Day 8 · SPARKS
Reframe
~10 minutes today
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Essential
R: Reframe. Seeing the Problem Anew.
Lesson video
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Thinking harder inside the wrong frame gets you to the wrong place faster. Reframing is not about finding a better solution to the problem you were given. It is about finding the real problem hiding behind the one you were given. The question you start with determines every answer that follows.
Lesson video
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Summary
The Science
Research by Rittel (1973) found that high-creative teams explore up to 26 levels of problem depth. Most teams stop at 4 to 10. The gap between 10 and 26 is where the real problem lives. The How Might We (HMW) method is the tool that operationalizes this: it reframes the challenge as an opportunity, opens new solution spaces, and forces you to name the barrier explicitly before asking for solutions.
Weak vs. Strong HMW
A weak HMW is vague about the user, abstract about the outcome, and names no barrier. It produces generic solutions: pay more, add benefits, recruit harder. A strong HMW is specific about the user's lived experience, concrete about the outcome, and names the real barrier. The hospital nursing case shows this precisely: 'How do we retain nurses?' produces salary benchmarks. 'How might we help nurses feel staying is worth it despite stressful shifts?' produces recognition, recovery time, peer support, and manager behavior changes.
AI Amplifies the Frame You Provide
AI does not question your problem statement. It accepts it and works inside it. If the frame is wrong, every suggestion AI produces will be wrong in the same direction. The hospital asked AI 'how do we retain nurses?' and got higher salaries and signing bonuses. That is not wrong. It is incomplete. The frame limited the search space. Reframing before prompting changes everything.
Key Takeaway
Reframing is not creativity. It is excavation. You are digging for the real problem that sits beneath the one everyone agreed to work on. Ask AI for five HMW reframes of your current challenge. Pick the one that opens the most interesting solution space. That is where the better answer lives.
Key Takeaway
Reframing is not creativity. It is excavation. You are digging for the real problem that sits beneath the one everyone agreed to work on. Ask AI for five HMW reframes of your current challenge. Pick the one that opens the most interesting solution space. That is where the better answer lives.
Exercise
Exercise
Objective: Practice making HMWs to find better solutions
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Problution
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Problution
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