The Brainstorm From Hell

One of the most ancient corporate rituals, complete with post-its attached to a wall, full of buzzwords and impractical ideas. A mindnumbing waste of time.

At Globexhaust, where innovation is treated like a rare, exotic bird that must be both celebrated and smothered, the latest edict from senior leadership dropped into our inboxes with the usual cheerful menace:

“This Thursday we’ll be hosting a Creativity Deep Dive! to reimagine how we drive ideation across verticals”

Nobody knows what “drive ideation” or “verticals” mean, but it sounded like one of those days when you don’t get to sit at your desk quietly pretending to work.

According to Sharon from HR, “this is about unleashing our inner disruptor”. Sometimes I wonder what side she is on. One minute she’s all revolution and resistance, the next she’s fully compliant with management’s bullshit, buzzwords and all. Maybe that’s her quality, a skill she’s developed to survive the daily corporate torture: as she doesn’t quite fit into any one bucket, she doesn’t have to bear the burden of the associated responsibilities. Quite smart when I think about it.
According to everyone else, the event was about spending three hours trapped in a room with beanbags, flipcharts, and the faint smell of fear.

When the invite said “offsite,” I briefly dared to hope we might go somewhere with windows or oxygen.
No such luck. The Innovation Hub was just a repurposed storage area with plastic ferns and a poster of Steve Jobs glaring down at us like a disappointed father.

Leading the session was an external “Creativity Sherpa” named Jasper, imported from a ridiculously expensive consultancy called SparkMettle, who walked in with an alien-like swagger that had a Kafka meets The Office flavour.

He arrived in a mustard cardigan, carrying a ukulele.
That was my first warning.

“Hi team!” he beamed, his teeth radiating entrepreneurial optimism.
“Today’s not about problems - it’s about possibilities! We’re going to break silos, embrace chaos, and reframe failure as learning”

I glanced at Barry from Procurement. He was already mentally reframing this as suffering.

We began with what Jasper called “mind-limbering”

“Everyone stand in a circle and shout the first thing that comes into your head!”

Sharon yelled “synergy!”
Nigel from Finance shouted “liquidity!”
I said “p45”

Jasper clapped like an overcaffeinated seal. “Love the energy! Let’s keep that going!”

Next, we had to “find our inner creative animal”
Barry said he was a sloth.
I said I was a moth drawn to the nearest emergency exit sign.

After the humiliation phase came the Post-It Pandemonium.

We were told to fill as many sticky notes as possible with “radical new ideas”
Sapphire from Marketing wrote things like Gamify employee engagement, and Create a culture of YES!

Sapphire is the typical airhead, bleached blonde (because it’s ‘more fun’ – meaning: more sex) with black re-growth and re-drawn eyebrows, filled lips and push up bra, always in search of a sexual mate, but with pretend innocence.

I wrote my top three ideas:

1. “Stop holding meetings”

2. “Remove management”

3. “Let everyone go home”

Jasper studied my notes.

“I’m sensing some resistance here, Nobby. Can you reframe that negativity as possibility?”

“Sure,” I said a bit more quietly. “I possibly don’t want to be here”. He pretended not to hear me as he walked away.

Next we were divided into teams to “ideate solutions”. Gone are the days in which in sessions of this kind we were able to hide in a corner and not do any work. Now they have to be participative: someone from HR at some point must have obviously cottoned on to these events’ sheer skull-dimming nature.
Our challenge: “How might we revolutionise internal communication?”

Barry suggested “talking less”
Sharon proposed an app. Yet another one. We are drowning in apps: one for getting into and around the building, one for booking meeting rooms, one for the lunch vouchers, one to connect to the office network, one for all our HR needs. And these are the ones that spring to mind but I’m in no doubt there are others.
Nigel suggested sending fewer emails, which was immediately shot down as “lacking ambition”

Sapphire scribbled “HOLISTIC COMMUNICATION ECOSYSTEM” in huge letters and underlined it twice. Jasper nearly cried with joy.

Each group had to present their ideas. Ours was titled “Silence as a Service”
We claimed it would “leverage mindful non-communication to enhance clarity”. We were now in full buzzword mode, neither the managers nor Jasper had any idea of our hidden subversive sarcasm, because…well, it was hidden. Makes you wonder how revolutions happen when they are planned in secret basements in which you can cut the smoke-filled air with a knife and where drinks flow well into the small hours of the morning.

The other groups pitched things like Digital Empathy Portals and The Employee Voice Initiative (EVI) - which turned out to be a suggestion box with a QR code.

The leadership panel nodded gravely through every presentation, occasionally muttering “interesting” while checking their phones. I swear one of them yawned with a fully open mouth as though they weren’t being seen by everyone else in the room.

By the end, the room was plastered with hundreds of colourful sticky notes, each containing words like synergy, innovation, and authenticity - a confetti of delusion.

Jasper gathered them up solemnly.

“Every idea is a seed,” he said. “Some will grow, others will compost”

They all composted.

A week later, we received an email titled Brainstorm Outcomes and Next Steps. It contained a bulleted summary of “themes identified” - none of which had any practical use - and a new recurring meeting invite:

“Creativity Council Sync - Weekly”

That was the moment Barry wept silently into his keyboard.

At Globexhaust, but I suspect in all large and faceless corporations, creativity isn’t something people do - it’s something they have to be seen to do. And the tool they tend to use, corporate brainstorming, isn’t about generating ideas. It’s about generating the illusion of innovation - the performance of thinking without the threat of change.

True creativity is dangerous. It questions power. It rewrites systems and disrupts org charts.
That’s why corporations corral it into Post-Its and workshops until it dies of PowerPoint exposure.

And next Thursday, we’re doing it again.
This time with props. Imagine that.