Brainstorming is one of the fastest ways to generate great ideas for redesigning processes in your law firm. But what if you run a brainstorming session and no one participates? Perhaps you’re bombarded with solutions but none of them seems right, or you don’t get as many ideas as you expected. The worst is when, in the end, your session doesn’t help you address the problem you’re trying to solve, and you find yourself back at square one.

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Welcome to Gimbal’s Tip of the Week, where you get practical, actionable advice you can use right away to start building a more productive and profitable legal practice.

The key to productive brainstorming sessions is having the right people in the room.

This week’s tip is to choose the right people for your brainstorming team. Here are 3 ways to get started:

•  Include the subject matter experts. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, you don’t need the entire law firm or department to be included. Instead, invite a blend of people, from senior lawyers to legal assistants, who work directly in the process your targeting. Each person fulfils a different function. They’ll see potential solutions from their unique perspective on the process. They’re what we call the subject matter experts.
•  Choose a variety of thinkers. You need creatives just as much as you need analytical thinkers. That variety will provide you with a much broader range of possible solutions than you’ll get from a team where people typically think the same way.
•  Operate with a can-do mindset. Many brainstorming sessions are doomed from the start because people come with a negative outlook. Choose people with an open, can-do mindset. You need people who will think of an idea, or hear someone else’s idea and say, “Yes, we could do that if...” rather than, “No! We can’t do that because...”

Your action item is, the next time you’re having a brainstorming session, to think about who you need in the room. Make sure you’ve got: one, the subject matter experts; two, a good mix of different kinds of thinkers; and three, people with a positive, can-do mindset. It may take some time to put together the ideal team, but it will be worth the extra effort.

We use brainstorming in every process improvement project. The right team makes all the difference. Adopting these three tips for building a brainstorming team will help you do it well. It’s the same strategy we teach in our Practice Accelerator and Legal Process Improvement Professional courses.

Legal professionals who brainstorm effectively can quickly generate a wealth of ideas for increasing efficiency, profitability, and productivity. They’ll be able to improve their processes and deliver even better service to their clients.

And that’s it. Join us next week for more on building a profitable and productive law practice and don’t forget to sign up so you never miss a Tip of the Week.

See you next week.