How to hold brainstorming sessions remotely

Brainstorming together as a team while working remotely has proved to be very difficult. Here are the two strategies we have found most effective.

Instead of one all-in meeting, break them up into two-hour weekly meetings.

The whole benefit to brainstorming in-person is being able to jump in and build on one another's ideas. Remotely, and with the ever-so-slightly-delayed time between people’s sound and cameras, this becomes nearly impossible. People end up unintentionally interrupting one another.

Break this big planning conversation into chunks. Each week, we hold a two-hour meeting. Everyone is involved, but two hours is only enough time to get through a handful of talking points and ideas. Then

everyone has the rest of the week to reflect on what we talked about, do homework, talk with their teams, and then come back to the table ready to build on those ideas the following week — and so on.

Use materials to create additional context before a big meeting.

One of the things we did recently was hold a big retrospective session — something we aim to do after all our big projects to reflect on areas of improvement. Previously if we held a retrospective, we’d go around the room and have everyone talk. It would be more of an open dialogue.

What we did instead was the person running the

session solicited feedback through a survey in advance.

Each person had to submit three things that went well, three things that didn’t go well, and so on.

The benefit we found in creating this survey beforehand was, for one, people who weren’t as verbal ended up sharing really great feedback. And second, it gave important context to the discussion so that we didn’t spend too much time going around and gathering all that information on video. Instead, we had a starting point.