I was recently asked to facilitate a workshop on creative problem solving for the 2018 Swindon & Wiltshire Women in Business Conference. In the workshop design, I wanted to consider three elements of value small business owners gain from attending conferences: Pause, new perspectives and community. Attendees worked in small groups around a shared challenge. The aim wasn't to solve a problem in its own right, but rather to take a pause to think about the mindset we use when we do work to solve a problem.
Problem space vs. Solution space
Considering our mindset can give us momentary pause from the chaos of problem solving. It provides pause to ask ourselves where we are right now and what underlying beliefs and assumptions, spoken or unspoken, are driving our actions. One simple framework for signalling that pause is to think in problem and solution space. That is, asking "Am I trying to understand the problem or find a solution?" Often, we try to make sense of a challenge and solve it at the same time, yet each of these requires a different mindset.
The small business owners came to the session struggling with questions that have no defined answer: How do I grow my business in an already crowded marketplace? How can I find ways to reach new customers? How can I find more time to do what I love. Big topics for a one-hour workshop.
Because we have a tendency to face problems like these head on - to identify the need then move straight into finding solutions i.e. the solution space - I wanted to use the time to help participants gain new perspectives on their challenges by spending a little time in the problem space. Teams of three began with a shared challenge - something they had all encountered in their businesses or were currently struggling with.
How Might We...
As teams talked about their challenge, they were asked to reframe problems into possibilities by writing 'How Might We...' questions. For example, one group focusing on how to make more time for doing the things they love, began discussing the stress of administration and wrote, 'How might we co-op administrative duties among small businesses?'
Reframing the challenge in this way begins to shape a variety of new perspectives. The challenge is broken down into smaller more manageable parts or morphs into an entirely different question.
Now, I want to warn you. The problem space can be messy, uncomfortable even.
We spent the first part of the session creating as many 'How Might We...' questions as possible. Then we did a group reflection. One team said that the more they got in the mindset of creating 'How Might We...' the easier it became and the more divergent their thinking became. Another team felt as if we were making the problem worse instead of better, bigger instead of smaller; afterall, they needed to solve one thing and now have 10 or 15 things to consider. Yet another team was noticeably luke-warm about the whole idea. These are each very normal responses.
This is where the magic happens.
For the last part of the session, I asked the teams to take a look at the 'How Might We...' and discuss how spending more time with the problem before coming up with solutions had changed their perspective. Remember luke-warm team number three? Within three minutes they had rearranged their 'How Might We...' into two rows and a glimmer of excitement appeared in their eyes. By exploring the problem they found an important pattern in the way they were approaching their challenge that hadn't occurred to them earlier. Finding new patterns, paths or perspectives through which to navigate business challenges is one of the benefits of spending time with the problem before jumping to a solution.
'How Might We...' and creative problem solving
“Focus on questions, not answers, for breakthrough insights.”
Challenge or How Might We... questions are often employed in the 'solution space' during brainstorming sessions (for example, see how challenge questions were used during the Ibiza Service Jam). However, they are often overlooked as tools to help ensure you are asking the right questions in the first place.
Shortly after the workshop I ran across a Harvard Business Review article by Hal Gregersen who offers his own version of a three-step reframing exercise that touts the tagline "Focus on questions, not answers, for breakthrough insights." Gregersen has found that, similar to the the workshop experience, "...lingering in a questioning mode doesn't come naturally to most people, because we're conditioned from an early age to just keep the answers coming." Yet, when we stay there just long enough, it can create the space for understanding the challenge and the opportunities it presents in a dramatically different way.
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Sources:
Gregerson, H. 2018. Better Brainstorming. Harvard Business Review, March–April, 64–71