Authored By: Candace Whitman
When it comes to marketing your law firm, it is important to try new ideas in order to stand out from the crowd. One way to come up with fresh ideas is to hold a brainstorming session. Gina Rubel provides some tips for productive brainstorming sessions in an article for Attorney at Work.
Organize ideas
Decide how you would like to organize and keep track of everyone's ideas. Rubbel suggests appointing a moderator to facilitate the session by taking notes, reading out ideas, keeping the meeting on track etc. She says you can use methods like sticky notes, a whiteboard, or index cards to capture everyone's ideas in writing.
At Advocate Capital, we use Excel during our brainstorming sessions to type out the idea and who suggested it. We go around in a circle and each person can either say an idea or pass for that round. We continue taking turns until the meeting is over or everyone passes. In a separate meeting, we add more columns to the sheet for which ideas we want to proceed with, who will lead that particular project, and what priority it is.
Variety of perspectives
It can be valuable to bring involve people with different perspectives. Rubbel states, "Don’t just invite your marketing team or senior partners. Rather, include people from various aspects of your law firm." This will help you gather ideas you may never have thought about before.
No bad ideas
One of the most crucial parts of a successful brainstorming session is creating a space where participants feel comfortable sharing. It can be intimidating to share crazy and creative ideas if you fear you will be judged or shot down.
Explain the "rules" of the session to participants before starting. The number one rule should be that no idea is a bad one. Rubbel explains that negative language like, "That won't work" or "We've done that before" can stifle creativity and ruin the process. Brainstorming sessions are only for sharing ideas, not planning how to execute them.
For more helpful ideas on how to hold a brainstorming session, click here to read Rubbel's article.
