i'd put in my two weeks notice before you caught me dead on that thing. i love how in the video no one is wearing a helmet. great safety campaign!

I've done a ton of brainstorming in my career and have generally found that these silly, crazy antics tend to work. The idea is generally to get people back in their "child-like" state of mind, when they tended to be less influenced by the work "no", when they did not know that things could not be done. As they grew up, they heard their parents and teachers telling them "no", you can't do that. As a result, as adults we become closed-minded, unwilling to take risks, think out of the box and think creatively.

In theory, taking people out of their element and getting them to think "freely" should work wonders. But in my experience, I have found these exercises to be awkward, childish and pretty strained. I'm not arguing that they do not work. Perhaps they've just fallen flat in my neck of the woods.

The silent brainstorming session stage requires all team members or participants to stop talking, and to think of ideas, but not speak out. The facilitator can ring a bell or use another method to indicate the start and end of this part of the exercise. Ideas are to written down by each brainstorming participant. In addition, the participants must guess the ideas that others may be thinking and writing down. Ideally participants should guess the ideas of the other participants for each person, one after the other. For example, if the participants are A, B, C, D, E, F and G, then A would not only write his or her her ideas, but also afterwards guess what B, C, D, E, F, and G may have as their ideas. Participants should do this using deep thinking, and base their guesses on the manner that other participants answered during the first speaking part of the session. Participants should be encouraged to think how each of the other participants' minds are working - to empathise, to 'put themselves in the other person's shoes' - as a method of guessing as intuitively and accurately as possible. 'Think how the other person will be thinking' is the sort of guidance that the facilitator can give.

At this stage what's happening is that each participant is coming up with ideas from their own perspective of how each of the other participants is thinking. All participants work on this stage of the session at the same time. You can imagine the multiplicity of ideas and perspectives that this stage produces.

Each participant should logically end up with a list of ideas alongside, or below, the names of each participant, including themselves.

After a reasonable period, when it is clear that participants have completed their lists, the facilitator can ring the bell again, indicating the end of the silent brainstorming stage.