I learned a very important skill as a kid of 11 years old. It’s called Brainstorming (a term often used but seldom practised in a meaningful way).
In the pursuit of solutions, people’s egos and personas can be an impediment to reaching an effective solution. One may have a shy or modest person, perhaps because of their personality or culture. Or one may have a powerful person that usurp proceedings who like to push their own agendas and win all the time.
This is where De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats is useful (I’m prone to wearing the Black Hat of the Devil’s Advocate, although I don’t mind wearing any of the other colors when required).
De Bono proposes using dix different coloured hats that represents personas. Each person in the discussion must wear each of the hats when discussing possible solutions.
White – Objective
Red – Emotional
Black – Critical
Yellow – Positive
Green – Creative
Blue – Organizational
The way we Brainstormed as children was simple.
Step 1: Take the problem at hand and document all proposed solutions, excluding none and rejecting none. Hold nothing back. As crazy as it might seem, include the idea.
Step 2: Reach consensus on which ideas to exclude, and democratically vote on the top ideas to spend time and effort to discuss.
Step 3: For each idea, for each person, record a short concise summary while wearing each of the hats. Participation under each of the hats is obligatory.
Step 4: Considering all the gathered comments, select a solution that is best suited to the problem at hand.
Take a chance and let this process of decision making help the solutions you employ in solving BIM solutions. You may be surprised at the wisdom that emerges from getting your team members to move out of their comfort zones. At the same time, you may just get to know them a little better when they are out of their shells.
