How to practice brainstorming "on the fly"

Firms will often brand this as ‘testing your creativity’, but in reality the skills are analogous to the structuring stage of a case. Can you take an open-ended question and put a structure around your answer quickly (without taking 90 seconds to do so). To do this ‘on the fly’ is a matter of 2 things:

1. Practicing enough structuring drills so that you train yourself to come up with 3-5 buckets very quickly then the brainstorming / idea generation can happen more naturally ‘on the fly’ as you communicate. You can structure very quickly around basic value chain stages, commercial drivers, MECE lenses (external, internal) etc 
2. If it's a difficult brainstorming question and you don't sense the 3-5 buckets coming to your mind quickly, use tactical adjustments to buy you some time, e.g. “that's an interesting question let me quickly think about a few areas to consider then we can ideate from there”… then take 10-20 seconds to do so

Partner rounds are always going to be more free flowing to really test how you would fare in a natural consulting setting. You always want to maintain structured, top down communication across all case stages - don't fall into the trap of a 'random walk' just because the conversation allows for it.  

Hi there,

It's a two step process:

1. Learn brainstorming techniques

There are several systematic ways to improve your ability to create broad, deep and insightful brainstorming answers (that's what they want to see). You need to learn them and understand when they are useful.

I discuss many of them in my book but also do offer a free course on it. Reach out if you are interested.

2. Internalize it and practice

It's like going to the gym. If you want your muscles to grow, you need to put in the effort.

It's the same with brainstorming. Practice high-quality brainstorming drills and questions with and without taking time. 

During skill building, take some time to think about your answers and gradually decrease the time you take to think about them.

Finally, even in many partner and final round interviews, you will get some time to think about it for a bit. Always ask.

All the best,

Florian
 

Hi there, 

Not to disagree with your point and what others are saying about structure - it is true it's very important, however … 

I think for a lot of candidates during a brainstorming question this sits in the way of giving genuinely good answers, which is a pity. An interviewer, even more so a partner would really want to hear what are your ideas, how you think. They will be aware you cannot have an amazing structure + good ideas with literally 0 seconds to think. 

It might be me, but when I was scoring candidates for the brainstorming question of my case, I used put way way more emphasis on the actual ideas than the structure. I of course scored their structuring as well, but I have already done most of that during the framework part. 

Now, a practical advice I give to people I coach is to come up with a simple structure: two buckets, and then move on to the content. 

See what works for you in terms of preparation methods from all the advice shared here - there are a lot of good ideas to pick up from. 

Best, 

Ariadna 

You don't have to practice brainstorming on the fly.

You have to train answering well a lot of brainstorming questions and making sure you are doing it in a structured way (and yes, simply dividing the options in two major groups is super-helpful). Once you get used to doing this well… you start becoming faster, and the more you practice, the least this will be an issue.