Identify the problem you need to solve.  Express it as a short, simple phrase.  You don’t want your brainstormers thinking too much about the problem.  You want their energy focused on dreaming up ideas.

Choose your brainstorm team.  Select people from diverse backgrounds.  This will make your mix of ideas broader and the different perspectives will stimulate idea generation even more.  Ensure a healthy mix of men and women.

Get your team together for the brainstorm and explain the problem you need to solve.  Set a time limit.  If it’s a simple problem, work at 15 minutes.  The more complex, the more time you will spend.  Don’t run a brainstorm for too long.  People get tired and you want fresh people with fresh ideas.

If your brainstormers are new to brainstorming, explain the process to them.  Especially reinforce the importance of not being judgmental and the need to suspend negative criticism.  Help them to approach the process with the question, “what if?” rather than, “yes but.”

You may want to conduct an icebreaker exercise.  This will achieve two things.  It will help brainstormers become comfortable working with each other.  And it will help them disassociate from whatever they were doing before the meeting - clearing the fog of external distraction.

Start the brainstorm.  Start the stopwatch so the leader can spur the brainstormers to generate ideas.  As brainstormers call out ideas, the leader should write them on the flipchart.  The leader should not interpret them – just write them up.  If a silence develops, encourage them to drill down into an idea that is already written up on the flipchart.

End on time.  If you set 15 minutes, make sure you try and end at 15 minutes unless you really are onto something big.  If you don’t end promptly, regular brainstormers will get used to late ends and the pressure of forcing ideas out in a short, predetermined amount of time will be lost.