Kevin SimpsonCPA Web Books · Founder at CPA Web Books

Brainstorm Like a Pro: The Silent Method

23 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker describes a silent, paper‑based brainstorming exercise designed for remote or distributed teams to generate book titles. Participants each receive a sheet (or column) and write a single title. The sheet is then passed to the left; the next person reads the previous title and riffs on it, adding a new variation. This pass‑around continues among eight participants, producing dozens of title variants (approximately 8 × 40 or more). After multiple rounds, the group selects one of the generated titles as the final book title. The method emphasizes quiet, individual reflection combined with collaborative expansion, making it suitable for remote collaboration where synchronous discussion is limited.

Chapters

Creativity, we have some great exercises to brainstorm. The reality is when we're working remotely or disparately, we have to work in our tunnels. But when we come together, we can tackle a big topic. We've created book titles. I remember Kelsey walked us through an exercise, which is a great brainstorm. You take a piece of paper and you give it one piece of paper to per person, and it's a column or kind of sheet. And say the brainstorm is around book titles. You write down one book title on your sheet and the person to your left writes one title. So each sheet now has one title on it. Then you pass the document to the person to your left and they look at what the prior title was and they riff off of it, right? And you pass it around. It's this silent brainstorm, but there's this natural expansion, right? And so we came up with 8 people, 8 times 40 or maybe more titles and variants, and one of them became our book title. Yeah, it is really cool creativity.