Looking for a-ha's ?

In a recent HBR article (November 2014), Mohanbir Sawhney and Sanjay Khosla indicate 7 areas where people or organizations can look for new insights and new ideas for products or processes or improvements in general. They define insight as an “imaginative understanding of an internal or external opportunity that can be tapped into to improve efficiency, generate revenue, or boost engagement.” A more simple term is “the a-ha moment” that we have all experienced at some point. The authors list different areas where individuals or teams should be looking for such insights, like  anomalies in customer data or evaluating the frustrations customers (internal or external) have with your organization’s services. They explain clearly WHERE to look, but the key of HOW to look is a bit buried and not made really explicit. They end each of their 7 sections by giving examples of how to actually find these insights, and the how in this case is ... the question ! The authors each time highlight the potential discovery by examples such as “ask yourself … is this or that possible ? what would happen if … ?” And this part ... the HOW ... is really the key to creating insights, because you can apply this to any situation, way beyond the 7 proposed by the authors.

Asking questions to yourself, and hoping that some of them will generate an insight, is possible but limited by our own mental models. It is difficult to pull yourself out of your comfort zone and questions that you ask yourself would probably be limited in depth or degree of innovativeness. So that’s why it is useful to put a group of people around a table, and instead of brainstorming for solutions or answers to a given problem, ask each to come up with questions. The rule is that people can only state questions, and nobody will be answering them. The questions are there to stir up ideas. Just like in brainstorming, no questions are off limits, and nobody can react and judge what others are saying.  At first it will be a bit awkward, and some of the questions will be very basic. But keeping the practice up for some time, you will create a dynamic where certain questions trigger other questions. Don’t be discouraged by sometimes long periods of silence. Thinking is not a bad thing when it happens !

You can hope for a-ha moments while in the shower or doing your favorite sport. Or you can teach your team to create them by asking each other questions … Give it a try !