Brainstorm Like a Principal Engineer
Best practices from two Amazon Principal Engineers on making brainstorming sessions productive and judgment-free
I like spending quality time with my own brain. Those moments help me focus, solve a hard problem, or understand something complex. That said, when I need to be creative, come up with lots of competing ideas, and choose one, my brain and I alone can do only so much.
Most of the best ideas I’ve been part of came in a room or on a call, surrounded by others’ brains thinking hard, tossing out ideas, and questioning them. The presence of even one more person forces me to be more creative and quick to iterate, eliminate, or build upon ideas. The days I enjoy most in my profession are the ones with a fruitful brainstorming session.
In an ideal session, ideas swirl as if a storm has filled the room. No wonder the name fits so well. It was coined by a New York advertising executive, Alex F. Osborn, who co-founded one of the most successful ad agencies of the 20th century. He introduced it as a method for creative thinking, built on deferring judgment so ideas could flow freely. An wonderful article by Hanisha Besant traces the journey of brainstorming from Osborn to today.
Besant says “[Osborn] came up with four basic rules for the process.” Three of the rules can be summarized this way: create as many ideas as possible, allow them to be wild, and build on others’ ideas. Osborn’s second rule, “that no one was to criticize an idea,” is the one that stood out for me. It is a great rule, it is essential for a productive session, but I’ve seen it broken at times.
At Amazon, with whiteboards in our hallways and even our elevators, I’ve been part of thousands of brainstorming sessions. I’ve been to both great sessions and poor ones. In the worst, egos clashed. The ideas were dismissed too quickly. Or everyone was after pushing their own agenda without taking the time to hear each other.
Hasan Abbasi is a Principal Engineer at Amazon with whom I’ve worked for almost a decade. He is my favorite teammate to brainstorm with. With him there is no judgment. Ideas surface freely, shaped and reshaped without fear of being shut down.
That’s why I invited him to record an episode of Walk the Talk: Builder Conversations with me and identify what he and I do that makes our brainstorming sessions productive and judgment-free.
What follows is that conversation, with some quotes lightly edited for clarity. You can also watch the full video here.
Hasan came prepared to our discussion. He said he thought about what had made our brainstorming sessions work:
At first, I thought maybe it works because we think alike. But then I realized, no, it is not. You and I usually have differing views. It is actually about four things: being respectful, being open-minded, bringing different perspectives, and also having strong opinions.
We definitely share a sense of humor, a glimpse is on display in the bloopers. But Hasan is right, I remember many instances where we were thinking in opposite directions, and through our sessions, we converged. His list resonated with me the moment I heard it.
Respect
We decided to break our conversation into those sections. Hasan kicked the first one off.
Respect is the foundation of collaboration of all sorts. You cannot collaborate with someone who does not respect you or that you do not respect. And not just the person, but their opinions, their past work, their approaches, their position.
He pointed out how quickly its absence shows.
Often people come into a discussion with a hostile attitude. That doesn’t help get over any hurdles. When you come into a session for brainstorming, you need to check your ego at the door but bring your respect in. Without that, people stop listening.
Hasan was spot on. Without respect, brainstorming collapses into the most senior person dictating while everyone else stays silent. With respect, ideas are heard and tested.
Open-Mindedness
The second element in Hasan’s list was open-mindedness.
If you come into a session and you have already made up your mind about the path you want to take, you will not consider other options. That’s not brainstorming anymore. That’s trying to sell your idea.
Respect and openness, he explained, go together.
You only listen to other people’s opinions if you actually respect them. Otherwise, you might tell someone what you think the right way is, but you will not hear what they are telling you.
I told him why I think our sessions work: we can put wild ideas on the board without the fear of being judged. Hasan said “Even crazy ideas, right?” and built on what I’d just said.
There have been many instances where we mapped an approach, wrote it out, and at the end I said, “You know what… I’m an idiot, my original idea doesn’t work.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said those exact words in a session.
This is great humility by Hasan, which goes a long way in brainstorming. What he is really saying is that one needs to feel comfortable admitting their original thinking was wrong. That builds trust, and trust leads to what Osborn had in his rules: “improve on each other’s ideas.”
We discussed that if one feels someone is going to attack them in a brainstorming session, they will be less likely to give an honest opinion.
I continued arguing that the most senior person sets the tone so everybody feels comfortable contributing, no matter how wild the idea or what their level is. I recalled examples where the most brilliant idea came from the most junior person in the room, and that only happened when we, as facilitators, ensured psychological safety. I later read in Besant’s article that Osborn also made it clear that the “facilitator of the brainstorming session played a pivotal role in the process.”
The open-mindedness Hasan brought up allows finding better paths. Hasan recalled a project where his design seemed solid until an engineer less experienced than him suggested a cheaper and simpler alternative. He said his idea would have worked, but her perspective reshaped the solution. For Hasan, that is the value of open-mindedness: testing everything far enough to see what holds, and replacing your own when something better emerges.
Perspective
Hasan’s third element was perspective.
People will always come up with an idea that fits with the vision they have. You may not have equal knowledge, but you have equal knowledge about yourself.
He explained that it is easy to dismiss someone’s view without realizing the foundation it comes from. You might hear the words but miss why they are being said. When that happens, the whole idea feels weak because its base has been ignored.
Each team comes to a brainstorming session with its own perspective. I noted that in Amazon we often talk about “wearing different hats.” Within your own team, you focus on what benefits that group. But in a larger setting, the perspective has to shift toward what benefits the whole company.
Hasan nodded and gave an example: One team might be focused on reducing high-severity operational tickets, another on revenue. Both are valid, but unless you recognize the hat each is wearing, you will talk past each other.
We concluded that good brainstorming means putting those hats on and switching them long enough to understand.
Strong Opinions
The final element Hasan named was having strong opinions.
You cannot just come into a brainstorming session with no perspective of yourself. You have to have an opinion, a goal you are trying to get out. If all the participants have no opinions, then yes, it’s a pure brainstorming session, but it’s not productive.
Strong opinions give the room something real to test. Hasan used the image of fan-in and fan-out. Everyone comes in with many ideas. A good session narrows them down, tests them, and shapes them. Sometimes the fan-out is larger, and that is a signal that there were options no one had thought of before. I call that a success too.
Hasan described brainstorming as a loop. I found that brilliant. He said you think on your own, come together to combine ideas, generate more, then return to refine them. Hasan continued to emphasize a point I made mid-conversation that writing a document afterward turns that loop into something concrete. “Writing the doc is the one that lets the dust settle after the storm.”
In Conclusion
Thinking about our conversation, Hasan laid out a simple but powerful set of elements to keep brainstorming effective: Respect is the foundation. Open-mindedness keeps the session alive. Perspective widens the frame. Strong opinions push the work forward and give the room something real to test.
Two brilliant people, Osborn and Hasan, more than half a century apart, came up with their own four rules for brainstorming. Different rules, same spirit. Both are based on trust.