What is a What, So What, What Now?
What? So What? Now What? is a reflective model that helps teams evaluate a shared experience or a recent event so that they can identify ways to improve or act. This critical thinking model was researched and developed by Rolfe et al. in 2001. It is also attributed to Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless, the creators of Liberating Structures.
The What, So What, What Now exercise works on brainstorming and reflecting on:
- Understanding the event (What?)
- Making sense of the facts and implications (So What?)
- Identifying the course of action or new solutions (Now What?)
Why Do a What, So What, What Now?
This model can be used for a critical reflection session through a crisis management situation where you need to define and frame the problem, analyse the impact and then consider the possible actions to address the issue.
- How Now Wow Matrix
- Risk Assessment
- Problem Solving
- Remind participants that they should address the facts and observations before jumping into action.
- Make sure you gather the right people from each section of your organization to be part of this exercise and identify the possible actions and implications from each angle.
- A worthy goal is to ensure that there is consensus on the definition of the problem itself before looking at implications and solutions. If needed, reword the statements to reflect the group’s definition of the problem.
- Communicate outcomes to stakeholders and regularly update progress on actions.
Who Should Use this Technique?
This system is a reflective method that can be used by groups who would like to better understand problems and discover better solutions.
Examples include:
- Crisis Management such as last minute cancellations due to a global pandemic or loss of venue booked.
- Problem solving meetings where the delivery time has exceeded expectations.
- Retrospective meetings to help teams work through continuous improvement issues.
- Impact analysis meetings where a change of policy, an incident or event has repercussions on strategy, people or processes.
- See last minute cancellations due to a global pandemic or loss of venue booked.
Use the What, So What, What Now to help with:
- resolving crisis and issues strategically;
- gaining new perspectives and understandings;
- clarifying our assumptions and beliefs, and developing a clear rationale for our actions and approaches;
- promoting a positive sense of self-awareness and self-confidence
- taking informed action; and,
- focusing on a philosophy of continuous growth and improvement.
What, So What, What Now Template
The What, So What, What Now template provides 3 separate columns and allows everyone in the team to collaboratively define the problem and share implications on the project or their work. The thumbs up and thumbs down feature lets you check for consensus along the way.Capture additional comments and move people from problem definition through to creating actions that address and overcome the issue.
How to Do a What, So What, What Now?
Brainstorm
Gather the right people who have insights or are being impacted by the problem.
Like/Dislike
Vote on the best possible actions and the next steps, so that the items with the most votes can be decided as the right move to mitigate and/or address the issue at hand.
Results
Once the crisis has been mitigated, provide a report on how as a team you came together to decide on this course of action, that can be shared with team members and those on the executive levels.
Just like an online whiteboard, ask people to create or state the problem in their own words. Allow enough time for people to think through how they would explain the problem to someone who has no knowledge of it. Ideas can then be discussed, refined and iterated on as needed. (WHAT)
Once the problem has been defined, then ask people to all share what the implications are (actual or potential). (SO WHAT)
Having considered the risks and consequences, now focus on what the potential solutions or actions to take forward are. (NOW WHAT)
Online collaboration tools like GroupMap significantly reduce the amount of resources required to combine independent lists. They also make organizing and prioritizing the ideas faster and more straightforward, thus providing savings in time and effort over traditional brainstorming tools such as a whiteboard or post-it notes.
Use the thumbs up and thumbs down option as a way for people to indicate if they support or disagree with the statements and ideas being made. For example, do they agree with the definition of the problem (WHAT) or do they support the actions being proposed (Now What).
The completed What, So What, What Now template provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities the organization faces now. Share the outcomes with relevant stakeholders and use the report to monitor progress and as an input for future reviews.
GroupMap automatically generates visually appealing reports and action plans in several formats for distribution, saving time and effort after the analysis.
Save effort, time and money with GroupMap
Whether you have your best minds together in the same room, or distributed around the world, GroupMap’s unique technology allows groups of up to 2000 to submit ideas independently at separate times, from different places, in different timezones. Prevent dominant personalities swaying the group, drowning out the opinions of others – GroupMap allows everyone to brainstorm independently then effortlessly combines that information to reveal the full spectrum of ideas. GroupMap templates keep the objective front and center throughout the session, keeping everyone on task. This ensures the activity identifies actionable issues rather than becoming just a discussion on ideas. GroupMap gives you all the group decision making tools you need to prioritize, decide and take action.
Create your first map and invite people in to start sharing their thoughts right NOW. Experience the power of GroupMap with our 14-day, no risk, FREE trial. You don’t even need to provide your credit card details to access to all of our features, including the entire suite of templates, for a full 14 days.