“How might we” people in a “we should” world
For years in tech, the standard phrase to represent a collaborative mindset and start said collaboration was "how might we?"
Originating with Min Basadur, transferred eventually to IDEO, and made famous by Google Ventures in their Design Sprints, "HMW" became shorthand for openness, patience, following problems instead of solutions, and acted as an invitation to collaboration with others. It was a way to say "I'm interested in this problem, in your opinion on it, I'm not rushing to a solution, and I'd like you to join me." It also served as a social signal to your colleagues that you didn't think you had all the answers and valued their perspectives.
I myself am a big HMW person. I'm curious what other people think. How they see things. I try to pull them into the orbit of an idea. Capture their interest and imagination. Make them feel bought in. Get the best from them.
But in this moment of continuous acceleration and ambiguity, HMW sounds...slow. Indecisive. Non-agentic. Weak.
A reality to accept, at least for the time being, is it is no longer a HMW world. It's a "we should" world.
We should build feature X. We should aim our messaging at group Y. We should use Z as our Northstar metric.
It is the currency of the day. We should is appealing because people are looking for certainty. The pervasive feelings of FOMO, imposter syndrome, and paranoia about what the competition is doing make anything that feels like certainty deeply seductive. People will employ every mental bias they have to believe that certainty into reality.
In the moment this can feel like momentum. But also biases for narrow thinking. Fast thinking. Solo thinking.
In this environment, it's important that HMW people don't lose their openness. It is their strength. It is the path to inclusion. The path to more ideas. The path to better ideas.
But HMW people risk being left behind, sidelined, or ignored? We need to treat "We shoulds" as a way to start HMW conversations.
Don't think of it literally as "we should." Think of it as a way to start a conversation that will almost certainly open up after the first few exchanges.
So if you're a HMW person, consider changing your language in this moment but not your openness.