Avoid The Execution Ceiling in Ideation Sessions

As a young designer, I attended a brainstorming session for a new campaign for a client. My Creative Director at the time was leading the session and came up with a really big idea. The idea was wonderful, but my response wasn’t. I challenged the idea not because it was bad, but because I wasn’t sure I could execute it perfectly for the presentation.

I had what is called an execution ceiling. I was limiting the idea by what I could produce for a pitch. I wanted the execution to be complete and ready to go to market instead of focusing on selling a great idea.

So how do you avoid this mentality? From my experience, this is not something limited to creative brainstorming; it also appears in branding workshops, especially when you have operationally driven people in a leadership team. The question "how are we going to make that a reality?" is often asked.

The way to avoid this is very simple: communication. The facilitator of the discussion needs to set the expectation that the “how are we going to make that a reality?” question is for a later discussion. For any visionary ideation session, you have to build upon ideas until they become scary.

A great tool can be found in Edward de Bono’s book, Six Thinking Hats. It’s based on the idea of parallel thinking—a technique in which the members of a brainstorming group think in the same direction at the same time.

Use this tool to guide conversation and hold team members accountable for building upon ideas rather than tearing them down.