Designing effective brainstorm round questions
Three patterns for writing round questions that get groups talking - and that AI can actually analyze for sentiment and consensus.
Bad questions produce silence or small-talk. Great questions produce ten minutes of disagreement followed by a real insight. Here are the patterns we see working again and again.
The 'stop / start / continue' pattern
Use three short rounds: what should we stop, what should we start, what should we keep doing. Concrete, time-bounded, easy for AI to cluster.
The 'imagine it's 2030' pattern
Future-tense questions unlock bolder answers than present-tense ones. 'It's 2030 and we won an award - what for?' produces sharper output than 'What is our strategy?'.
The 'devil's advocate' pattern
Spend one round asking groups to argue against the plan. EchoSphere's sentiment analysis lights up beautifully on these rounds and surfaces risks you'd otherwise miss.