When you sit down to brainstorm with a group, the instinct is to aim for good ideas immediately. Everyone wants to be the person who suggests the clever solution that saves the day. But if you have ever hosted a brainstorming session that flopped, you know that pressure often produces the opposite result. People clam up. They filter themselves before speaking. The room goes quiet, and you end up with a handful of mediocre thoughts that everyone half-heartedly agrees on. The problem is not a lack of creativity. The problem is that the group is trying to be smart too early.

A simple shift in approach can break this cycle. Instead of asking your team to generate brilliant ideas, ask them to generate the worst ideas they can think of. Call it the “Worst Idea First” method. It sounds counterintuitive, but it works because it removes the fear of judgment. When the goal is to be bad, there is no risk. People relax. They laugh. They throw out absurd, impractical, and sometimes hilarious suggestions. And once those bad ideas are on the table, something interesting happens. The worst ideas often contain the seed of a great one.

Consider a real example. A marketing team needs to come up with a campaign for a new brand of peanut butter. The terrible ideas might include: “Hire a trained squirrel to ride a unicycle in Times Square,” or “Give away free jars by dropping them from a helicopter over a football stadium.” These are obviously not going to work. But let the group sit with the squirrel idea for a moment. The core of it is something memorable and playful that relates to squirrels and peanuts. That could lead to a campaign featuring animated squirrel characters on social media, or a contest where people share videos of their pets going crazy for the new peanut butter. The helicopter drop, though ridiculous, raises the notion of a high-visibility stunt or a free-sample event with a twist. The terrible idea is a springboard you would never have reached by trying to be sensible from the start.

Hosting this kind of session takes a little nerve. You have to set the tone explicitly. Start by telling everyone that for the first fifteen minutes, no idea is too stupid, too expensive, or too illegal (within reason). Make sure nobody is allowed to critique anything. The only rule is that everyone must contribute at least one truly terrible idea. You can even prime the pump by giving an example from your own head. If the group sees you willing to look foolish, they will follow.

After you have a solid list of awful suggestions, the real work begins. Now you shift into a positive, constructive mode. Take each terrible idea and ask, “What is one thing that is interesting or useful about this?” Do not ask if the idea is good. Look for the nugget. Maybe the helicopter drop is a terrible logistics idea, but the concept of a surprising, large-scale giveaway could actually work if you partner with a theme park or a sports event. Write down those nuggets on a whiteboard. Then start combining them. The worst ideas often bump into each other in ways that produce something novel. Two terrible ideas mashed together can cancel out each other’s flaws.

Another benefit of this technique is that it levels the playing field. In any group, there are confident talkers and quiet, more reserved members. The confident ones might dominate a normal brainstorm. But when the goal is to be bad, everyone has an equal shot. The quieter person might offer a weird idea that seems completely off the wall, and that weird idea might be exactly what the group needs to pivot into a new direction. It also stops the habit of groupthink, where people echo the first halfway decent suggestion because they want to move on.

You do not need to spend a whole session on bad ideas. Ten to fifteen minutes is usually enough. Then move into the refining phase. As the host, your job is to keep the energy up and to protect the process from anyone who wants to say, “That will never work.” That kind of negativity kills the momentum. If someone starts critiquing too early, gently remind them that we are still in the “find the nugget” stage.

The worst idea method works because it tricks the brain into low-risk mode. Creativity thrives when you are not worried about getting it right. By deliberately aiming low, you actually aim high. The next time you host a brainstorming session, give it a try. Ask for the most ridiculous, impractical, embarrassing ideas you can imagine. You might be surprised at how often the worst idea turns out to be the best starting point for something truly original.