Event management is a highly creative activity. For anyone who thinks they aren’t creative, this is usually down to a lack of confidence sharing your ideas. Everyone is creative, but we all work in slightly different ways. If you are working in a team to create a killer event idea for that demanding client, make sure you gather input from everyone. Here are some tips on how to capture that creativity.
1) Time
Set a time for a group brainstorm. Lots of people enjoy a group meeting like this, but some don’t. Consider inviting quieter, more reflective members of your team to contribute in advance or to share their ideas after the meeting.
2) Brief
Be clear about what you want to achieve by setting SMART objectives and sending out a brief to participants ahead of the meeting so that people can arrive prepared to focus on this specific event.
3) Space
If possible, hold your brainstorm at the event venue. If not, find somewhere relevant to your theme or your client. Getting out of the office will help your team think differently.
4) Prompts
Bring as many print outs and props as you can to prompt ideas and spark thought in the session. Printed images, short videos, promotional material from the client, images or props that relate to your target audiences for the event are all great to focus your team.
5) Guidelines
Set clear ground rules to allow the free flow of ideas. For example:
- There is no such thing as a bad idea in a brainstorm.
- All ideas go up on the board or are written on post it notes.
- Writing, drawing or talking through your ideas is fine.
- Only one person should be speaking at a time (if you are leading it is your job to make sure everyone has a chance to speak).
- Instinctive reactions are fine, as are more considered thoughts shared later.
- Building on each other’s ideas is encouraged.
- The group will vote on ideas later so reserve judgement until then.
6) Reflection
Allow everyone a chance to break off for a short time. Come back together once everyone has had a chance to mull over the ideas so far.
7) Wrap up
When the ideas start to dry up, start to wind up the brainstorm and look at categorising the ideas into big /small and voting on them. Finally, thank everyone for their ideas and agree a deadline by which you’ll have collated votes and distilled the ideas.
So now you are armed to go out and get brainstorming, what kind of events do you most want to get creative about and with? Who would your ideal brainstorming team be?
Featured imaged by
Lars Ploughmann used under a
Creative Commons license.
