How to facilitate:
- Give each participant a blank sheet of paper and a writing utensil.
- Explain this scenario to the group: Imagine that you just woke up to a beautiful, sunny Monday morning. You get dressed, have a big bowl of wheaties, and you’re ready to start your day. As you step to go to your car, you notice there’s a big problem. You see a massive pile of bricks behind your car, blocking you from leaving. You can call someone to have them taken away, or you can look at this as an opportunity to make money on this as opposed to losing it.
- Now set a timer for 5 minutes.
- In 5 minutes, ask the group to silently come up with as many business-building ideas as they can for the bricks, writing out or drawing their ideas on a blank sheet of paper.
- When the timer ends, have the group take turns sharing their favorite ideas.
- From there, they’ll be ready to jump into their next meeting or any other great brainstorming activities.
The Takeaway:
This warm-up exercise is a great way to kick-off any brainstorming session, because it’ll get you coming up with a wide range of creative solutions that are likely outside of your normal focus or business. As a bonus, you’ll get to learn a bit more about what types of ideas or solutions others gravitate toward, whether as practical as building a brick oven for pizza, outlandish, or even a bit more on the charitable side.
