Divergent convergent thinking

What is it?

Every team has ideas, initiatives and proposals to improve. Sometimes teams have a lot of them. Some may be useful and some not so much, some may be very simple and some may be much more elaborate. Using divergent convergent thinking we can find and use the best of these ideas to help the team to reach it’s best performance.

This sounds very simple. So imagine you lead a team and you have to tackle a certain problem or improve a given service. Being a smart and proactive leader you want to use, precisely, the best ideas available. But ask yourself these questions:

• How do you go about getting people to communicate their ideas?
• Assuming you gather a good number of proposals, how do you decide on which ones to choose?
• How do you get team members to agree on which initiatives to use?

Finally, after figuring out how to do that, think about how much time you would have to invest to get those answers.

Divergent and convergent thinking can be a structured, time efficient and inclusive way to get ideas from teams. With a proper use of this tool you can go from having individual, separated and secluded ideas to having a few ideas that the team has agreed to.

The rational in this tool is to use Divergent thinking to “produce” ideas and then use Convergent thinking to filter or funnel ideas. If we plotted the number of ideas over time we would end up with something very similar to a bell curve with two narrow ends and a more populated middle section. See the gif at the bottom of the page to see an example of this bell curve.

 How do we use it?

The process starts by inviting the team to develop ideas around a specific goal or objective. After this, the fun starts. There is a total of 6 activities that complete the process. Here is an overview of each step. For further information click on each step.

• Brain storming
  • This is a very popular technique used to generate ideas. Each team member has the chance to give an idea. The facilitator writes down each idea without discussing details.
• Nominal Group technique
  • This is a kind of brain storming. The difference is that in this case the invitation is to engage in a quiet and individual process. Sticky notes are given to all team members and each idea is written down in one piece of paper. All ideas are posted on a flip chart.
• Affinity diagram
  • The goal here is for the team to group ideas that are similar. This is an activity done by the whole team but quietly. After the grouping is done, each group is given a name or title.
• Multi voting
  • This is a process recommended when the group comes up with more than 10 ideas. So each member of the group votes for the ideas they like most and the ideas with more votes are selected. This process can be done by making a matrix (As shown below) and giving sticky dots to team members. After this, each member sticks a dot in the idea or ideas of their preference.
• Rank ordering
  • Each team member ranks the selected ideas in a given order (For example from 1 to 5) and finally the facilitator counts the votes for each idea.
  • Rank ordering form
• Structured discussion
  • In this final discussion, team members get an opportunity to express any thoughts they have regarding the selected ideas.

Watch how we generate and agree upon the best ideas using these techniques…