Cassilis

Patrick Wintour tells us the Cabinet had to endure a ‘brainstorming session’ courtesy of Gordon Brown’s new strategy chief Stephen Carter:

“Ministers were put into groups of six and seven to look at how the party is to raise cash to campaign. Other problems posed were the difficulties of going into a general election as the party of government, and how to turn more than a decade in power to the party's advantage. They were also asked to examine dividing lines with the Tories and how to sharpen them, and how to improve "messaging". Each group then reported its findings to the overall cabinet. The novel format, common in business but less so round the cabinet table, is undoubtedly a product of Carter”

The story will raise a chuckle from the millions of us ‘in business’ who have to endure such sessions regularly – it’s nice to know even the great and the good can’t forever escape the tediums of 80’s management consultancy. But it also got me wondering how typical the session was and what other details might never see the light of day…?

Flipcharts. There are always flipcharts. Usually almost full so you have to rummage through the discarded output from previous such sessions to find a blank page or two. What long discarded ideas from previous Blair brainstorm sessions might Gordon’s cabinet have glimpsed flicking through the flipchart? “Join the Euro”, “Reshuffle – move Gordon to FO, Peter to Treasury”?

Then someone is chosen to ‘scribe’ – and it’s crucially important that it’s described as such rather than ‘write’ or ‘take notes’. If anyone in the group uses the such hideously plain English they immediately identify themselves as a ‘brainstorm novice’ – this alters the power balance significantly and said individual suddenly has to work doubly hard to gain group approval, perhaps offering up ideas at an increased rate or agreeing to ‘feedback for the group’ (see below). It’s common for people to claim really poor handwriting as an excuse not to scribe but this shouldn’t be taken too seriously – even those with a gloriously legible hand will employ this tactic simply because the can’t be bothered standing up. Scribing duties then usually fall to the overly enthusiastic or irritatingly eager members of the group, keen to impress the facilitator or managers in the room – for the Cabinet read Hazel Blears or James Purnell.

Before they kick-off (again, language is important – these sessions never start, they ‘kick off’) there’s normally an unseemly scrabble for materials that should’ve been in place long before everyone got round the table – working pens, blu-tack, post-it notes etc. The poor sod unfortunate enough to sit near door fairs worst here because he / she needs to leave the room and try to ‘source’ (brainstorm for ‘find’) these things nearby. That in turn often involves delicate negotiations and promises of safe return after the session. Worth stressing here that this is again part of the ritual and neither party puts any credence in these promises – tradition demands you leave all materials in the room when you’re done. But, this being a Brown Government brainstorm profligacy with office funds is a more likely scenario – I suspect everyone at the table had their own little pack of flipchart pens, 6 post-it pads, an A4 lined notepad and a nice little ‘No. 10 – getting on with the business of government’ pen. Down the side of the pen there’s a graph showing violent crime rates, the tax burden and national debt – turn it upside down and watch them soar.

Once things finally get underway it’s clear that ‘brainstorming’ is an elaborate illusion designed to elevate a bunch of people sitting in a room talking into a ‘process’. Almost every nuance of the discussion is written down and stuck on the walls lest remembering it becomes too much of a mental strain. Contributing ideas is elevated to something more substantive by virtue of having to ‘write it on a sticky’ and stick it on the wall. And after group work some poor bugger has to ‘feedback’ to the whole group - this means struggling to decipher the scribes handwriting and not being able to remember what was meant by it even when you do. In most cases the other group members end up bailing the speaker out.

What started off as a silly idea when reading Wintour’s story seems to have got out of hand – 700 + words and I haven’t even got to ‘Objectives for the Day’, ‘Icebreakers’, inevitable buffet lunch etc. Feel free to continue via the comments and I may revisit the theme later myself. Suffice to say the next time I have to endure such a session I’ll do so with slightly better humour in the knowledge that even the PM endures such suffering from time to time…..