. As groups write down different items, they should circle those and branch off these sub-topics as well. What ends up happening is groups will get a large network of ideas branching off the central thought, some of which may interconnect as well (and if they do, instruct the groups to draw a line connecting the two sub-topics). While the initial sub-topics will be things that are likely already being done or are an obvious connection, the branches off the sub-topics are where the true ideas start to emerge and some new thoughts are likely to present themselves here.

Once the groups have completed their mind maps, open up discussion and have each group step through their mind map. Highlight new ideas and encourage discussion on items that may initially seem unrelated, to be sure there isn't a potentially great idea hidden in there. Also highlight common sub-topics listed between groups, as this indicates things that are either already in place, or things the group thinks should be in place. Discuss the effectiveness of these items and what will ultimately happen is a list of actionable items will begin to surface through discussion. Between the mind maps, the discussion and the list, your group will have their minds actively engaged in coming up with action steps to put some of the new ideas into place. Once this is done, your next step will be to conduct a T-analysis on the topics.

So to lead a powerful brainstorm session, it's important to have a game plan in place. Mind maps help focus the group in the right direction and enable discussions that will help everyone as a group "think outside the box".