An Uncommon Tool for a Common Problem

Feb 26, 2021

Early in the pandemic every event was cancelled or rescheduled for a few months later. Oh, how naive we were!

Then events went virtual. Conferences and retreats, to concerts and weddings. The newness of traditionally in-person events being held virtually made them a little nerve wracking, but also exciting. (Again, how naive we were!)

Now we’re at a point where we’re still largely doing remote events. The novelty has worn off, and so has much of the excitement.

So, what do you do when you need to make that remote event more exciting? More interesting? More relevant?

Well, one option is to hire a comical puppeteer to surprisingly drop into your virtual event. (Seriously, I know a guy.)

Alternatively (or additionally!), you could pull out one of my favorite problem-solving aides: The “How might we” (HMW) question.

If you haven’t used the HMW question yet, please be aware that your life is about to change. Or, at least your ability to creatively solve problems.

How to use the HMW question

STEP 1: Identify what the problem is. 

For instance, conference participants are fatigued of the virtual format.

STEP 2: Don’t do the same ol’ thing. Fight against understandably natural tendencies to want to ignore the problem and to do things the way that they’ve always been done. 

Sticking with this example, don’t ignore the fact that conference participants are fatigued of the virtual format, and then run a conference online like it would have been done in person. 

STEP 3: Establish your original “How Might We” question. In general, try framing questions in a way that would help you and your team broadly and creatively think about how to solve the problem. State the question using positive language and getting at the root of the problem. 

For instance, rather than “How might we make sure that conference participants aren’t tired?”, challenge yourself to think bigger, more positively, and more sustainably. Consider something like “How might we create an experience that energizes participants?”

STEP 4: Create additional HMW questions. Riff on that original question to get HMW questions that really help you think out of the box. There are a lot of different ways to do that. A few include thinking about sensory experiences, about one specific aspect of the experience, about complete opposite experiences, about similar-but-different experiences, etc. 

Let’s keep going with this conference example: How might we engage the participants’ sense of smell during the virtual conference? How might we make what is traditionally the opening keynote address of the conference the most energizing part of the event? How might we design a conference that feels like going to a non-professional event, like a concert?

STEP 5: Have fun brainstorming! Indulge in the brainstorming process.

 

Once you try this out, please let me know how it goes!

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