How Might We?

PREPARE THE EXERCISE

Identify a problem statement you want to focus on for the exercise. Make sure it can easily be turned into a HMW question. 

For example, a problem statement could be, “Funding for our recovery work has decreased.” The resulting HMW question could then be, “How Might We use innovative finance to close the funding gap?”

If you have more than one problem area you want to focus on, you can identify as many problem statements as you like and have the group work on several different ones at the same time.

Do your homework for the chosen problem statement so you can guide exercise participants with background or contextual information, information about the communities, intervention strategic plans and ambitions, etc.

Face-to-face: Prepare the flip chart with the problem statement and stick it up on the wall where you will run the exercise. Ensure there is space for a lot of sticky notes on the flip chart for the HMW questions.

If online: Before the session, encourage participants to familiarise themselves with the chosen online platform. If you use Miro, you can share this short video tutorial (3 min) in advance. Prepare the board for each group.

Facilitator tips
Make sure that the HMW questions are not too broad, but also not too narrow. It can be a tricky process, but a good HMW question should give you both a narrow enough frame to let you know where to start your project design brainstorm, but also enough breadth to give you room to explore new and creative ideas. 

Look at your HMW question and ask yourself if it allows for a variety of solutions. If it does not, then broaden it. Use the technique to attack the problem from different angles. An HMW question may have different answers to it, and that is a good thing because you are expanding the possibilities of your solution.

Review your HMW questions to ensure they include relevant protection, gender, and inclusion concerns.

CREATING HMW QUESTIONS

Introduce the participants to the timeframe and the purpose of the exercise:

• What are we going to do today?
• Why are they invited?
• What are their roles (if participants do not know each other well)?
• How long will this exercise take? 

Establish the challenge, the current reality, the context, the targeted communities for the intervention, and the parameters based on the data and insight you have gathered. Make sure everyone thoroughly understands the issue at hand before creating the HMW questions.

Instruct the participants to do the following:

• Individually and in silence, take a few minutes in silence to reflect on the problem statement on the wall. Create as many HMW questions to the problem statement and out them on sticky notes – if the problem is defined properly, it should be easy for participants to come up with HMW questions.
• When creating the How Might We statements, the participants should use this formula: “How Might We… (the intended action), “For/as/by…. (the primary target group)”, “So that… (the intended outcome). As this this example: “How Might We use innovative finance as humanitarian actors so that we close the funding gap?”
• Have all participants present their HMW questions and stick them on the prepared flip chart. Ask participants only to present HMW questions that have not been already mentioned to avoid repetition. If they have duplicates, they can simply add them to the flip chart where the respective sticky note has already been placed (this is helpful in indicating a strong HMV question). 

Allow approximately 20 minutes for this step.

Facilitator tips

Remind participants of the strategic intent, plans, and ambitions for the project/programme/broader operation and other relevant contextual information. This keeps the participants within scope during their silent brainstorm.

If you have a large group of participants, you can split them into pairs (e.g., they could walk n talk) or break-out rooms and ask them to come up with HMW questions in pairs. Whether you choose one or the other approach, the participants should write each HMW question on a sticky note and stick it up on a wall/on the online board.  

GROUP HMW QUESTIONS AND VOTE

The facilitator now goes over the HMW questions and groups the ones that have not already been grouped. A pattern will usually start to emerge in terms of directions and opportunity spaces.

Now, have all participants vote on the HMW question they feel is the most important. This will give you a priority list of possible opportunities to address the issue outlined in your problem/insight statement, as well as the general picture of what the solution will look like. The HMW should align with your stated goal for the project.

Next step: Agree with the participants and/or project team on how to proceed with the HMW questions. Next steps after this exercise could be to ideate potential concrete solutions based on the prioritised HMW questions, for instance using the Crazy Eight tool or Round-Robin brainstorming tool. Remember to thank participants for their time and input. 

Allow approximately 20–30 minutes for this step.