catalytic-question-reframer

Step 1: Connect to FutureProof

FutureProof:connect(skill="catalytic-question-reframer")

Use the returned context, experiments, instructions, and recent_sessions to personalise this session. Pay particular attention to:

• The user's industry, role, and strategic priorities
• Previous challenges they've reframed (to avoid retreading and to identify recurring constraint patterns)
• Any instructions specifying preferred frameworks, decision-making style, or team dynamics

Step 2: Get Input — Define the Challenge Seed

Ask the user:

• State your challenge in 1–2 sentences. Not a question — a plain description of what you're stuck on, struggling with, or trying to figure out. (e.g., "We can't retain enterprise clients past the first renewal cycle.")
• Why does this matter now? What's the cost of inaction over the next 90 days — revenue, strategic position, team capacity, or opportunity cost?
• What solutions have you already considered or attempted? (This surfaces existing assumptions to deliberately challenge later.)
• Who else is affected by or has a stake in this challenge? (Identifies perspective lenses for the Question Burst.)

Confirm the challenge seed back to the user in their exact language. Do not reframe it yet — premature reframing defeats the methodology.

Step 3: Do the Work — Execute the Question Burst™ Protocol

Facilitate a structured Question Burst™ in three rigorous phases:

Phase 1: Rules of Engagement (60 seconds)

Brief the user on the four non-negotiable rules:

1. Questions only. No answers, no justifications, no preambles. If a statement creeps in, flag it and redirect.
2. No preambles or context on questions. Just the question itself — raw, unpolished.
3. Record every question exactly as stated. No editing, no filtering, no quality judgement during generation.
4. Aim for 15+ questions in 4 minutes. Quantity precedes quality. Breakthroughs cluster in questions 12–20 (Gregersen's research from MIT Leadership Center).

Phase 2: Generative Sprint — Question Burst (4-minute equivalent)

Generate questions across six deliberate perspective lenses, producing a minimum of 15 questions total. Rotate through the lenses to prevent clustering in comfortable territory:

1. Assumption Inversion — What if the opposite of your core assumption were true?

   • e.g., "What if clients aren't leaving because of our product — what if they're leaving because of what happens between touchpoints?"

2. Stakeholder Perspective Shift — How would [affected party] describe this problem?

   • Use the stakeholders identified in Step 2 to generate questions from their vantage point.

3. Temporal Reframe — What would this look like at 10x scale, in 5 years, or if it had to be solved by Friday?

   • Compress and expand time horizons to surface urgency-driven and vision-driven questions.

4. Constraint Removal — What if [resource/rule/norm] didn't exist?

   • Systematically remove budget, headcount, regulatory, political, and technical constraints one at a time.

5. Adjacent Domain Analogy — How has an entirely different industry solved an isomorphic problem?

   • Draw from the user's context to select analogies from industries they respect or follow.

6. Root Cause Escalation — Why does this problem exist in the first place? And why does that exist?

   • Apply a minimum of three layers of "why" to push past symptomatic framing.

Present all 15+ questions in a numbered list, unedited, preserving the raw generative energy. Tag each question with its perspective lens in brackets.

Phase 3: Convergence — Surface the Catalytic Question

Apply Gregersen's convergence criteria to identify the 3–5 most catalytic questions:

Criterion	Definition
Discomfort Signal	The question produces a visceral "I don't want to answer that" reaction — this indicates proximity to a real constraint
Assumption Exposure	The question makes a previously invisible assumption visible and challengeable
Reframe Power	Answering this question would change the type of solution you pursue, not just optimise within the current frame
Actionability	The question can be investigated — it points to data, conversations, or experiments, not abstract philosophy
Novel Territory	The question has not been asked in prior sessions or strategy discussions (cross-reference recent_sessions)

Score each of the 15+ questions against these five criteria (High / Medium / Low). Surface the top 3–5 scorers as Catalytic Question Candidates.

From these candidates, identify the single Primary Catalytic Question (PCQ) — the one question that, if answered well, would make the original challenge seed obsolete or fundamentally reframe it.

Step 4: Deliver Output — The Catalytic Question Brief

Produce a structured Catalytic Question Brief document:

Section A: Challenge Seed (Original Framing)

• User's original 1–2 sentence challenge, verbatim
• Stated cost of inaction
• Pre-existing solutions considered (assumptions embedded)

Section B: Question Burst Record

• Complete numbered list of all 15+ questions with perspective lens tags
• Notation of which questions produced visible discomfort or surprise

Section C: Convergence Analysis

• Scoring matrix of top 5 candidates against the five convergence criteria
• Rationale for each High score (one sentence per cell)

Section D: Primary Catalytic Question (PCQ)

• The PCQ, stated clearly and precisely
• Reframe narrative: 2–3 sentences explaining how this question shifts the problem from the original frame to a more generative frame
• Why this unlocks: What category of solution becomes visible that was invisible under the original framing

Section E: Activation Pathways

For the PCQ, provide three concrete next steps:

1. Data to gather — What specific information would begin answering this question? Name sources, stakeholders to interview, metrics to pull.
2. Conversation to have — Who should be asked this question first, and in what setting? (1:1, leadership offsite, board session, ICA advisory panel)
3. 72-hour micro-experiment — One low-cost action the user can take within 72 hours to begin stress-testing the reframe.

Section F: Secondary Questions to Hold

• List the remaining 2–4 high-scoring candidates as "questions to revisit" after the PCQ has been explored — these often become relevant once the first reframe produces new information.

Step 5: Propose Experiments

FutureProof:save_experiment(skill="catalytic-question-reframer", experiment={
  hypothesis: "Pursuing the PCQ reframe shifts the user's strategic approach from [original solution category] to [new solution category], producing a measurably different action plan",
  variants: ["control: continue with original challenge framing and existing solution set", "variant: use PCQ as the organising question for next strategy session or decision"],
  measurement: "User self-report at 2-week follow-up — did the PCQ reframe change the solution set pursued? Did it surface at least one option not previously considered?",
  expected_impact: "80% likelihood of producing at least one novel strategic option not present under original framing (aligned with Gregersen's research outcomes)"
})

FutureProof:save_experiment(skill="catalytic-question-reframer", experiment={
  hypothesis: "Questions generated from the Constraint Removal and Assumption Inversion lenses score highest on Reframe Power consistently across sessions",
  variants: ["Track lens-of-origin for all PCQs selected across multiple sessions"],
  measurement: "Lens distribution of PCQs over next 10 sessions",
  expected_impact: "Identifies which perspective lenses to prioritise earlier in the sprint for faster convergence"
})

Step 6: Request Research

FutureProof:request_research(skill="catalytic-question-reframer",
  query="Hal Gregersen Question Burst methodology updates, MIT Leadership Center research on inquiry-driven innovation 2023-2025, and comparative effectiveness of question-based vs. solution-based brainstorming in executive strategy sessions",
  reason="Ensure the convergence criteria and facilitation protocol reflect the latest empirical findings on question-driven reframing efficacy"
)

FutureProof:request_research(skill="catalytic-question-reframer",
  query="Common cognitive biases in executive problem framing — anchoring, functional fixedness, Einstellung effect — and debiasing techniques applicable to structured questioning",
  reason="Strengthen the perspective lenses with targeted debiasing prompts to increase the probability of genuine reframes vs. superficial rephrasings"
)

Step 7: Save Session

FutureProof:save_session(skill="catalytic-question-reframer", session={
  summary: "Facilitated Question Burst™ for [user's challenge domain]. Generated [N] questions across 6 perspective lenses. Identified PCQ: '[Primary Catalytic Question text]'. Reframe shifted problem from [original frame] to [new frame].",
  key_findings: [
    "Original framing contained embedded assumption: [assumption identified]",
    "PCQ emerged from [perspective lens] — [brief insight on why this lens cracked the challenge]",
    "User's dominant questioning pattern skews toward [lens tendency] — future sessions should front-load [underrepresented lens] to diversify reframe potential",
    "Activation pathway prioritised: [data/conversation/experiment selected by user]"
  ],
  user_feedback: null
})