How to come up with great ‘How might we…’s.
Our Hooks spark discussions. They encourage unwitting participants to make connections between their knowledge and experiences with global issues. The Active Citizen Toolkit, a collection of free sessions that develop soft skills (available at www.glie.org), encourages participants to reflect upon their discussions and generate ‘How might we…’ statements (HMWs). They are aspirational statements that stimulate us and others to make a change that makes our world even better.
This makes HMWs really important. So how do we compose and identify really effective ones?
We at the Global Learning Idea Exchange are passionate about creating significant learning through innovative, evidence-based teaching. This post will focus on our latest, in-practice reflection regarding HMWs.
We better engage in global issues when their introduction is relevant to us
When the HMW means something to us, we are able to better engage with it. This will result in our users creating a more effective change that will likely be embedded within their communities.
If the HMW means little to them, participants really struggle to delve deeper into it. For example, a seemingly great HMW statement generated by a year 4 class was,
How might we make our homes even cosier to boost mental well-being?
This was the result of a debate sparked by the cement hook (again, available at www.glie.org). Its first impression was so great that it was selected and taken forward pretty much immediately. One can understand why. There were so many barbs to latch onto as the concepts were so broad.
However, issues with it arose when it was adopted by the same year 4 class as a fundamental component of their second session of Make Change (our extensive learning resource). The root cause of the issues was that the HMW was too broad. It was overwhelming; so much so that participants could not find a way into the HMW that was personal to them.
As part of the session, participants needed to come up with a range of questions to ask their community. The answers received would help them better understand and empathise with how others suffer the problem implied; that not all of us are fortunate to live in a comfortable home for a myriad of reasons.
There was very little variety of questions to choose from. The group became fixated on the word ‘cosy’. Why? Participants struggled to engage meaningfully with the HMW. They did not pick up the implied problem because their experience was that they were the fortunate ones. They were born into and lived in comfortable homes.
There were no questions that sought to understand the choices people make to make their homes cosy. Whilst evaluating the session part-way into it, the teacher/ facilitator and I asked ourselves, How could our participants have generated a range of questions? They are children who had zero involvement in the sofa that features in their living room. They just sit on it. The potentially calming colours on their home’s walls are, to them, just colours on the walls.
The concept of how a sofa or the colour on their living room walls makes them feel is too abstract. They did not think that homes could be uncomfortable. They did not think that, for whatever reason prevalent in the world today, other people’s homes might not have walls. They think, I have a kitchen, so does the next person, right? It is highly unlikely that they would know that so many apartments in metropolises like New York City or shelters in war-torn countries do not have a kitchen. Their experiences do not remotely correlate.
In being the beneficiaries of their parent’s or guardians’ good choices, participants had no experience in how to execute comfort. Therefore, they had no experience to bring to the table when it came to generating questions that would provide useful data relating to the HMW.
HMWs should focus on one clear element that needs improvement
Our in-session evaluation concluded that, in order to boost engagement, we (the class teacher and I) had to narrow the HMW. We, the facilitators, had to facilitate learning. We decided to narrow it down by focusing on the bedroom. The revised HMW became,
How might we make our bedrooms help us get a good night’s sleep?
Participants had experience in making their bedrooms spaces that they are comfortable in. Each participant’s bedroom is their own, personal space. They had more experience in making choices about their rooms. Their choices made their rooms theirs. Their choices represented them, be it the posters that adorn their walls or the duvet covers on their bed.
It worked. They were more engaged, more able to find their way into the HMW and were more able to make connections. Connections between elements that make their room more conducive to a good night's sleep with their peers’ rooms or anybody else’s room across the globe.
It was easier for participants to do this because the revised HMW focused on one clear thing that needed improvement. Try listing every feature of a home. It could be an extensive list. Again, an overwhelming list. How to make a home cosier contains a wide range of elements. Hence, the participants in the session focused on the one element that was clear to them within the initial HMW, the word cosy.
Narrowing the HMW to a single room provided some parameters. Parameters help bring focus. A good HMW helps participants focus on one clear element that needs improvement.
HMWs tell us what needs to be done
In his book Start with Why, Simon Sinek professes that we are more likely to carry out actions when the reason to do it is clear to us. He stipulates that so many communications within the world are directives. They tell us what to do, how to do it and finally explain why it should be done.
We are human beings. In freedom, we thrive — when we feel (in the words of the band The Soup Dragons) “free to do what I want any old time”.
If outside forces are instructing us what to do, we become less motivated to do them. Sinek suggests that the challenge is tapping into our limbic brain, triggering positive emotions within us that trigger us to get up and do what (we feel) needs to be done.
In our initial HMW, the reason why we needed to make our homes cosier was not clear to participants. Mental well-being was not a fully embedded concept. They could not clearly define it, therefore they could not clearly think as to how it could be ‘boosted’.
However, in our revised HMW, the concept of sleep was clearer to them. Participants knew what sleep was and they knew the benefits of getting good sleep. This meant they had a bank of ideas for improving it. They shared their ideas whilst always appreciating that others might have different ideas. They appreciated that the understood concept of sleep still offered opportunities for their perspective to be broadened.
Participants also had a good understanding of the personal factors that affect their sleep. They acknowledged that a games console in their room with its accompanying screen are compelling items that can potentially have a negative impact on their sleep. It is up to us as facilitators to take this knowledge and facilitate connections. We will help participants connect this knowledge with reasons why others, who might be in more desperate situations across the world, have difficulties in getting a good night’s sleep.
Global, distant concepts are completely engaging when we find a relevant way in. When we fully understand what needs to be done, the easier it is for us to journey along new, relevant avenues of learning and bolt on new knowledge along the way.
How to apply this learning in practice
When embarking on a design-thinking quest and using HMWs to help start making something even better, assess:
- How clear to the group is the why we need to change something within the HMW?
- How clear to the group is the how we can change something to make it better within the HMW?
If you are facilitating this quest with a group of participants, invite them to list HMWs relating to a problem you are trying to solve together. They could then use this tool to filter their most effective HMW.
Group participants into small groups of five. Within their small group, they share their HMW. Together they peer assess using a second copy of the tool. The group adopts the highest scoring HMW.
Each small group can then bring their adopted HMW to the whole group. These can then be peer assessed en masse. The highest scoring HMW is then adopted by the whole group.
