problem solving meeting

How to Run Problem Solving Meetings

Problem Solving Meetings are oriented around solving either a specific or general problem, and are perhaps the most complex and varied type of meetings.

At problem solving meetings the outcome is often an important decision and thus these meetings can be crucial to the development of a team or product. If the wrong action is chosen, it could be hugely damaging. To make sure that this doesn’t happen at your next problem solving meeting, follow the tips provided here.

Primary Goals in Problem Solving Meetings

The goal underlying these meetings is to leave with a new strategy designed to counter a current issue preventing or hindering the team’s progress.

The key objective for problem solving meetings is to find the most optimal solution or reach the best compromise that can resolve an issue facing the group or organization. In order to do this the group first has to identify possible solutions, and then evaluate these based on relevant requirements and criteria.

Agreeing on the most optimal solution

What truly is the most optimal solution can vary a lot, depending on the setting and situation. It is important to clearly define what the problem is, as well as agree on key criteria for the solution, in order to start identifying possible options.

Sometimes the best solution is the quickest one, other times it is the one that requires the least resources, while other times the solution that brings the most long term benefits is the best alternative. If all planning decisions were made by one person, not only would the choices be uninformed, there would also be little unity around team goals and direction.

Key Roles in Problem Solving Meetings

Problem solving meetings should be oriented around issues that affect and are only resolvable by the team. If a problem is the responsibility of, or can be fixed by one person, a group meeting is likely a waste of time. However, when a singular person’s decision affects that of the entire team, it may be worth it.

The significance of a problem and the amount of group time spent solving it should be considered before calling forth any group problem solving meeting. The participant roles found in a problem solving meeting tend to vary more than most other meeting types. This is because problem solving meetings exist across such a large variety of contexts and group.

Meeting leader

Just as with decision making meetings, there is a need for direction and authority in the process of problem solving. The person in charge should either be the person with the deepest understanding of the situation or someone with the most responsibility over the outcome (i.e. the highest ranking member of the team). The leader should be able to provide the team with a general overview of the situation. They should then lead the team through the guided process.

Meeting participants

All other attendees of the meeting should be people who fall under two categories. The first is of participants who may have been involved in the events leading up to the problem. This group is not there to be blamed or criticized, but rather to provide information about how the situation was reached. In addition, this group has unique insights on how potential solutions may or may not fit with the current approach.

The second group of people who should be invited are those who will be impacted by the solution. If, for example, one subgroup of a company has to restructure the timing of their releases, representatives from other groups who will have to adapt their schedule as a result should be included.

Common Challenges in Problem Solving Meetings

Often the most successful problem solving meetings are ones that happen before a major issue arises. Taking time to identify potential future problems allows a team to have solutions immediately ready. Unfortunately, problem solving meetings are all too often done only after a problem occurs, adding a variety of challenges that would not exist in other meeting types.

Problem solving can be a particularly stressful type of group strategizing. For instance, the urgency and decisiveness that is necessary in this meeting type can lead to disagreements that wouldn’t happen if teammates were not strained.

Identifying the real problem

Identifying the true problem to be addressed can on the surface seem like a very simple task. However, different meeting participants are likely to have slightly different perspectives of what they are gathered to address. Without a common understanding of what problem they are aiming to solve, the problem solving meeting is not going to yield any productive solutions.

Intra-group conflicts

With any problem solving or decision making meeting there is bound to be some conflicting opinions on how to go forward. Because problem solving meetings are often high strung, and because of the importance of selecting a correct plan, resolving these conflicts effectively is crucial. When making group decisions, a number of different strategies can be used to reach a compromise.

Defensiveness

When any type of group decision needs to be made, participants in the process can become too attached to their own suggestion to truly consider other options. While this leads to a lot of passionate and potentially productive conversation, it can also lead members to feel personally offended when their solutions are rejected.

Time pressure

Often problem meetings are extremely time-constrained. This can be because the problem is an approaching deadline or because there was simply no time scheduled in the initial plan for a problem to arise

How to Host Successful Problem Solving Meetings

The best way to approach a problem solving meeting is to first properly define the problem and the restrictions of potential solutions. Before brainstorming solutions, evaluate them, and decide on the best one.

Identify the problem to be addressed

The first key step to solving any problem is to identify the issue at hand. Problem solving meetings are designed to address any type of situation specific to the group. Determining what the problem is may be easier if it has already become a pressing issue. However, problem solving meetings can also be designed to generate preemptive solutions to problematic situations that may arise in the future. Regardless, any problem solving meeting should begin with a discussion of the specific issues that need to be changed or resolved by the end of the meeting.

Often, when a pervasive issue exists within a group, .some members are more aware of it than others. Beginning a problem solving meeting by explicitly identifying the issue not only makes clear what the meeting goals are, but also puts all team members on the same page about the state of the group or project. Identifying this problem early on also gives the team the ability to modify the topics or members involved in reaching a solution.

Define solution requirements and restraints

Once a problem has been identified, the group should propose all possible ways to approach and resolve the issue. The reason why problem solving is often easier said than done is because of existing restraints that withhold many of the ideal options available. For example, these restrictions could involve a lack of time or a lack of corporate resources. These restraints are important to consider because problems often result as a lack of consideration for them in the first place.

Brainstorm possible solutions

To choose among feasible solutions, it is important to define not only the possible limitations but also where group priorities lie. The most effective choices are made once the team’s understanding of the most urgent aspects of a future decision have been defined. Without a realistic idea of which aspects are most important, the solutions proposed will either be unrealistic or oriented around personal opinions. This step in the problem solving methodology allows for the most important and realistic strategies to be the ones most discussed.

Evaluate top solutions

After the feasible solutions to a problem have been isolated, the group must come to a collective conclusion about the best approach. This process should involve group consideration and evaluation of proposed options. It can be important to highlight and compare potential options against each other. For example, depending on the priorities of the group, an option which extends the timeline might be preferable to one that sacrifices quality or vice versa.

Agree on a solution

The best and most appropriate options that are generated during this meeting should be approached in the same way as options within a decision making meeting. Feedback, opinions and questions about each strategy should be considered and everyone involved in the meeting should feel free to voice their opinions. The final decision should be one that is not only realistic but that puts the entire team on the same page going forward.

Better Problem Solving Meetings with MeetingSift

MeetingSift’s brainstorm activity can help determine the problem, identify restrictions, and come up with ideas for possible solutions. The polling and ranking activities can then give an overview of where the group’s opinions lie. Using these tools can relieve not only the above mentioned problems but many others that are associated with problem solving meetings.

Gather honest opinions through anonymous feedback

The anonymous contribution platform that MeetingSift provides allows for more candid feedback, as well as helping the group to focus on the issue rather than the person.

Not only does this lead participants to be less upset when their ideas are not chosen, but also to not feel like they must support one particular solution or plan just because it was proposed by someone with authority in the group. In short, MeetingSift allows for the group to focus on the problem solving process rather than office politics.

Cut meeting time with parallel input

With MeetingSift, group polls can be conducted and decisions made in a fraction of the time that it usually takes to collect that amount of information. Additionally, MeetingSift allows facilitators to time the duration of their slides and activities in order to cut down and condense unnecessary aspects of the conversation.

Efficiently identify solutions or acceptable compromises

With problem solving meetings we suggest using an empirical voting tool such as ranking or voting to choose a winner, rather than trying to find a compromise between the two. In the face of a problem at hand, it is often best to choose and stick with one dominant strategy.

Easily record and share the final solution

While these opinions should be incorporated in the process, MeetingSift reports serve as a useful tool to share the solution decisions with as many other people as possible.

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Problem Solve with MeetingSift

The best way to approach a problem solving meeting is to follow the simple steps outlined in this article.

MeetingSift brainstorm activity can help determine the problem and opportunities, and identify restrictions related to possible solutions. The evaluate , polling, and ranking activities can quickly reveal where the group’s opinions lie.

Using these tools can relieve common challenges like time pressure, intra-group conflicts, defensiveness, and many others that are associated with the stressful nature of problem solving meetings.

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Solving the Problem with Problem-Solving Meetings

Leadership development expert Jonathan Levene shares an effective tool for facilitating productive problem-solving meetings.

Jonathan Levene

Your team is facing a complex problem. So you gather everyone for a meeting, only to spend hours disagreeing on the ideal solution — with no progress toward consensus.

Facilitating productive problem-solving meetings can be challenging. You want to foster an open dialogue and gain buy-in while working toward an ideal solution. To do this effectively, it helps to understand one very important aspect of human nature: how we reason.

A Tool for Better Group Reasoning

In my work with clients, I have found that the ladder of inference* is an essential framework for understanding human reasoning, identifying opportunities, and keeping group reasoning on track. It is especially helpful when your challenge involves ambiguity or complexity.

The ladder of inference lays out the mental steps in our reasoning — from receiving data to drawing a conclusion. It also explains how we adopt certain beliefs about the world.

While our reasoning process may feel logical, our analysis at every step is always based on past experience. And everyone’s experience is different.

Here is how the ladder of inference reveals our reasoning process:

We begin with the pool of information available to us — the observable data and experiences.
We then select some of the information — typically that which grabs our attention or seems particularly significant — and ignore the rest.
Then, we interpret the information, drawing on personal/cultural meanings and making assumptions based on those meanings.
Finally, we draw a conclusion based on that interpretation. Over time, these conclusions inform our beliefs and drive our actions.

Our beliefs might be founded on faulty selection or interpretation of data. For example, if you have a number of memorable interactions with a few customers, you might focus on and generalize from those experiences. This leads you to certain conclusions about the entire marketplace. We all proceed through these mental steps, often subconsciously. And we’re not always aware of our assumptions.

By using the ladder of inference as a tool to expose chains of reasoning, we are better able to understand ourselves and our colleagues, find the best solutions, and overcome resistance to change.

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Your Role in Meetings of the Minds

As the moderator, your job is to:

Listen carefully to the views expressed.
Figure out what type of contribution each person is offering: belief, assumption, or interpretation.
Bring hidden reasoning into the open by asking questions.

For example, if a person makes an assertion about what should be done, you might ask him or her to describe the chain of reasoning that led to that conclusion.

If two people have reached very different conclusions, one or both may be missing a key subset of data. Or perhaps they are missing an interpretive lens that would lead to a new set of possibilities.

The only way to know is to ask open-ended questions, such as:

Can you help me understand your thinking?
What was your chain of reasoning?
What assumptions are you making?
What data are you basing your recommendation on?

In asking these questions, you are not challenging people or judging them. You don’t want to put anyone on the defensive. Instead, you want to bring their reasoning to light so that it becomes part of the group’s thinking.

To do so, you can reflect back on what you’re hearing: “It sounds like we’re talking about assumptions here.” Or, if someone has difficulty articulating a chain of reasoning, you might say, “Think about it, and we’ll come back to you.”

At the same time, you should consider what is not being said. Keep in mind that silence does not imply agreement — or that a person has nothing to say. Your goal is to understand what’s happening in people’s heads and surface ideas that have not been articulated.

Better learning and decision-making result from staying low on the ladder. By slowing down the conversation — focusing on selecting and interpreting data — you encourage the group to avoid reaching conclusions prematurely. Using the ladder of inference, you can invite more contributions. Think about the ideas that might come to light when you ask questions like:

Does anyone else have data that bears on this?
Does anyone think something different might happen if we did this?
Did anyone else arrive at a different conclusion?
Did anyone make different assumptions?

The Ladder of Inference in Your Toolbox

As a manager, you can use the ladder of inference in multiple ways. You might start by employing it yourself as a framework for structuring your own thinking and interactions. Then, as you become more familiar with the approach, you can introduce the ladder as an explicit standard tool in team meetings.

Once you have introduced the concept, your team will begin to take on ownership of the process. They’ll develop better habits of mind and follow your lead by probing one another’s reasoning in meetings.

Over time, the ladder can become an integral part of how you think and work. Along the way, you’ll be encouraging open-mindedness, building more effective teams—and coming up with better solutions.

*The ladder of inference was initially developed by the late Chris Argyris, former professor at Harvard Business School, and elaborated on in numerous publications including The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization (Peter Senge, Richard Ross, Bryan Smith, Charlotte Roberts, Art Kleiner).

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About the Author

Levene is a leadership coach and facilitator at Harvard Business School with over 15 years experience leading teams in product development organizations.

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Tips for Running Effective Problem-Solving Meetings

Brenda R. Smyth, Content Creator at SkillPath

Mar 26, 2019

Unproductive workplace meetings are frustrating. And most of us would like all meetings to move along quickly, follow the agenda and solve the problems we were gathered to solve.

But workplace meetings have varied purposes. Some sail along smoothly because the purpose and agenda are simple. Filled with sharing, recapping and planning, they’re practically a Hallmark moment. Who could argue with a rundown of someone’s latest sales triumph or profit margins?

Problem-solving meetings are some of the most challenging to lead.

"How do we fix this problem?" That's the purpose of a problem-solving meeting. And that gets complicated. So don’t beat yourself up if you’ve found your group mired — talking in circles, disagreeing on even a basic problem and making little progress — only to reconvene a week later to repeat the same discussion.

For problem-solving meetings to work, they must encourage effective discussion and lead to well-considered decisions. Sounds easy enough. But consider that often a group is grathered after there's a problem, so strategizing under pressure can be stressful. There can be time pressure, conflict and defensiveness as discussion moves forward. Without strong meeting leadership, viewpoints can be stifled or discussions can easily turn into monologues or debates. And decisions can become personal rather than objective.

The trouble often starts at the outset when the group first tries to agree on the problem. As the meeting leader, you give a concise outline of the situation. “We’re here to discuss how we’re going to counter our competitor’s latest online price cut.” Just one minute in, and those individuals who are closest to the situation may pile their version of the problems onto this purposely well-honed sentence. “I don’t know if you saw what they did yesterday. But, now they’re not just offering 20 percent off, but they’re also giving customers a free trial membership. I think we need to get out ahead of this and offer our own 25 percent discount before half our customers leave.” Yep. Buckle in for the long haul. Problems are not static. And they can look different from various perspectives.

Problem-solving meetings can take stronger facilitation. Preparing for and running an effective problem-solving meeting would include first creating and distributing an agenda and any supporting information. This enables the team to come prepared (and let those invited know that you expect this preparation).

Let's take a look at example agenda for a problem-solving meeting:

Clearly define the problem or objective. The meeting leader can get this started by preparing his or her version of the problem and then asking for input. (That’s right. There’s nothing wrong with input.) This is a time to ask and answer questions with the goal of everyone understanding and agreeing on the problem. It is, however, important that the facilitator ask everyone to wait to share ideas about solutions until you get to that portion of the meeting.
Identify and prioritize requirements and constraints of potential solutions. Consider any parameters your ideal solution must meet. Which aspects are most important? Examples of constraints: Time, staffing or budget. Also, consider if the people who control these things are in the room. Should they be?
Consider possible solutions. Give meeting participants a few minutes to consider solutions or add to thoughts they brought with them to the meeting. (These may need to be altered if earlier discussion has redefined the problem.) If you’re meeting in person, have everyone jot down ideas. If participants are not all in the same room, try an online brainstorming tool or whiteboard. Save discussion until after all ideas have been collected.
Discuss all possibilities, ask questions, combine ideas and closely evaluate the top solutions. Let the person who suggested the idea take the lead in explaining their solution. What are the positive and negative merits? At this stage, try to encourage discussion participation by everyone present—check out these approaches to help avoid groupthink.
Agree on a solution or allow the problem owner to have the final say. This is where the priorities and constraints you discussed earlier can help. If several options seem equally viable, consider which is the most realistic, most likely to solve the problem long term, or least risky. When solutions become more technical, defer to the participants with greatest expertise or responsibility.

Here are a few additional tips to help you run more effective problem-solving meetings:

Keep the group small if possible and invite only stakeholders. This includes people involved in events leading up to the problem with unique insights into possible solutions, suggests MeetingSift.com , as well as those who will be affected by the solution.
Help ensure participation by everyone in attendance. Encourage this by explaining the ground rules up front and letting the group know why various individuals have been included (their expertise).
Chart progress by assigning someone to take notes that can be revisited if a second meeting is needed. This can help you avoid covering the same ground more than once.

Problem-solving meetings are often necessary in the workplace. But they don’t have to be painful. To reach a satisfying solution without becoming stuck in never-ending disagreement and discussion, take the lead.

Brenda Smy t h is a content creator at SkillPath. Drawing from 20-plus years of business and management experience, her writings have appeared on Forbes.com and Entrepreneur.com.

Since 1989, SkillPat h has provided strategic and innovative training solutions to companies and businesspeople around the world. Check out some of the Training Programs available in your area, as a virtual semina r or webinar, or accessible anytime on the STAR12 online learning.

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How To Run A Problem Solving Meeting

To run a problem-solving meeting, define the issue clearly, encourage open and honest communication, generate potential solutions, evaluate and prioritize solutions, decide on a course of action, and establish a follow-up mechanism to monitor progress.

Steps in this Guide: 10
Updated: March 11, 2024

A Problem Solving Meeting is a structured gathering of individuals or teams with a specific goal of identifying and resolving an issue or challenge within a business or organization. These meetings are designed to bring together different perspectives, expertise, and ideas to collaboratively analyze the problem, generate potential solutions, evaluate options, and decide on the most effective course of action. The focus is on problem-solving techniques, brainstorming, critical thinking, and decision-making processes aimed at finding practical resolutions that can be implemented to overcome obstacles and improve performance.

What Is The Purpose Of A Problem Solving Meeting?

The purpose of running a problem-solving meeting as a leader is to gather team members together to address and resolve issues that may be hindering productivity or success. By facilitating discussion and offering guidance, leaders can encourage collaboration, brainstorming, and decision-making to find effective solutions. Ultimately, such meetings aim to foster teamwork, enhance problem-solving skills, and improve overall organizational performance.

How To Run A Problem Solving Meeting: Step-By-Step

Next, we will share our step-by-step guidelines for running a Problem Solving Meeting:

Step 1: Identify the Meeting Objective

Step 2: planning, step 3: invite participants, step 4: set ground rules, step 5: define the problem, step 6: gather information, step 7: generate possible solutions, step 8: evaluate and prioritize solutions, step 9: develop an action plan, step 10: establish a follow-up.

During a problem-solving meeting, it is essential to begin by thoroughly comprehending and defining the problem, as well as establishing the objective of the meeting, in order to effectively guide the discussions and ensure a successful outcome.

In addition to outlining the structure of the meeting, it is essential to identify the objectives and desired outcomes. Identify key stakeholders to invite and allocate specific roles for each participant. Lastly, distribute the agenda beforehand to ensure everyone is prepared and on the same page.

It is crucial to invite and involve the appropriate stakeholders in the meeting, such as those directly affected by the problem, decision-makers, and experts in the subject matter, to ensure a well-informed and productive discussion.

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Establish communication guidelines prior to the meeting to promote fairness and civility among participants.

During a meeting, effective communication is crucial. Clearly outline the problem and ensure everyone comprehends it by presenting pertinent data, case studies, or anecdotes.

Encourage participants to actively contribute their insights and ideas through collaborative discussions, brainstorming sessions, and thought-provoking questions that foster diverse perspectives on the problem at hand.

Conduct a brainstorming session to generate a wide range of solutions, promoting creativity and open-mindedness. Encourage all participants to think freely and propose as many ideas as possible.

Once all potential solutions have been presented, the group will assess their feasibility, potential effects, advantages, and disadvantages. Following this evaluation, the most favorable alternatives will be selected and ranked according to priority.

Once the solution has been chosen, it is essential to outline the specific steps required for implementation. This includes assigning tasks to individuals involved in the process and establishing deadlines for completion.

After concluding the meeting, it is crucial to establish a systematic approach for follow-ups to track the implementation progress and assess the effectiveness of the solution.

Questions To Ask As The Leader Of The Meeting

1. What is the root cause of the problem? Explanation: Identifying the root cause helps in finding the most effective solution.

2. What are the potential solutions we can consider? Explanation: Generating a list of potential solutions promotes brainstorming and open discussion.

3. What are the pros and cons of each solution? Explanation: Evaluating the advantages and disadvantages helps in making an informed decision.

4. Which solution aligns best with our goals and values? Explanation: Considering alignment ensures the chosen solution is in line with the organization’s vision and principles.

5. What resources (financial, human, etc.) are required to implement the solution? Explanation: Analyzing the necessary resources helps in estimating the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of the solution.

6. What are the potential risks and obstacles associated with each solution? Explanation: Identifying risks allows for appropriate risk management and contingency planning.

7. How will we measure the success of the chosen solution? Explanation: Defining clear metrics for success enables tracking progress and measuring the effectiveness of the solution.

8. How will we communicate and involve stakeholders during the problem-solving process? Explanation: Involving stakeholders fosters transparency, collaboration, and buy-in for the solution.

9. How do we plan to implement, monitor, and adjust the solution? Explanation: Developing an implementation plan and monitoring strategy ensures a smooth execution and provides room for necessary adjustments.

10. What lessons have we learned from this problem, and how can we prevent it from recurring? Explanation: Reflecting and learning from the problem-solving experience helps in preventing or mitigating similar issues in the future.

Exemplary Agenda Template For: Problem Solving Meeting

During a problem-solving meeting, it is important to discuss the specific issue at hand, potential causes, and possible solutions. Ideas, suggestions, and feedback from team members should be encouraged and explored. The meeting should also focus on identifying and addressing any challenges or obstacles that may arise during the problem-solving process.

Running a problem-solving meeting successfully is essential for any business or organization. In this blog post, we have discussed the key steps and techniques to ensure a productive and effective problem-solving session. By setting clear objectives, creating an inclusive environment, encouraging open communication, and using various brainstorming and decision-making methods, you can optimize your problem-solving meetings and drive innovative solutions.

Remember, problem-solving is a collaborative effort that requires active participation and engagement from all team members. It is important to foster a culture of trust, respect, and creativity within your organization to create an environment conducive to problem solving.

In conclusion, by implementing the strategies outlined in this blog post, you can transform your problem-solving meetings from unproductive discussions to powerful sessions that generate actionable solutions. So, embrace the opportunity to tackle challenges head-on and leverage the collective knowledge and skills of your team to drive positive change and propel your business forward. Good luck in your future problem-solving endeavors!

The primary purpose of a problem-solving meeting is to identify a specific issue and brainstorm potential solutions to overcome it. It's a space where all team members can share their insights or suggestions, leading to an effective resolution strategy.

Depending on the nature and scope of the problem, this meeting should ideally involve key team members who are directly related to the issue, decision-making authorities, and anyone who may contribute valuable input or insights.

First, clearly identify the problem to be discussed. Gather all relevant information and data regarding the issue for a factual understanding of the situation. Attendees should be informed in advance, along with the send-out of an agenda summarizing the purpose of the meeting so participants can prepare their thoughts.

The output of a problem-solving meeting should ideally be a well-defined action plan addressing the identified issue, with tasks assigned to specific individuals or teams along with a realistic timeline.

The effectiveness of a problem-solving meeting can be evaluated by the quality of solutions presented, participant engagement during the meeting, and ultimately, the successful resolution of the problem. Progress tracking of the implemented solutions also helps in measuring the effectiveness.

Step-by-Step: How To Run A Problem Solving Meeting

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Problem Solving Meeting Agenda: 4 Effective Steps to Conduct a Problem Solving Session

By Ted Skinner

4 Steps to Solve Problems at Your Weekly Meetings

Strategy Execution
Effective Meetings

4 Steps for a Problem Solving Meeting Agenda

One of the easiest changes to your meeting is to attempt to solve at least one problem per week. Not just any problem, you should pick the most important problem facing your team each and every week. Think of all of the additional productivity you, your team, and your company could gain if you were able to put the team together and solve at least one problem per week. That’s an additional 52 problems you could solve each and every year, clearly putting you on the path to out-execute your competition and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

At Rhythm Systems, our business KPI and OKR dashboards allow you to quickly and easily find the most important problems each week to solve. Since all of our key performance indicators (KPIs) and projects (Quarterly Priorities) have clear Red, Yellow, Green success criteria and are updated weekly by the owner, the team has a clear visual indicator of the business problems they are facing. Our clients can easily determine where there are problems, find the most important ones (as all KPIs and priorities/OKRs are ranked in order of importance), and brainstorm together on how to get back on track during their weekly adjustment meetings.

As you can see in our KPI dashboard below, we have a clear issue with our sales pipeline - a leading indicator for revenue. As this is a leading indicator, it helps the team predict revenue in the future; it gives us the added bonus of fixing the revenue problem BEFORE it shows up in the bottom line. To take your KPIs to the next level, follow these five tips to make sure your team is tracking the right KPIs - both leading and results indicators - successfully. It is extremely important to define the problem properly, so that you can get to the root cause of the issue.

Now that you have identified the problem to focus on, you can work deeply on the problem until you are able to devise and execute a complete game plan to solve it. If you follow our problem-solving meeting template below, you'll have the proper meeting agenda to help you break through any challenges you face. Use this as a primary agenda, but remember to allow team members to add an agenda item.

4-Step Process for a Problem Solving Meeting Agenda with This Problem-Solving Session Template (or Agenda).

Step One: List and brainstorm every potential cause for the problem or challenge.

We want to make sure that we solve any structural issues first. These might be open sales positions, known bugs in the software, issues with a supplier - internal or external, known production issues, and those types of challenges. Do we have a standard and complete understanding of the problem? Is the meeting goal clear to everyone? This root cause analysis is an essential part of the process. If you don't find the root of the problem, it will feel like groundhog day as you'll solve the symptoms repeatedly.

Step Two: Brainstorm possible resources to help.

During this step, think of the people and resources that might help you solve the problem. Are the resources in the room? Are they in the company? What are the budget constraints for a solution? In the sales pipeline example, the sales and marketing leader would likely need to be involved in solving the issue. This is critical to group problem solving: knowing where to get the necessary resources. You'll need to think of resources that might be outside the room. There needs to be a shared understanding of the root cause of the issue and all possible solutions to solve the problem.

Step Three: List and brainstorm every potential solution or approach.

Think of as many ideas as you can. You might list an email blast to all of your prospects, a sales promotion to help with a sales pipeline issue, contracting an outside expert for search engine optimization, investing in more outbound sales representatives to schedule more meetings, and any other potential approach that is likely to solve the problem. This is where the team comes to a final decision on the recommended course of action or potentially two teams trying two different approaches.

Step Four: Recommendation for action.

Discuss, Debate, and Agree on the course of action and execute against that plan. Discuss the plans entirely with the person who suggested them, taking the lead to explain their approach to the solution. Allow the team to debate the positive and negative merits of the proposal and repeat the process until all ideas have been presented. The team should be able to reach a consensus on the best course of action. Now the team can agree on the most likely solution (or two - if they are different resources) and create a game plan to execute against. Make sure that everybody on the team can answer the question "what is my role in the solution?" This action planning process ensures that you have an execution plan to solve the problem.

Move forward with your action plan and keep a constant and deliberate eye on your metrics and KPIs. If that isn't doing enough to move the needle to correct the problem, run through the process again, and determine additional steps to take to alleviate the issue. Keep working until you solve the problem. You can read more about different applications for the process here and download our free and handy Breakthrough to Green tool here .

However, many of you reading this post don't have a business dashboard solution already, so what can you do?

Ask for any issues from the team when setting the agenda for your weekly meeting.
If you are a manager, bring one of your problems to your team to have them help solve it with you. Making yourself human and vulnerable will encourage them to do the same with any issues they face.
Work on solving problems, rather than placing blame, when discussing issues. Creating a safe environment for healthy discussions about things that are off track is crucial in solving problems in your business.
Monitor your KPIs weekly and make sure significant projects get frequent (and honest) updates. If you wait too long between updates, you lose the ability to make the necessary adjustments if issues arise.
Create a shared spreadsheet to start tracking your most important metrics and projects as a place to start. However, you might find that you'll outgrow your spreadsheet quickly; it is a place to get started and organize your thoughts.
You're likely to have conflicting opinions, so ensure you set the proper ground rules for conduct and respect.
Creative problem-solving isn't an event; it is a state of mind. You might not get it 100% right the first time, but with this problem-solving framework, you'll have the correct process to get to the desired solution.

Good luck taking your weekly staff meetings back and making them more productive! Download the free Breakthrough to Green tool to help you properly frame your problem and create an action plan to solve it. Thousands of teams have used this problem-solving process and can help yours too!

Breakthrough to Green Tool - get your Yellow and Red Success Criteria back to Green

Additional Rhythm Systems Weekly Staff Meeting Resources:

How To Have Effective Weekly Staff Meetings (With Sample Agenda Template)

4 Easy Steps to Fix Your Weekly Staff Meetings [Video]

Download our weekly meeting agenda

Supercharge Your Meetings with This Effective Weekly Meeting Agenda

8 Ways to Make Weekly Meetings Strategic vs. Tactical (Video)

Weekly Adjustment Meetings vs. Weekly Status Meetings (Infographic)

Consider using Rhythm Software to run your weekly meeting , where the status and agenda are automatically created weekly to keep you on track!

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Ted Skinner

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Use Smart Thinking to Innovate and Solve Problems

Annual & Quarterly Planning

5 Ways to Solve Problems Faster During Annual Planning

Accountable Leaders & Teams

Do You Have a People Problem or a Leadership Problem?

Using week in sync notes to solve problems and drive alignment, 4 steps to get your team past issues and problems, what the rhythm software solves [video].

Problem Solving Meeting

Glossary of Meeting Terms

Meeting Type

What is a Problem Solving Meeting?

Teams use Problem Solving Meetings to analyze a situation and its causes, assess what direction to take, then create an action plan to resolve the problem.

You can find an introduction to Problem Solving Meetings in Chapter 25 of our book, Where the Action Is . You may also want to visit the Learn More link, below, for resources to help you plan, run, and troubleshoot the specific meetings your team needs.

Incident Response
Strategic Issue Resolution
Major Project Change Resolution
16 Meeting Types: Problem Solving Meetings
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A Complete Guide: Planning a Problem Solving Meeting

January 6, 2022

By MeetingFull Team

What’s the best way to prepare for a meeting where the goal of that meeting is to solve a problem? What’s the key difference between a problem solving meeting and a decision making meeting?

Let’s first identify the challenges in a problem solving meeting and make sure our plan addresses each of those points.

Meeting challenges:

Different perceptions of the definition of the problem.
Unclear understanding of the magnitude and future consequences of the problem.
Disorganized brainstorming process for a solution.
Misalignment on the cost/benefit of different solutions.
No clear ownership of the solution.

The goal of a problem solving meeting is to discuss solutions to a problem only after all participants fully agree on the definition of that problem . Everyone attending the meeting should be a part of a group responsible for identifying and correcting the problem.

In a decision making meeting, the group is already presented with a solution(s) and is coming to a consensus on how to proceed. The method for how to come to a decision is predefined as either a vote , group consensus or a leader made decision.

Also Read: A Complete Guide: Planning a Decision Making Meeting

Now that we understand what we’re aiming to accomplish in our two meeting types, let’s address solutions for each of our problem solving meeting challenges.

Listen to the participant’s definition of the problem. Ideally, a meeting organizer can try soliciting input prior to the meeting and share a summary of it at the start of the meeting. It’s key that everyone agrees that their perspective is being repeated accurately. If that’s not possible, participants should share their definition of the problem at the start of the meeting. Before moving forward, get agreement from everyone on the definition of the problem.

Discuss how long the problem has been going on and what will happen if the problem isn’t resolved. The solutions people present in a problem solving meeting are highly dependent on understanding the real impact (or cost) of the problem. Share with the team how long ago the problem started and what the future will look like depending on when the problem is solved.

Weigh the pros and cons of a solution in real time. A core practice to keeping a brainstorming process organized is to write things down as you go and document the advantages and disadvantages of each proposal. You can do this on a shared document or up on the whiteboard. All participants should be viewing the growing list.

Create criteria for key factors that should be considered. Common factors are financials , resources, time, values and accessibility . Discuss these areas in the meeting. Consider each factor while brainstorming on a solution.

Gain consensus before ending the meeting. There should be one option that the list of advantages and disadvantages shows as a winner. The participants included in this meeting should be the people who can execute on a solution. Clearly defined next steps that are reviewed and distributed are the last steps for this problem solving meeting.

Also Read: A Complete Guide: Creating the Perfect Meeting Agenda

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Historical Meetings

Productivity

How to Run an Urgent Problem Solving Meeting

Everything exploded. you’ve got a mess. now what.

In one of the first posts on this blog, our friend and former partner wrote about adapting his emergency response training as a SCUBA instructor to the business setting. Chris translated the steps for triaging a physical emergency into a basic meeting agenda. It looked very much like the “Red Light” process John used when he worked a computer manufacturing firm, and like the “All Hands on Deck!” meeting I remembered from my time in client services. Since then, I’ve seen many formats for problem-solving meetings, and the basic pattern holds.

Here at Lucid, we’ ran into a thorny problem we need to solve quickly, and that none of us could fix on our own. To find a solution, we used our “Problem Buster” meeting process that we adopted way back when Chris wrote that first SCUBA-inspired post. Happily, our challenge also presents an opportunity to share this process and (a new meeting template!) with you.

The Lucid team lifts a big ugly blocking problem out of the way together

When to Use this Process

This meeting format is best for urgent problems that require a speedy tactical response. When you leave the meeting, someone will immediately go out and do something to start solving the problem.

What counts as urgent? “Urgency” is obviously subjective, but we can provide some guidance about the kind of problems that should be addressed by other means.

An urgent problem is NOT:

An Emergency Emergencies should not wait for a meeting. In our business, when we have an emergency that requires collaboration to resolve, we all log in to a live chat window and keep voice communication open. In our case, we use either Slack, Skype, or Lucid’s “Meet Now” and swarm on the problem until the crisis passes.
Chronic or Institutional The big thorny problems that get baked into how an organization works, that arise out of personality conflicts, strategic blunders, or operational ineffectiveness, require deeper thought and more time to address than this format allows. Leaders should plan Issue Identification and Resolution sessions, with several rounds of brainstorming, analysis, and prioritization, to tackle these big soupy messes.
Procedural Some problems become clear as we work on a project. We make mistakes that could be prevented in the future, and we find problems with existing tools and processes that inhibit progress. These kinds of problems are best addressed using continuous learning methods such as retrospectives , postmortems, and after-action planning meetings.

Our example

Our urgent problem had to do with an upcoming software release. We’d been working to build in support for recurring meetings in Lucid, and thought we were days away from shipping the release. We were so pleased with the progress and confident in the result that we promised the feature to several clients, and to a prospect scheduled to visit us for a preview later in the week.

But then, calamity! One of our test scenarios completely broke down in Outlook. When we fixed the software to work for Outlook, the Apple Calendar failed. Every fix that made the feature work in one calendar broke the feature for another one. A week of whack-a-mole later and we’re at an impasse. No one knew how to solve this edge-case issue, and we needed to ship the update.

It was time to come up with some new solutions quickly. Urgently.

And it worked! We released support for recurring meetings one week later, using the strategies we identified in this meeting.

Preparation

Because the situation is urgent, but not an emergency, you have a little time to prepare. We will schedule this meeting with at least an hour to prepare, and up to one day. (Urgency is relative.)

The meeting begins with a situation assessment, in which the team gets a shared understanding of the problem. Then, you’ll discuss the solution goals and constraints; what you want to see happen and what you have to work with to make it happen.

Use the preparation time to write up the facts. Usually one or two people will take responsibility for this basic situation description, which they should write up and add to the agenda before the meeting.

You want succinct answers to questions like:

What was the original problem?
What have we tried?
What have we learned?
What exactly is the problem we need to solve now?
What does an immediate solution need to achieve?
What hard constraints do we have to work within (time, resources, commitments, etc.)?

Important: do not use this meeting to discuss who or what is to blame .

There is a time and a place for root cause analysis. There are occasions when a problem really is someone’s “fault” and they need to be held accountable.

But that’s not what this meeting is about. This meeting is about finding solutions . Describe the problem briefly, factually, and as it exists right now so you can focus the group’s attention and energy on finding the best solution they can, right now. Too much attention on how and why the problem arose takes up valuable time and shifts the group’s energy to fault-finding and away from creating solutions.

Who to Invite

Be aggressive about keeping the group small . Invite only the people needed to understand and solve the problem. In an urgent situation, speed counts, and extra people will require more time to understand the problem and the constraints. You don’t want to spend any time getting someone up to speed who isn’t directly involved.

Situation Report
Solution Constraints
Brainstorm Solutions
Define Action Plan
Confirm Next Steps

The agenda is simple. There are no complicated exercises or fancy meeting techniques here – just enough structure to help the group bust through the problem effectively. Here’s the step-by-step.

1. Situation Report

Ideally, everyone will read the data about the problem before the meeting. Use this first agenda item to ask and answer questions, and make sure everyone fully understands the situation. Ask everyone to wait to share ideas about solutions for the moment; focus solely on understanding the problem.

2. Solution Goals & Constraints

Next, talk about the solution goals and any constraints on what you can try.

For example, our goal solution included a software release within the week. Our constraints were the impending customer visit and limited staff availability.

3. Brainstorm Solutions

Most likely, people arrived at the meeting with some possible solutions in mind. We still start this agenda item with a few minutes of silent individual brainstorming, which gives everyone a chance to assimilate all they’ve learned into their thinking. Each person writes their ideas separately.

After a few minutes, we all paste our ideas into notes at once, then take a moment to look through all the contributions. In Lucid, we do this by individually typing notes in Lucid, then all hitting “Save” at the same time. You could achieve the same thing using Slack or a Google Doc . If you meet in person, use sticky notes and post them all up on the board at once.

Then, discuss what you see. Ask questions, combine ideas, and prioritize the best ones. If you feel compelled, you can use dot voting or some other way to pick a solution. We often find that we reach consensus without any particular process, and when we don’t, the problem owner makes the final decision.

4. Define the Action Plan

Urgent problems require a tactical response. Once you’ve settled on an approach, get specific. Who will do what, and by when?

5. Confirm Next Steps

Finally, review everything. Does your plan address the immediate problem? Do you know exactly what will happen next? Is everyone clear and committed to what they need to do?

Then, set a time to meet again and check progress. Your plan should include actions that will either solve the problem, or fail to do so. Schedule the follow up meeting for as soon as you can reasonably expect to know whether the plan is working or not.

After the Meeting

Send out the meeting notes and schedule the follow-up meeting. Then get to work on putting your solution in action!

Try the Template

You can find the agenda and guide for this meeting template on our website , and Lucid customers can add the template for use in their online meetings .

Just want the instructions?

If you use this process or one like it, let us know: what did you learn? What worked? How can the process be improved? We use this process ourselves, and any ideas you can share to make it more effective are very welcome. After all, when we’re up against an urgent problem, we love to use anything that helps us solve it faster and better.

Categories: meeting design

Elise Keith

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35 problem-solving techniques and methods for solving complex problems

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How do you identify problems?

How do you identify the right solution.

Tips for more effective problem-solving

Complete problem-solving methods

Problem-solving techniques to identify and analyze problems
Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions

Problem-solving warm-up activities

Closing activities for a problem-solving process.

Before you can move towards finding the right solution for a given problem, you first need to identify and define the problem you wish to solve.

Here, you want to clearly articulate what the problem is and allow your group to do the same. Remember that everyone in a group is likely to have differing perspectives and alignment is necessary in order to help the group move forward.

Identifying a problem accurately also requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner. It can be scary for people to stand up and contribute, especially if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. Be sure to try and create a psychologically safe space for these kinds of discussions.

Remember that problem analysis and further discussion are also important. Not taking the time to fully analyze and discuss a challenge can result in the development of solutions that are not fit for purpose or do not address the underlying issue.

Successfully identifying and then analyzing a problem means facilitating a group through activities designed to help them clearly and honestly articulate their thoughts and produce usable insight.

With this data, you might then produce a problem statement that clearly describes the problem you wish to be addressed and also state the goal of any process you undertake to tackle this issue.

Finding solutions is the end goal of any process. Complex organizational challenges can only be solved with an appropriate solution but discovering them requires using the right problem-solving tool.

After you’ve explored a problem and discussed ideas, you need to help a team discuss and choose the right solution. Consensus tools and methods such as those below help a group explore possible solutions before then voting for the best. They’re a great way to tap into the collective intelligence of the group for great results!

Remember that the process is often iterative. Great problem solvers often roadtest a viable solution in a measured way to see what works too. While you might not get the right solution on your first try, the methods below help teams land on the most likely to succeed solution while also holding space for improvement.

Every effective problem solving process begins with an agenda . A well-structured workshop is one of the best methods for successfully guiding a group from exploring a problem to implementing a solution.

In SessionLab, it’s easy to go from an idea to a complete agenda . Start by dragging and dropping your core problem solving activities into place . Add timings, breaks and necessary materials before sharing your agenda with your colleagues.

The resulting agenda will be your guide to an effective and productive problem solving session that will also help you stay organized on the day!

Tips for more effective problem solving

Problem-solving activities are only one part of the puzzle. While a great method can help unlock your team’s ability to solve problems, without a thoughtful approach and strong facilitation the solutions may not be fit for purpose.

Let’s take a look at some problem-solving tips you can apply to any process to help it be a success!

Clearly define the problem

Jumping straight to solutions can be tempting, though without first clearly articulating a problem, the solution might not be the right one. Many of the problem-solving activities below include sections where the problem is explored and clearly defined before moving on.

This is a vital part of the problem-solving process and taking the time to fully define an issue can save time and effort later. A clear definition helps identify irrelevant information and it also ensures that your team sets off on the right track.

Don’t jump to conclusions

It’s easy for groups to exhibit cognitive bias or have preconceived ideas about both problems and potential solutions. Be sure to back up any problem statements or potential solutions with facts, research, and adequate forethought.

The best techniques ask participants to be methodical and challenge preconceived notions. Make sure you give the group enough time and space to collect relevant information and consider the problem in a new way. By approaching the process with a clear, rational mindset, you’ll often find that better solutions are more forthcoming.

Try different approaches

Problems come in all shapes and sizes and so too should the methods you use to solve them. If you find that one approach isn’t yielding results and your team isn’t finding different solutions, try mixing it up. You’ll be surprised at how using a new creative activity can unblock your team and generate great solutions.

Don’t take it personally

Depending on the nature of your team or organizational problems, it’s easy for conversations to get heated. While it’s good for participants to be engaged in the discussions, ensure that emotions don’t run too high and that blame isn’t thrown around while finding solutions.

You’re all in it together, and even if your team or area is seeing problems, that isn’t necessarily a disparagement of you personally. Using facilitation skills to manage group dynamics is one effective method of helping conversations be more constructive.

Get the right people in the room

Your problem-solving method is often only as effective as the group using it. Getting the right people on the job and managing the number of people present is important too!

If the group is too small, you may not get enough different perspectives to effectively solve a problem. If the group is too large, you can go round and round during the ideation stages.

Creating the right group makeup is also important in ensuring you have the necessary expertise and skillset to both identify and follow up on potential solutions. Carefully consider who to include at each stage to help ensure your problem-solving method is followed and positioned for success.

Document everything

The best solutions can take refinement, iteration, and reflection to come out. Get into a habit of documenting your process in order to keep all the learnings from the session and to allow ideas to mature and develop. Many of the methods below involve the creation of documents or shared resources. Be sure to keep and share these so everyone can benefit from the work done!

Bring a facilitator

Facilitation is all about making group processes easier. With a subject as potentially emotive and important as problem-solving, having an impartial third party in the form of a facilitator can make all the difference in finding great solutions and keeping the process moving. Consider bringing a facilitator to your problem-solving session to get better results and generate meaningful solutions!

Develop your problem-solving skills

It takes time and practice to be an effective problem solver. While some roles or participants might more naturally gravitate towards problem-solving, it can take development and planning to help everyone create better solutions.

You might develop a training program, run a problem-solving workshop or simply ask your team to practice using the techniques below. Check out our post on problem-solving skills to see how you and your group can develop the right mental process and be more resilient to issues too!

Design a great agenda

Workshops are a great format for solving problems. With the right approach, you can focus a group and help them find the solutions to their own problems. But designing a process can be time-consuming and finding the right activities can be difficult.

Check out our workshop planning guide to level-up your agenda design and start running more effective workshops. Need inspiration? Check out templates designed by expert facilitators to help you kickstart your process!

In this section, we’ll look at in-depth problem-solving methods that provide a complete end-to-end process for developing effective solutions. These will help guide your team from the discovery and definition of a problem through to delivering the right solution.

If you’re looking for an all-encompassing method or problem-solving model, these processes are a great place to start. They’ll ask your team to challenge preconceived ideas and adopt a mindset for solving problems more effectively.

Six Thinking Hats
Lightning Decision Jam
Problem Definition Process
Discovery & Action Dialogue

Design Sprint 2.0

Open Space Technology

1. Six Thinking Hats

Individual approaches to solving a problem can be very different based on what team or role an individual holds. It can be easy for existing biases or perspectives to find their way into the mix, or for internal politics to direct a conversation.

Six Thinking Hats is a classic method for identifying the problems that need to be solved and enables your team to consider them from different angles, whether that is by focusing on facts and data, creative solutions, or by considering why a particular solution might not work.

Like all problem-solving frameworks, Six Thinking Hats is effective at helping teams remove roadblocks from a conversation or discussion and come to terms with all the aspects necessary to solve complex problems.

2. Lightning Decision Jam

Featured courtesy of Jonathan Courtney of AJ&Smart Berlin, Lightning Decision Jam is one of those strategies that should be in every facilitation toolbox. Exploring problems and finding solutions is often creative in nature, though as with any creative process, there is the potential to lose focus and get lost.

Unstructured discussions might get you there in the end, but it’s much more effective to use a method that creates a clear process and team focus.

In Lightning Decision Jam, participants are invited to begin by writing challenges, concerns, or mistakes on post-its without discussing them before then being invited by the moderator to present them to the group.

From there, the team vote on which problems to solve and are guided through steps that will allow them to reframe those problems, create solutions and then decide what to execute on.

By deciding the problems that need to be solved as a team before moving on, this group process is great for ensuring the whole team is aligned and can take ownership over the next stages.

Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ) #action #decision making #problem solving #issue analysis #innovation #design #remote-friendly The problem with anything that requires creative thinking is that it’s easy to get lost—lose focus and fall into the trap of having useless, open-ended, unstructured discussions. Here’s the most effective solution I’ve found: Replace all open, unstructured discussion with a clear process. What to use this exercise for: Anything which requires a group of people to make decisions, solve problems or discuss challenges. It’s always good to frame an LDJ session with a broad topic, here are some examples: The conversion flow of our checkout Our internal design process How we organise events Keeping up with our competition Improving sales flow

3. Problem Definition Process

While problems can be complex, the problem-solving methods you use to identify and solve those problems can often be simple in design.

By taking the time to truly identify and define a problem before asking the group to reframe the challenge as an opportunity, this method is a great way to enable change.

Begin by identifying a focus question and exploring the ways in which it manifests before splitting into five teams who will each consider the problem using a different method: escape, reversal, exaggeration, distortion or wishful. Teams develop a problem objective and create ideas in line with their method before then feeding them back to the group.

This method is great for enabling in-depth discussions while also creating space for finding creative solutions too!

Problem Definition #problem solving #idea generation #creativity #online #remote-friendly A problem solving technique to define a problem, challenge or opportunity and to generate ideas.

4. The 5 Whys

Sometimes, a group needs to go further with their strategies and analyze the root cause at the heart of organizational issues. An RCA or root cause analysis is the process of identifying what is at the heart of business problems or recurring challenges.

The 5 Whys is a simple and effective method of helping a group go find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct analysis that will deliver results.

By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to truly discover the cause of an issue.

The 5 Whys #hyperisland #innovation This simple and powerful method is useful for getting to the core of a problem or challenge. As the title suggests, the group defines a problems, then asks the question “why” five times, often using the resulting explanation as a starting point for creative problem solving.

5. World Cafe

World Cafe is a simple but powerful facilitation technique to help bigger groups to focus their energy and attention on solving complex problems.

World Cafe enables this approach by creating a relaxed atmosphere where participants are able to self-organize and explore topics relevant and important to them which are themed around a central problem-solving purpose. Create the right atmosphere by modeling your space after a cafe and after guiding the group through the method, let them take the lead!

Making problem-solving a part of your organization’s culture in the long term can be a difficult undertaking. More approachable formats like World Cafe can be especially effective in bringing people unfamiliar with workshops into the fold.

World Cafe #hyperisland #innovation #issue analysis World Café is a simple yet powerful method, originated by Juanita Brown, for enabling meaningful conversations driven completely by participants and the topics that are relevant and important to them. Facilitators create a cafe-style space and provide simple guidelines. Participants then self-organize and explore a set of relevant topics or questions for conversation.

6. Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

One of the best approaches is to create a safe space for a group to share and discover practices and behaviors that can help them find their own solutions.

With DAD, you can help a group choose which problems they wish to solve and which approaches they will take to do so. It’s great at helping remove resistance to change and can help get buy-in at every level too!

This process of enabling frontline ownership is great in ensuring follow-through and is one of the methods you will want in your toolbox as a facilitator.

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD) #idea generation #liberating structures #action #issue analysis #remote-friendly DADs make it easy for a group or community to discover practices and behaviors that enable some individuals (without access to special resources and facing the same constraints) to find better solutions than their peers to common problems. These are called positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices. DADs make it possible for people in the group, unit, or community to discover by themselves these PD practices. DADs also create favorable conditions for stimulating participants’ creativity in spaces where they can feel safe to invent new and more effective practices. Resistance to change evaporates as participants are unleashed to choose freely which practices they will adopt or try and which problems they will tackle. DADs make it possible to achieve frontline ownership of solutions.

7. Design Sprint 2.0

Want to see how a team can solve big problems and move forward with prototyping and testing solutions in a few days? The Design Sprint 2.0 template from Jake Knapp, author of Sprint, is a complete agenda for a with proven results.

Developing the right agenda can involve difficult but necessary planning. Ensuring all the correct steps are followed can also be stressful or time-consuming depending on your level of experience.

Use this complete 4-day workshop template if you are finding there is no obvious solution to your challenge and want to focus your team around a specific problem that might require a shortcut to launching a minimum viable product or waiting for the organization-wide implementation of a solution.

8. Open space technology

Open space technology- developed by Harrison Owen – creates a space where large groups are invited to take ownership of their problem solving and lead individual sessions. Open space technology is a great format when you have a great deal of expertise and insight in the room and want to allow for different takes and approaches on a particular theme or problem you need to be solved.

Start by bringing your participants together to align around a central theme and focus their efforts. Explain the ground rules to help guide the problem-solving process and then invite members to identify any issue connecting to the central theme that they are interested in and are prepared to take responsibility for.

Once participants have decided on their approach to the core theme, they write their issue on a piece of paper, announce it to the group, pick a session time and place, and post the paper on the wall. As the wall fills up with sessions, the group is then invited to join the sessions that interest them the most and which they can contribute to, then you’re ready to begin!

Everyone joins the problem-solving group they’ve signed up to, record the discussion and if appropriate, findings can then be shared with the rest of the group afterward.

Open Space Technology #action plan #idea generation #problem solving #issue analysis #large group #online #remote-friendly Open Space is a methodology for large groups to create their agenda discerning important topics for discussion, suitable for conferences, community gatherings and whole system facilitation

Techniques to identify and analyze problems

Using a problem-solving method to help a team identify and analyze a problem can be a quick and effective addition to any workshop or meeting.

While further actions are always necessary, you can generate momentum and alignment easily, and these activities are a great place to get started.

We’ve put together this list of techniques to help you and your team with problem identification, analysis, and discussion that sets the foundation for developing effective solutions.

Let’s take a look!

The Creativity Dice
Fishbone Analysis
Problem Tree
SWOT Analysis
Agreement-Certainty Matrix
The Journalistic Six
LEGO Challenge
What, So What, Now What?
Journalists

Individual and group perspectives are incredibly important, but what happens if people are set in their minds and need a change of perspective in order to approach a problem more effectively?

Flip It is a method we love because it is both simple to understand and run, and allows groups to understand how their perspectives and biases are formed.

Participants in Flip It are first invited to consider concerns, issues, or problems from a perspective of fear and write them on a flip chart. Then, the group is asked to consider those same issues from a perspective of hope and flip their understanding.

No problem and solution is free from existing bias and by changing perspectives with Flip It, you can then develop a problem solving model quickly and effectively.

Flip It! #gamestorming #problem solving #action Often, a change in a problem or situation comes simply from a change in our perspectives. Flip It! is a quick game designed to show players that perspectives are made, not born.

10. The Creativity Dice

One of the most useful problem solving skills you can teach your team is of approaching challenges with creativity, flexibility, and openness. Games like The Creativity Dice allow teams to overcome the potential hurdle of too much linear thinking and approach the process with a sense of fun and speed.

In The Creativity Dice, participants are organized around a topic and roll a dice to determine what they will work on for a period of 3 minutes at a time. They might roll a 3 and work on investigating factual information on the chosen topic. They might roll a 1 and work on identifying the specific goals, standards, or criteria for the session.

Encouraging rapid work and iteration while asking participants to be flexible are great skills to cultivate. Having a stage for idea incubation in this game is also important. Moments of pause can help ensure the ideas that are put forward are the most suitable.

The Creativity Dice #creativity #problem solving #thiagi #issue analysis Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

11. Fishbone Analysis

Organizational or team challenges are rarely simple, and it’s important to remember that one problem can be an indication of something that goes deeper and may require further consideration to be solved.

Fishbone Analysis helps groups to dig deeper and understand the origins of a problem. It’s a great example of a root cause analysis method that is simple for everyone on a team to get their head around.

Participants in this activity are asked to annotate a diagram of a fish, first adding the problem or issue to be worked on at the head of a fish before then brainstorming the root causes of the problem and adding them as bones on the fish.

Using abstractions such as a diagram of a fish can really help a team break out of their regular thinking and develop a creative approach.

Fishbone Analysis #problem solving ##root cause analysis #decision making #online facilitation A process to help identify and understand the origins of problems, issues or observations.

12. Problem Tree

Encouraging visual thinking can be an essential part of many strategies. By simply reframing and clarifying problems, a group can move towards developing a problem solving model that works for them.

In Problem Tree, groups are asked to first brainstorm a list of problems – these can be design problems, team problems or larger business problems – and then organize them into a hierarchy. The hierarchy could be from most important to least important or abstract to practical, though the key thing with problem solving games that involve this aspect is that your group has some way of managing and sorting all the issues that are raised.

Once you have a list of problems that need to be solved and have organized them accordingly, you’re then well-positioned for the next problem solving steps.

Problem tree #define intentions #create #design #issue analysis A problem tree is a tool to clarify the hierarchy of problems addressed by the team within a design project; it represents high level problems or related sublevel problems.

13. SWOT Analysis

Chances are you’ve heard of the SWOT Analysis before. This problem-solving method focuses on identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a tried and tested method for both individuals and teams.

Start by creating a desired end state or outcome and bare this in mind – any process solving model is made more effective by knowing what you are moving towards. Create a quadrant made up of the four categories of a SWOT analysis and ask participants to generate ideas based on each of those quadrants.

Once you have those ideas assembled in their quadrants, cluster them together based on their affinity with other ideas. These clusters are then used to facilitate group conversations and move things forward.

SWOT analysis #gamestorming #problem solving #action #meeting facilitation The SWOT Analysis is a long-standing technique of looking at what we have, with respect to the desired end state, as well as what we could improve on. It gives us an opportunity to gauge approaching opportunities and dangers, and assess the seriousness of the conditions that affect our future. When we understand those conditions, we can influence what comes next.

14. Agreement-Certainty Matrix

Not every problem-solving approach is right for every challenge, and deciding on the right method for the challenge at hand is a key part of being an effective team.

The Agreement Certainty matrix helps teams align on the nature of the challenges facing them. By sorting problems from simple to chaotic, your team can understand what methods are suitable for each problem and what they can do to ensure effective results.

If you are already using Liberating Structures techniques as part of your problem-solving strategy, the Agreement-Certainty Matrix can be an invaluable addition to your process. We’ve found it particularly if you are having issues with recurring problems in your organization and want to go deeper in understanding the root cause.

Agreement-Certainty Matrix #issue analysis #liberating structures #problem solving You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. The combination of two questions makes it possible to easily sort challenges into four categories: simple, complicated, complex , and chaotic . A problem is simple when it can be solved reliably with practices that are easy to duplicate. It is complicated when experts are required to devise a sophisticated solution that will yield the desired results predictably. A problem is complex when there are several valid ways to proceed but outcomes are not predictable in detail. Chaotic is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward. A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” The Liberating Structures Matching Matrix in Chapter 5 can be used as the first step to clarify the nature of a challenge and avoid the mismatches between problems and solutions that are frequently at the root of chronic, recurring problems.

Organizing and charting a team’s progress can be important in ensuring its success. SQUID (Sequential Question and Insight Diagram) is a great model that allows a team to effectively switch between giving questions and answers and develop the skills they need to stay on track throughout the process.

Begin with two different colored sticky notes – one for questions and one for answers – and with your central topic (the head of the squid) on the board. Ask the group to first come up with a series of questions connected to their best guess of how to approach the topic. Ask the group to come up with answers to those questions, fix them to the board and connect them with a line. After some discussion, go back to question mode by responding to the generated answers or other points on the board.

It’s rewarding to see a diagram grow throughout the exercise, and a completed SQUID can provide a visual resource for future effort and as an example for other teams.

SQUID #gamestorming #project planning #issue analysis #problem solving When exploring an information space, it’s important for a group to know where they are at any given time. By using SQUID, a group charts out the territory as they go and can navigate accordingly. SQUID stands for Sequential Question and Insight Diagram.

16. Speed Boat

To continue with our nautical theme, Speed Boat is a short and sweet activity that can help a team quickly identify what employees, clients or service users might have a problem with and analyze what might be standing in the way of achieving a solution.

Methods that allow for a group to make observations, have insights and obtain those eureka moments quickly are invaluable when trying to solve complex problems.

In Speed Boat, the approach is to first consider what anchors and challenges might be holding an organization (or boat) back. Bonus points if you are able to identify any sharks in the water and develop ideas that can also deal with competitors!

Speed Boat #gamestorming #problem solving #action Speedboat is a short and sweet way to identify what your employees or clients don’t like about your product/service or what’s standing in the way of a desired goal.

17. The Journalistic Six

Some of the most effective ways of solving problems is by encouraging teams to be more inclusive and diverse in their thinking.

Based on the six key questions journalism students are taught to answer in articles and news stories, The Journalistic Six helps create teams to see the whole picture. By using who, what, when, where, why, and how to facilitate the conversation and encourage creative thinking, your team can make sure that the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the are covered exhaustively and thoughtfully. Reporter’s notebook and dictaphone optional.

The Journalistic Six – Who What When Where Why How #idea generation #issue analysis #problem solving #online #creative thinking #remote-friendly A questioning method for generating, explaining, investigating ideas.

18. LEGO Challenge

Now for an activity that is a little out of the (toy) box. LEGO Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that can be used to improve creative thinking and problem-solving skills.

The LEGO Challenge includes giving each member of the team an assignment that is hidden from the rest of the group while they create a structure without speaking.

What the LEGO challenge brings to the table is a fun working example of working with stakeholders who might not be on the same page to solve problems. Also, it’s LEGO! Who doesn’t love LEGO!

LEGO Challenge #hyperisland #team A team-building activity in which groups must work together to build a structure out of LEGO, but each individual has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative process more challenging. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, conflict, cooperation, patience and problem solving strategy.

19. What, So What, Now What?

If not carefully managed, the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the problem-solving process can actually create more problems and misunderstandings.

The What, So What, Now What? problem-solving activity is designed to help collect insights and move forward while also eliminating the possibility of disagreement when it comes to identifying, clarifying, and analyzing organizational or work problems.

Facilitation is all about bringing groups together so that might work on a shared goal and the best problem-solving strategies ensure that teams are aligned in purpose, if not initially in opinion or insight.

Throughout the three steps of this game, you give everyone on a team to reflect on a problem by asking what happened, why it is important, and what actions should then be taken.

This can be a great activity for bringing our individual perceptions about a problem or challenge and contextualizing it in a larger group setting. This is one of the most important problem-solving skills you can bring to your organization.

W³ – What, So What, Now What? #issue analysis #innovation #liberating structures You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

20. Journalists

Problem analysis can be one of the most important and decisive stages of all problem-solving tools. Sometimes, a team can become bogged down in the details and are unable to move forward.

Journalists is an activity that can avoid a group from getting stuck in the problem identification or problem analysis stages of the process.

In Journalists, the group is invited to draft the front page of a fictional newspaper and figure out what stories deserve to be on the cover and what headlines those stories will have. By reframing how your problems and challenges are approached, you can help a team move productively through the process and be better prepared for the steps to follow.

Journalists #vision #big picture #issue analysis #remote-friendly This is an exercise to use when the group gets stuck in details and struggles to see the big picture. Also good for defining a vision.

Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions

The success of any problem-solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. After you’ve defined the issue, explored existing ideas, and ideated, it’s time to narrow down to the correct solution.

Use these problem-solving techniques when you want to help your team find consensus, compare possible solutions, and move towards taking action on a particular problem.

Improved Solutions
Four-Step Sketch
15% Solutions
How-Now-Wow matrix
Impact Effort Matrix

21. Mindspin

Brainstorming is part of the bread and butter of the problem-solving process and all problem-solving strategies benefit from getting ideas out and challenging a team to generate solutions quickly.

With Mindspin, participants are encouraged not only to generate ideas but to do so under time constraints and by slamming down cards and passing them on. By doing multiple rounds, your team can begin with a free generation of possible solutions before moving on to developing those solutions and encouraging further ideation.

This is one of our favorite problem-solving activities and can be great for keeping the energy up throughout the workshop. Remember the importance of helping people become engaged in the process – energizing problem-solving techniques like Mindspin can help ensure your team stays engaged and happy, even when the problems they’re coming together to solve are complex.

MindSpin #teampedia #idea generation #problem solving #action A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.

22. Improved Solutions

After a team has successfully identified a problem and come up with a few solutions, it can be tempting to call the work of the problem-solving process complete. That said, the first solution is not necessarily the best, and by including a further review and reflection activity into your problem-solving model, you can ensure your group reaches the best possible result.

One of a number of problem-solving games from Thiagi Group, Improved Solutions helps you go the extra mile and develop suggested solutions with close consideration and peer review. By supporting the discussion of several problems at once and by shifting team roles throughout, this problem-solving technique is a dynamic way of finding the best solution.

Improved Solutions #creativity #thiagi #problem solving #action #team You can improve any solution by objectively reviewing its strengths and weaknesses and making suitable adjustments. In this creativity framegame, you improve the solutions to several problems. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. At the conclusion of the activity, each player ends up with two solutions to her problem.

23. Four Step Sketch

Creative thinking and visual ideation does not need to be confined to the opening stages of your problem-solving strategies. Exercises that include sketching and prototyping on paper can be effective at the solution finding and development stage of the process, and can be great for keeping a team engaged.

By going from simple notes to a crazy 8s round that involves rapidly sketching 8 variations on their ideas before then producing a final solution sketch, the group is able to iterate quickly and visually. Problem-solving techniques like Four-Step Sketch are great if you have a group of different thinkers and want to change things up from a more textual or discussion-based approach.

Four-Step Sketch #design sprint #innovation #idea generation #remote-friendly The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper, Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

24. 15% Solutions

Some problems are simpler than others and with the right problem-solving activities, you can empower people to take immediate actions that can help create organizational change.

Part of the liberating structures toolkit, 15% solutions is a problem-solving technique that focuses on finding and implementing solutions quickly. A process of iterating and making small changes quickly can help generate momentum and an appetite for solving complex problems.

Problem-solving strategies can live and die on whether people are onboard. Getting some quick wins is a great way of getting people behind the process.

It can be extremely empowering for a team to realize that problem-solving techniques can be deployed quickly and easily and delineate between things they can positively impact and those things they cannot change.

15% Solutions #action #liberating structures #remote-friendly You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference. 15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change. With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.

25. How-Now-Wow Matrix

The problem-solving process is often creative, as complex problems usually require a change of thinking and creative response in order to find the best solutions. While it’s common for the first stages to encourage creative thinking, groups can often gravitate to familiar solutions when it comes to the end of the process.

When selecting solutions, you don’t want to lose your creative energy! The How-Now-Wow Matrix from Gamestorming is a great problem-solving activity that enables a group to stay creative and think out of the box when it comes to selecting the right solution for a given problem.

Problem-solving techniques that encourage creative thinking and the ideation and selection of new solutions can be the most effective in organisational change. Give the How-Now-Wow Matrix a go, and not just for how pleasant it is to say out loud.

How-Now-Wow Matrix #gamestorming #idea generation #remote-friendly When people want to develop new ideas, they most often think out of the box in the brainstorming or divergent phase. However, when it comes to convergence, people often end up picking ideas that are most familiar to them. This is called a ‘creative paradox’ or a ‘creadox’. The How-Now-Wow matrix is an idea selection tool that breaks the creadox by forcing people to weigh each idea on 2 parameters.

26. Impact and Effort Matrix

All problem-solving techniques hope to not only find solutions to a given problem or challenge but to find the best solution. When it comes to finding a solution, groups are invited to put on their decision-making hats and really think about how a proposed idea would work in practice.

The Impact and Effort Matrix is one of the problem-solving techniques that fall into this camp, empowering participants to first generate ideas and then categorize them into a 2×2 matrix based on impact and effort.

Activities that invite critical thinking while remaining simple are invaluable. Use the Impact and Effort Matrix to move from ideation and towards evaluating potential solutions before then committing to them.

Impact and Effort Matrix #gamestorming #decision making #action #remote-friendly In this decision-making exercise, possible actions are mapped based on two factors: effort required to implement and potential impact. Categorizing ideas along these lines is a useful technique in decision making, as it obliges contributors to balance and evaluate suggested actions before committing to them.

27. Dotmocracy

If you’ve followed each of the problem-solving steps with your group successfully, you should move towards the end of your process with heaps of possible solutions developed with a specific problem in mind. But how do you help a group go from ideation to putting a solution into action?

Dotmocracy – or Dot Voting -is a tried and tested method of helping a team in the problem-solving process make decisions and put actions in place with a degree of oversight and consensus.

One of the problem-solving techniques that should be in every facilitator’s toolbox, Dot Voting is fast and effective and can help identify the most popular and best solutions and help bring a group to a decision effectively.

Dotmocracy #action #decision making #group prioritization #hyperisland #remote-friendly Dotmocracy is a simple method for group prioritization or decision-making. It is not an activity on its own, but a method to use in processes where prioritization or decision-making is the aim. The method supports a group to quickly see which options are most popular or relevant. The options or ideas are written on post-its and stuck up on a wall for the whole group to see. Each person votes for the options they think are the strongest, and that information is used to inform a decision.

All facilitators know that warm-ups and icebreakers are useful for any workshop or group process. Problem-solving workshops are no different.

Use these problem-solving techniques to warm up a group and prepare them for the rest of the process. Activating your group by tapping into some of the top problem-solving skills can be one of the best ways to see great outcomes from your session.

Check-in/Check-out
Doodling Together
Show and Tell
Constellations
Draw a Tree

28. Check-in / Check-out

Solid processes are planned from beginning to end, and the best facilitators know that setting the tone and establishing a safe, open environment can be integral to a successful problem-solving process.

Check-in / Check-out is a great way to begin and/or bookend a problem-solving workshop. Checking in to a session emphasizes that everyone will be seen, heard, and expected to contribute.

If you are running a series of meetings, setting a consistent pattern of checking in and checking out can really help your team get into a groove. We recommend this opening-closing activity for small to medium-sized groups though it can work with large groups if they’re disciplined!

Check-in / Check-out #team #opening #closing #hyperisland #remote-friendly Either checking-in or checking-out is a simple way for a team to open or close a process, symbolically and in a collaborative way. Checking-in/out invites each member in a group to be present, seen and heard, and to express a reflection or a feeling. Checking-in emphasizes presence, focus and group commitment; checking-out emphasizes reflection and symbolic closure.

29. Doodling Together

Thinking creatively and not being afraid to make suggestions are important problem-solving skills for any group or team, and warming up by encouraging these behaviors is a great way to start.

Doodling Together is one of our favorite creative ice breaker games – it’s quick, effective, and fun and can make all following problem-solving steps easier by encouraging a group to collaborate visually. By passing cards and adding additional items as they go, the workshop group gets into a groove of co-creation and idea development that is crucial to finding solutions to problems.

Doodling Together #collaboration #creativity #teamwork #fun #team #visual methods #energiser #icebreaker #remote-friendly Create wild, weird and often funny postcards together & establish a group’s creative confidence.

30. Show and Tell

You might remember some version of Show and Tell from being a kid in school and it’s a great problem-solving activity to kick off a session.

Asking participants to prepare a little something before a workshop by bringing an object for show and tell can help them warm up before the session has even begun! Games that include a physical object can also help encourage early engagement before moving onto more big-picture thinking.

By asking your participants to tell stories about why they chose to bring a particular item to the group, you can help teams see things from new perspectives and see both differences and similarities in the way they approach a topic. Great groundwork for approaching a problem-solving process as a team!

Show and Tell #gamestorming #action #opening #meeting facilitation Show and Tell taps into the power of metaphors to reveal players’ underlying assumptions and associations around a topic The aim of the game is to get a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives on anything—a new project, an organizational restructuring, a shift in the company’s vision or team dynamic.

31. Constellations

Who doesn’t love stars? Constellations is a great warm-up activity for any workshop as it gets people up off their feet, energized, and ready to engage in new ways with established topics. It’s also great for showing existing beliefs, biases, and patterns that can come into play as part of your session.

Using warm-up games that help build trust and connection while also allowing for non-verbal responses can be great for easing people into the problem-solving process and encouraging engagement from everyone in the group. Constellations is great in large spaces that allow for movement and is definitely a practical exercise to allow the group to see patterns that are otherwise invisible.

Constellations #trust #connection #opening #coaching #patterns #system Individuals express their response to a statement or idea by standing closer or further from a central object. Used with teams to reveal system, hidden patterns, perspectives.

32. Draw a Tree

Problem-solving games that help raise group awareness through a central, unifying metaphor can be effective ways to warm-up a group in any problem-solving model.

Draw a Tree is a simple warm-up activity you can use in any group and which can provide a quick jolt of energy. Start by asking your participants to draw a tree in just 45 seconds – they can choose whether it will be abstract or realistic.

Once the timer is up, ask the group how many people included the roots of the tree and use this as a means to discuss how we can ignore important parts of any system simply because they are not visible.

All problem-solving strategies are made more effective by thinking of problems critically and by exposing things that may not normally come to light. Warm-up games like Draw a Tree are great in that they quickly demonstrate some key problem-solving skills in an accessible and effective way.

Draw a Tree #thiagi #opening #perspectives #remote-friendly With this game you can raise awarness about being more mindful, and aware of the environment we live in.

Each step of the problem-solving workshop benefits from an intelligent deployment of activities, games, and techniques. Bringing your session to an effective close helps ensure that solutions are followed through on and that you also celebrate what has been achieved.

Here are some problem-solving activities you can use to effectively close a workshop or meeting and ensure the great work you’ve done can continue afterward.

One Breath Feedback
Who What When Matrix
Response Cards

How do I conclude a problem-solving process?

All good things must come to an end. With the bulk of the work done, it can be tempting to conclude your workshop swiftly and without a moment to debrief and align. This can be problematic in that it doesn’t allow your team to fully process the results or reflect on the process.

At the end of an effective session, your team will have gone through a process that, while productive, can be exhausting. It’s important to give your group a moment to take a breath, ensure that they are clear on future actions, and provide short feedback before leaving the space.

The primary purpose of any problem-solving method is to generate solutions and then implement them. Be sure to take the opportunity to ensure everyone is aligned and ready to effectively implement the solutions you produced in the workshop.

Remember that every process can be improved and by giving a short moment to collect feedback in the session, you can further refine your problem-solving methods and see further success in the future too.

33. One Breath Feedback

Maintaining attention and focus during the closing stages of a problem-solving workshop can be tricky and so being concise when giving feedback can be important. It’s easy to incur “death by feedback” should some team members go on for too long sharing their perspectives in a quick feedback round.

One Breath Feedback is a great closing activity for workshops. You give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback on what they’ve done but only in the space of a single breath. This keeps feedback short and to the point and means that everyone is encouraged to provide the most important piece of feedback to them.

One breath feedback #closing #feedback #action This is a feedback round in just one breath that excels in maintaining attention: each participants is able to speak during just one breath … for most people that’s around 20 to 25 seconds … unless of course you’ve been a deep sea diver in which case you’ll be able to do it for longer.

34. Who What When Matrix

Matrices feature as part of many effective problem-solving strategies and with good reason. They are easily recognizable, simple to use, and generate results.

The Who What When Matrix is a great tool to use when closing your problem-solving session by attributing a who, what and when to the actions and solutions you have decided upon. The resulting matrix is a simple, easy-to-follow way of ensuring your team can move forward.

Great solutions can’t be enacted without action and ownership. Your problem-solving process should include a stage for allocating tasks to individuals or teams and creating a realistic timeframe for those solutions to be implemented or checked out. Use this method to keep the solution implementation process clear and simple for all involved.

Who/What/When Matrix #gamestorming #action #project planning With Who/What/When matrix, you can connect people with clear actions they have defined and have committed to.

35. Response cards

Group discussion can comprise the bulk of most problem-solving activities and by the end of the process, you might find that your team is talked out!

Providing a means for your team to give feedback with short written notes can ensure everyone is head and can contribute without the need to stand up and talk. Depending on the needs of the group, giving an alternative can help ensure everyone can contribute to your problem-solving model in the way that makes the most sense for them.

Response Cards is a great way to close a workshop if you are looking for a gentle warm-down and want to get some swift discussion around some of the feedback that is raised.

Response Cards #debriefing #closing #structured sharing #questions and answers #thiagi #action It can be hard to involve everyone during a closing of a session. Some might stay in the background or get unheard because of louder participants. However, with the use of Response Cards, everyone will be involved in providing feedback or clarify questions at the end of a session.

Save time and effort discovering the right solutions

A structured problem solving process is a surefire way of solving tough problems, discovering creative solutions and driving organizational change. But how can you design for successful outcomes?

With SessionLab, it’s easy to design engaging workshops that deliver results. Drag, drop and reorder blocks to build your agenda. When you make changes or update your agenda, your session timing adjusts automatically , saving you time on manual adjustments.

Collaborating with stakeholders or clients? Share your agenda with a single click and collaborate in real-time. No more sending documents back and forth over email.

Explore how to use SessionLab to design effective problem solving workshops or watch this five minute video to see the planner in action!

Over to you

The problem-solving process can often be as complicated and multifaceted as the problems they are set-up to solve. With the right problem-solving techniques and a mix of creative exercises designed to guide discussion and generate purposeful ideas, we hope we’ve given you the tools to find the best solutions as simply and easily as possible.

Is there a problem-solving technique that you are missing here? Do you have a favorite activity or method you use when facilitating? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you!

thank you very much for these excellent techniques

Certainly wonderful article, very detailed. Shared!

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Work Futurist

Senior Quantitative Researcher, People Insights

Principal Writer

How to manage meetings like an expert facilitator

A skilled meeting facilitator can get a group to discuss, debate, and, above all, decide a lot of stuff in not-a-lot of time. Trouble is, most teams don’t have dedicated program managers or agile coaches to step in and fill that role. So as the modern workplace becomes ever-more collaborative, it’s increasingly important for all team members to know how to run effective meetings .

I’ve been facilitating meetings for years, and I’ve had to grabble with quite a few facilitation questions. What if the pace is too fast, or too slow? Is the agenda pitched at the right level? How will the vibe in the room change if I “double-click” on an uncomfortable truth that surfaces? Will I be able to get the inevitable strong personality in the room to button up and listen to their peers? Sheesh. So many x-factors to keep track of!

The good news is that meeting facilitation is simply a skill you have to practice. To help build your chops and conquer your fears, here are some pointers and pro tips that will help you manage your next meeting with confidence.

Bookmark this post so you can review it quickly the next time you’re about to facilitate a meeting.

1. Understand your role as meeting facilitator

Hint: It’s not about you

Me, I’m a classic “talker”. So standing in front of a group to facilitate a meeting isn’t much of a stretch. (In fact, when I was learning how to manage meetings, the hardest part was getting myself to shut up so the rest of the group could speak.)

Being an effective meeting facilitator while simultaneously being a meeting participant is near impossible – you can’t be emcee and performer at the same time. Embrace the facilitator’s role of managing time, encouraging participation, and asking juicy questions. Let the other people in the group be the stars of the show.

2. Create an interactive agenda

Structure your agenda such that there are opportunities for different people to lead parts of the discussion. This lets you sink into the background, observe the group, and focus on driving the group toward that outcome or decision.

As meeting facilitator, it’s a best practice to send a meeting agenda out to all participants before the meeting so they can come prepared. Many folks here at Atlassian will simply pop the agenda into the meeting’s calendar invite.

3. Establish your meeting’s purpose

Every meeting you facilitate needs to have a clear endpoint: an objective to achieve, or a decision to make. Make sure your agenda covers this so participants know why they’re there, and (importantly) what it would take to finish the meeting early.

It’s worth reiterating the objective at the start of the meeting, too. Heck, you could even write it on the whiteboard to serve as guardrails for the discussion – especially if you’re likely to have detractors in the room. If the conversation heads down a rabbit hole or veers off-course, you can get the group back on track by reminding them of the meeting’s purpose.

4. Close your laptop and open your ears

People are far more engaged in discussions when they’re not firing off an email or checking Facebook. So take a hardline approach and ask for all laptops, tablets, and phones to be turned off. The only exception is the meeting’s scribe, who gets a pass to use their device for taking meeting minutes . Don’t start the meeting until everyone is tuned in and ready to contribute.

A laptops-closed/phones-off policy is critical for sessions that revolve around active listening and flat-out, transparent sharing. Can you imagine someone working up the courage to share a dissenting opinion while their teammates pecked away on email? Not so much. For team retrospectives and similar types of meetings , it’s best if the facilitator takes notes so all participants are fully engaged in the discussion.

If someone insists they need to be working on something else during the meeting, then give them permission to leave the room and go do it. They’ll have an easier time of it and produce better work without the distraction of people talking around them anyway.

5. Make space for everyone to contribute

Sometimes there’s a “celebrity” in the room: a strong personality with strong opinions who is highly respected by other people in the group. They can dominate the discussion (usually without intending to), or even disrupt it by advancing their own agenda.

Give them a pen, and ask them to take charge of capturing ideas on the whiteboard. Not only does this intrinsically task them with listening (i.e., creating space for others to speak), you also avoid the scenario where they sit in the back of the room trashing ideas that diverge from their own. No hecklers, please.

If they’re a strong detractor or feel particularly strongly about the session, you’ll be glad you shared the agenda and purpose in advance and gathered their input before the meeting. Help them walk in ready to make a constructive contribution.

6. Facilitate conversation through questions

Many meetings are essentially problem-solving workshops ( 5 Whys , Experience Canvas , Premortem , Empathy Mapping … If you’ve ever checked out the Atlassian Team Playbook , these are probably familiar!). As the meeting facilitator, it’s not your job to have all the answers. It is your job, however, to lead the group to answers. That means posing the right questions at the right time. When done well, pointed questions will challenge assumptions that may be preventing the group from getting to that “ah-ha!” moment.

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Even if you think you have The Answer™, resist the temptation to offer it up. Instead, ask leading questions that guide the group to that answer (it’s more meaningful if they arrive at that conclusion themselves). Here are a few of my favorites that you can customise:

Can you expand on that point?
Is this conversation moving us in the direction we want?
Your last point intrigues me, but it feels counterintuitive – in what context could you see that applying?
How would you summarise that?
What would that look like?
How does that make you feel?
How would you measure success in that instance?

Of course, asking the right questions requires you to bust out your active listening skills. Give the group space to burn through the ideas that come quickly, and pay attention to what they’re saying so you know which questions can get them to think deeper. But generally stay out of the discussion until it stalls out or starts going in circles.

7. Read the room

Tune into the energy of the room and look for visual cues like body language. Are people fidgeting in frustration? Do looks of discontent or disagreement abound? These are signs you need to intervene. It’s ok to gauge sentiment in the room by simply asking people straight-up: Is this resonating? Do we feel comfortable with the progress we’re making?

Bringing focus to the group’s emotional state helps you understand whether they’re engaged or disconnected. And if the group is disconnected, it’s time for you to jump in and lead them down an alternate path.

Pay especially close attention in meetings that tend to be highly emotional like team health checks , goal-setting workshops , and root-cause analysis sessions

Getting your energetic radar calibrated will take time, and you’ll get it wrong once or twice. Being mindful and observant are the first steps.

8. Create a “parking lot” for good ideas that distract

If an idea pops up that is valuable, but off-point, offer to create a “parking lot” and jot it down (usually on the whiteboard or in the meeting notes) so you can come back to it later. Because right now is all about nailing your objective for this meeting.

Knowing their thoughts aren’t lost forever to the aether helps people return their focus to the outcome you’re striving for.

9. Know your audience

If you’re facilitating a problem-solving meeting or a retrospective , be on high alert for people who need to be drawn into the discussion. Consider the personality types amongst your attendees, and try to get everyone to contribute to the discussion evenly (more or less). The quiet people in the group might not be shy, per se. In fact, they might have a lot to say, if given the opportunity. It’s your job as the facilitator to carve out space for them to speak.

A veteran facilitator might even observe people as they enter the room, mentally noting who they sit next to or who they avoid. It’s ok to use your judgment and re-arrange chairs (or who sits where) if that’ll help bring out the best in everyone.

Also, understand who has the final say on whatever decisions you’re making, and use them as a tie-breaker if the group can’t reach a consensus. That person can also come in handy when deciding who owns follow-up items.

8. Get moving to keep the energy up

Stand up, congregate around the whiteboard, and bring some dynamic energy to the room. This isn’t the UN General Assembly, after all. (Unless you actually work at the UN. In which case, good on ya.)

One dead-simple facilitation hack I like is having people write their thoughts on sticky notes, then walk up to the front of the room and post them a whiteboard or butcher’s paper. Once everyone is done posting up ideas, take turns coming up front to present those ideas to the group. Works great in problem-solving or brainstorming-flavored meetings like mindmapping and premortems .

Incidentally, when paired with coffee, a whiteboard is easily the most innovative tool in the knowledge worker’s tool kit. Seriously!

Running meetings and workshops will be clunky at first, and you’ll make some mistakes. That’s ok! You don’t have to be an ace facilitator to save your team weeks’ worth of time spinning their wheels.

Your skills will improve with practice. So you know what’s next, right? Get out there and start practicing! Browse the brainstorming and problem-solving meeting ideas in the Atlassian Team Playbook – our free, no-BS guide to working better together – and schedule a session with your team.

Browse plays in the Team Playbook

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Leader Training at Gordon Training International

Welcome to Gordon Training International

Gti has been helping people all over the world have better relationships at work, at home, and in schools through the gordon model skills., we hope to help you, too.

Seven Best Practices for Problem-Solving Meetings

Oh Ye Gods and Monsters, not another <groan> meeting .

Admit it. You’ve said that. Or some version of it, only NSFW.

manager meeting productive leadership training

In Leader Effectiveness Training , Dr. Thomas Gordon dedicates 28 jam-packed pages to “How to Make Your Management Team Meetings More Effective.” Unsurprisingly, in an environment already using the No-Lose Method of conflict resolution, this approach will build trust and consensus. It’s a surefire basis to make meetings more productive .

Leaders can help ensure the teams they assemble to solve tricky workplace problems function optimally (and maybe even have fun while they’re at it—it’s science! ) by following these guidelines, amalgamated and abstracted from Dr. Gordon’s original 17 guidelines for problem-solving management teams.

Frequency and Duration: While new groups will have to meet more often, and frequency will be dictated by the number and complexity of the problems the group is working on, consistency is key. Meet at the same time on the same day , even if the group leader can’t be there. And never, ever meet for more than two hours at a time. Enforce that limit, because brains fry.
Get the Right People in the Room: The problems a group will be working on should dictate group membership (never more than 15 people; more voices than that become unworkable). Does each member have access to critical data that will be important to solving the problem or represent an organizational group that will be directly affected by the group’s decision? Then they’re in. Also, each member will need to a delegate an alternate with full participatory and decision-making authority should he or she not be able to make it to a meeting.
Agendas and Priorities: The group, not the leader, develops the agenda, either ahead of time or at the beginning of the meeting, with a means for adding items at the last minute if needed. The group prioritizes items at meeting kickoff.
Discussion Ground Rules: Surprise! In a functional autonomous group of adults entrusted with solving important workplace problems, they should also be trusted to come up with their own ground rules. The group leader’s main role is to stay out of the way of productive discussion.
Right Problem/Wrong Problem : The Polish proverb “ Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys ” is as good a guideline as any to help a problem-solving group decide what is an appropriate problem to tackle and what is not. If group members agree a problem affects them and is within their span of authority and scope of responsibility, it’s the right problem. If not, they can and should delegate up, down, or out.
Reaching Consensus : Like a jury, a problem-solving group must strive for unanimous consensus. This means a member with a very strong opinion needs to be willing to let it go when she’s greatly outnumbered; conversely, members without strong feelings should always be willing to go with the majority. And in some cases (highly technical software purchasing decisions, for example), the group should be willing to defer to members with the greatest responsibility for implementation or expertise in the area under consideration.
Follow-up: Agenda items should be marked resolved in one of several ways: Resolved; Delegated (inside or outside the group); Deferred to a future agenda; Removed by the submitter; or Redefined in other terms. Meeting notes should be sent to members as soon as possible after the meeting (record only decisions, task assignments, future agenda items, and follow-up items—not discussion details). Finally, the group itself should set up a mechanism to periodically evaluate its own effectiveness.

And there you have it. A seven-point prescription for more productivity and less pain in meetings. A kind of analgesic, or acupuncture (depending on your painkiller preference) for getting people together and focused on getting stuff done— which, after all, is the purpose for work team meetings in the first place: to collaborate on problems that can’t be solved alone .

Try it. (If you want to read the full 28 pages—well worth your time—get a copy of Leader Effectiveness Training .)

→ Save Your Spot! Our Free Webinar: Reduce org-wide meeting time and increase your productivity. Sign Up now ←

Problem solving meeting agenda template.

A Problem Solving Meeting Agenda Template is a structured guide used to outline key discussion points for solving specific business-related problems efficiently during a meeting.

A Problem Solving meeting agenda is a guideline or roadmap laid out before a meeting that focuses on resolving specific issues or challenges. It typically involves detailing the problem at hand, elucidating its impact and importance, presenting prior attempts to solve it, if any. It should also involve brainstorming and discussing possible solutions, making decisions or recommendations, and defining the next steps or actions to be taken. Proper documentation is vital to keep track of insights and decisions made. Such an agenda aims to facilitate focused and meaningful discussions, encourage idea exchange, ensure all perspectives are considered, and fast-track the decision-making process, ultimately leading to the resolution of the issue in question.

Our Problem Solving Meeting Agenda Template

I. Introduction and Housekeeping (Duration: 10 minutes) A. Opening Remarks: Chair or designated lead B. Ground Rules: Explanation of behavioral expectations C. Agenda Review and Time Allocation: Confirmation of agenda acceptance

II. Problem Overview (Duration: 20 minutes) A. Problem Statement: Clear and detailed description of the problem B. Background Information: Presentation of relevant data or insights C. Impact Analysis: Discussion on potential effects if the problem remains unsolved

III. Problem Analysis (Duration: 30 minutes) A. Root Cause Analysis: Detailed examination of contributing factors B. Impediments and Obstacles: Discussion of limitations and challenges in solving the issue C. Resources and Capabilities: Evaluation of available resources to help address the problem

IV. Idea Generation (Duration: 40 minutes) A. Brainstorming Session: Open-floor discussion for attainable solutions B. Promising Solutions: Identification of the most potential solutions for considerations

V. Decision Making (Duration: 40 minutes) A. Evaluation of Alternatives: Systematic comparison of potential solutions B. Selection Criteria: Developing checklist or scoring system to choose solution C. Decision: Define the best solution based on collected ratings

VI. Developing Plans and Priorities (Duration: 30 minutes) A. Action Plan: Define actionable steps, deadlines, responsibilities for chosen solution B. Contingency Plan: Discuss potential challenges and fallback plans C. Prioritizing Actions: Determine urgency and importance of each step

VII. Summary and Next Steps (Duration: 10 minutes) A. Review of Decisions and Plans: Summarize decisions made and prioritize actions B. Next Steps: Define timeline, responsibilities, and resources allocation C. Conclusion: Chair or meeting lead concludes meeting, appreciation for contribution

VIII. Adjournment

Note: It’s essential to allot time for breaks in-between sections to maintain meeting engagement and efficiency. This sample agenda assumes a 3-hour meeting including two short breaks. The duration for each section may vary depending on the complexity of the problem and the number of participants involved.

How To Plan A Problem Solving Meeting?

To plan a problem solving meeting agenda, first identify the problem and clarify the desired outcome. Then, brainstorm potential solutions with the team and prioritize the most effective ones. Allocate time slots for each agenda item, allowing for discussion and decision-making. Finally, distribute the agenda in advance and keep it focused, ensuring that objectives are achieved.

How To Run A Problem Solving Meeting?

As a leader running a problem-solving meeting, start by clarifying the problem at hand and setting clear goals. Encourage open discussion and active participation from all team members, allowing diverse perspectives. Facilitate brainstorming sessions to generate ideas and consider all possibilities. Encourage critical thinking, collaboration, and consensus-building in order to reach effective solutions. Finally, ensure action plans are developed with assigned responsibilities and deadlines.

How Software Can Help To Manage Meetings Better

Software helps leaders run problem-solving meetings by providing a platform for collaboration and organization. It offers features such as task assignment, real-time communication, and document sharing, allowing team members to work together efficiently. Additionally, software can track progress, set deadlines, and generate reports, ensuring that problem-solving efforts stay focused and productive.

Our Recommendations:

Meeting Management Software : A software that can help you organize your meeting workflow
Meeting Agenda Software : A software that helps you to collaboratively create meeting agendas
Meeting Notes Software : Software that allows you to create notes during meetings

In conclusion, a well-structured problem-solving meeting agenda template plays a crucial role in streamlining discussions, fostering collaboration, and ensuring effective problem resolution within an organization. This robust tool not only aids in clearly outlining the problem at hand, key discussion points, stakeholder roles and expected outcomes, but it also fosters a focused and efficient time-bound conversation. Implementing such a template can dramatically increase a team’s ability to generate innovative solutions, reach consensus faster and bolster overall productivity. Harness the power of a problem-solving meeting agenda template and unlock the door to improved decision-making, better team alignment, and ultimately, a more productive and harmonious work environment.

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Do You Understand the Problem You’re Trying to Solve?

To solve tough problems at work, first ask these questions.

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Problem solving skills are invaluable in any job. But all too often, we jump to find solutions to a problem without taking time to really understand the dilemma we face, according to Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg , an expert in innovation and the author of the book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve .

In this episode, you’ll learn how to reframe tough problems by asking questions that reveal all the factors and assumptions that contribute to the situation. You’ll also learn why searching for just one root cause can be misleading.

Key episode topics include: leadership, decision making and problem solving, power and influence, business management.

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: The Secret to Better Problem Solving (2016)
Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

Problem solving skills are invaluable in any job. But even the most experienced among us can fall into the trap of solving the wrong problem.

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg says that all too often, we jump to find solutions to a problem – without taking time to really understand what we’re facing.

He’s an expert in innovation, and he’s the author of the book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve .

In this episode, you’ll learn how to reframe tough problems, by asking questions that reveal all the factors and assumptions that contribute to the situation. You’ll also learn why searching for one root cause can be misleading. And you’ll learn how to use experimentation and rapid prototyping as problem-solving tools.

This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in December 2016. Here it is.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael.

Problem solving is popular. People put it on their resumes. Managers believe they excel at it. Companies count it as a key proficiency. We solve customers’ problems.

The problem is we often solve the wrong problems. Albert Einstein and Peter Drucker alike have discussed the difficulty of effective diagnosis. There are great frameworks for getting teams to attack true problems, but they’re often hard to do daily and on the fly. That’s where our guest comes in.

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg is a consultant who helps companies and managers reframe their problems so they can come up with an effective solution faster. He asks the question “Are You Solving The Right Problems?” in the January-February 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review. Thomas, thank you so much for coming on the HBR IdeaCast .

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Thanks for inviting me.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, I thought maybe we could start by talking about the problem of talking about problem reframing. What is that exactly?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Basically, when people face a problem, they tend to jump into solution mode to rapidly, and very often that means that they don’t really understand, necessarily, the problem they’re trying to solve. And so, reframing is really a– at heart, it’s a method that helps you avoid that by taking a second to go in and ask two questions, basically saying, first of all, wait. What is the problem we’re trying to solve? And then crucially asking, is there a different way to think about what the problem actually is?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, I feel like so often when this comes up in meetings, you know, someone says that, and maybe they throw out the Einstein quote about you spend an hour of problem solving, you spend 55 minutes to find the problem. And then everyone else in the room kind of gets irritated. So, maybe just give us an example of maybe how this would work in practice in a way that would not, sort of, set people’s teeth on edge, like oh, here Sarah goes again, reframing the whole problem instead of just solving it.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: I mean, you’re bringing up something that’s, I think is crucial, which is to create legitimacy for the method. So, one of the reasons why I put out the article is to give people a tool to say actually, this thing is still important, and we need to do it. But I think the really critical thing in order to make this work in a meeting is actually to learn how to do it fast, because if you have the idea that you need to spend 30 minutes in a meeting delving deeply into the problem, I mean, that’s going to be uphill for most problems. So, the critical thing here is really to try to make it a practice you can implement very, very rapidly.

There’s an example that I would suggest memorizing. This is the example that I use to explain very rapidly what it is. And it’s basically, I call it the slow elevator problem. You imagine that you are the owner of an office building, and that your tenants are complaining that the elevator’s slow.

Now, if you take that problem framing for granted, you’re going to start thinking creatively around how do we make the elevator faster. Do we install a new motor? Do we have to buy a new lift somewhere?

The thing is, though, if you ask people who actually work with facilities management, well, they’re going to have a different solution for you, which is put up a mirror next to the elevator. That’s what happens is, of course, that people go oh, I’m busy. I’m busy. I’m– oh, a mirror. Oh, that’s beautiful.

And then they forget time. What’s interesting about that example is that the idea with a mirror is actually a solution to a different problem than the one you first proposed. And so, the whole idea here is once you get good at using reframing, you can quickly identify other aspects of the problem that might be much better to try to solve than the original one you found. It’s not necessarily that the first one is wrong. It’s just that there might be better problems out there to attack that we can, means we can do things much faster, cheaper, or better.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, in that example, I can understand how A, it’s probably expensive to make the elevator faster, so it’s much cheaper just to put up a mirror. And B, maybe the real problem people are actually feeling, even though they’re not articulating it right, is like, I hate waiting for the elevator. But if you let them sort of fix their hair or check their teeth, they’re suddenly distracted and don’t notice.

But if you have, this is sort of a pedestrian example, but say you have a roommate or a spouse who doesn’t clean up the kitchen. Facing that problem and not having your elegant solution already there to highlight the contrast between the perceived problem and the real problem, how would you take a problem like that and attack it using this method so that you can see what some of the other options might be?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Right. So, I mean, let’s say it’s you who have that problem. I would go in and say, first of all, what would you say the problem is? Like, if you were to describe your view of the problem, what would that be?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: I hate cleaning the kitchen, and I want someone else to clean it up.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: OK. So, my first observation, you know, that somebody else might not necessarily be your spouse. So, already there, there’s an inbuilt assumption in your question around oh, it has to be my husband who does the cleaning. So, it might actually be worth, already there to say, is that really the only problem you have? That you hate cleaning the kitchen, and you want to avoid it? Or might there be something around, as well, getting a better relationship in terms of how you solve problems in general or establishing a better way to handle small problems when dealing with your spouse?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Or maybe, now that I’m thinking that, maybe the problem is that you just can’t find the stuff in the kitchen when you need to find it.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Right, and so that’s an example of a reframing, that actually why is it a problem that the kitchen is not clean? Is it only because you hate the act of cleaning, or does it actually mean that it just takes you a lot longer and gets a lot messier to actually use the kitchen, which is a different problem. The way you describe this problem now, is there anything that’s missing from that description?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That is a really good question.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Other, basically asking other factors that we are not talking about right now, and I say those because people tend to, when given a problem, they tend to delve deeper into the detail. What often is missing is actually an element outside of the initial description of the problem that might be really relevant to what’s going on. Like, why does the kitchen get messy in the first place? Is it something about the way you use it or your cooking habits? Is it because the neighbor’s kids, kind of, use it all the time?

There might, very often, there might be issues that you’re not really thinking about when you first describe the problem that actually has a big effect on it.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: I think at this point it would be helpful to maybe get another business example, and I’m wondering if you could tell us the story of the dog adoption problem.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Yeah. This is a big problem in the US. If you work in the shelter industry, basically because dogs are so popular, more than 3 million dogs every year enter a shelter, and currently only about half of those actually find a new home and get adopted. And so, this is a problem that has persisted. It’s been, like, a structural problem for decades in this space. In the last three years, where people found new ways to address it.

So a woman called Lori Weise who runs a rescue organization in South LA, and she actually went in and challenged the very idea of what we were trying to do. She said, no, no. The problem we’re trying to solve is not about how to get more people to adopt dogs. It is about keeping the dogs with their first family so they never enter the shelter system in the first place.

In 2013, she started what’s called a Shelter Intervention Program that basically works like this. If a family comes and wants to hand over their dog, these are called owner surrenders. It’s about 30% of all dogs that come into a shelter. All they would do is go up and ask, if you could, would you like to keep your animal? And if they said yes, they would try to fix whatever helped them fix the problem, but that made them turn over this.

And sometimes that might be that they moved into a new building. The landlord required a deposit, and they simply didn’t have the money to put down a deposit. Or the dog might need a $10 rabies shot, but they didn’t know how to get access to a vet.

And so, by instigating that program, just in the first year, she took her, basically the amount of dollars they spent per animal they helped went from something like $85 down to around $60. Just an immediate impact, and her program now is being rolled out, is being supported by the ASPCA, which is one of the big animal welfare stations, and it’s being rolled out to various other places.

And I think what really struck me with that example was this was not dependent on having the internet. This was not, oh, we needed to have everybody mobile before we could come up with this. This, conceivably, we could have done 20 years ago. Only, it only happened when somebody, like in this case Lori, went in and actually rethought what the problem they were trying to solve was in the first place.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, what I also think is so interesting about that example is that when you talk about it, it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would have been thought of through other kinds of problem solving methods. There wasn’t necessarily an After Action Review or a 5 Whys exercise or a Six Sigma type intervention. I don’t want to throw those other methods under the bus, but how can you get such powerful results with such a very simple way of thinking about something?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: That was something that struck me as well. This, in a way, reframing and the idea of the problem diagnosis is important is something we’ve known for a long, long time. And we’ve actually have built some tools to help out. If you worked with us professionally, you are familiar with, like, Six Sigma, TRIZ, and so on. You mentioned 5 Whys. A root cause analysis is another one that a lot of people are familiar with.

Those are our good tools, and they’re definitely better than nothing. But what I notice when I work with the companies applying those was those tools tend to make you dig deeper into the first understanding of the problem we have. If it’s the elevator example, people start asking, well, is that the cable strength, or is the capacity of the elevator? That they kind of get caught by the details.

That, in a way, is a bad way to work on problems because it really assumes that there’s like a, you can almost hear it, a root cause. That you have to dig down and find the one true problem, and everything else was just symptoms. That’s a bad way to think about problems because problems tend to be multicausal.

There tend to be lots of causes or levers you can potentially press to address a problem. And if you think there’s only one, if that’s the right problem, that’s actually a dangerous way. And so I think that’s why, that this is a method I’ve worked with over the last five years, trying to basically refine how to make people better at this, and the key tends to be this thing about shifting out and saying, is there a totally different way of thinking about the problem versus getting too caught up in the mechanistic details of what happens.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What about experimentation? Because that’s another method that’s become really popular with the rise of Lean Startup and lots of other innovation methodologies. Why wouldn’t it have worked to, say, experiment with many different types of fixing the dog adoption problem, and then just pick the one that works the best?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: You could say in the dog space, that’s what’s been going on. I mean, there is, in this industry and a lot of, it’s largely volunteer driven. People have experimented, and they found different ways of trying to cope. And that has definitely made the problem better. So, I wouldn’t say that experimentation is bad, quite the contrary. Rapid prototyping, quickly putting something out into the world and learning from it, that’s a fantastic way to learn more and to move forward.

My point is, though, that I feel we’ve come to rely too much on that. There’s like, if you look at the start up space, the wisdom is now just to put something quickly into the market, and then if it doesn’t work, pivot and just do more stuff. What reframing really is, I think of it as the cognitive counterpoint to prototyping. So, this is really a way of seeing very quickly, like not just working on the solution, but also working on our understanding of the problem and trying to see is there a different way to think about that.

If you only stick with experimentation, again, you tend to sometimes stay too much in the same space trying minute variations of something instead of taking a step back and saying, wait a minute. What is this telling us about what the real issue is?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, to go back to something that we touched on earlier, when we were talking about the completely hypothetical example of a spouse who does not clean the kitchen–

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Completely, completely hypothetical.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Yes. For the record, my husband is a great kitchen cleaner.

You started asking me some questions that I could see immediately were helping me rethink that problem. Is that kind of the key, just having a checklist of questions to ask yourself? How do you really start to put this into practice?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: I think there are two steps in that. The first one is just to make yourself better at the method. Yes, you should kind of work with a checklist. In the article, I kind of outlined seven practices that you can use to do this.

But importantly, I would say you have to consider that as, basically, a set of training wheels. I think there’s a big, big danger in getting caught in a checklist. This is something I work with.

My co-author Paddy Miller, it’s one of his insights. That if you start giving people a checklist for things like this, they start following it. And that’s actually a problem, because what you really want them to do is start challenging their thinking.

So the way to handle this is to get some practice using it. Do use the checklist initially, but then try to step away from it and try to see if you can organically make– it’s almost a habit of mind. When you run into a colleague in the hallway and she has a problem and you have five minutes, like, delving in and just starting asking some of those questions and using your intuition to say, wait, how is she talking about this problem? And is there a question or two I can ask her about the problem that can help her rethink it?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, that is also just a very different approach, because I think in that situation, most of us can’t go 30 seconds without jumping in and offering solutions.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Very true. The drive toward solutions is very strong. And to be clear, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that if the solutions work. So, many problems are just solved by oh, you know, oh, here’s the way to do that. Great.

But this is really a powerful method for those problems where either it’s something we’ve been banging our heads against tons of times without making progress, or when you need to come up with a really creative solution. When you’re facing a competitor with a much bigger budget, and you know, if you solve the same problem later, you’re not going to win. So, that basic idea of taking that approach to problems can often help you move forward in a different way than just like, oh, I have a solution.

I would say there’s also, there’s some interesting psychological stuff going on, right? Where you may have tried this, but if somebody tries to serve up a solution to a problem I have, I’m often resistant towards them. Kind if like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That solution is not going to work in my world. Whereas if you get them to discuss and analyze what the problem really is, you might actually dig something up.

Let’s go back to the kitchen example. One powerful question is just to say, what’s your own part in creating this problem? It’s very often, like, people, they describe problems as if it’s something that’s inflicted upon them from the external world, and they are innocent bystanders in that.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Right, or crazy customers with unreasonable demands.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Exactly, right. I don’t think I’ve ever met an agency or consultancy that didn’t, like, gossip about their customers. Oh, my god, they’re horrible. That, you know, classic thing, why don’t they want to take more risk? Well, risk is bad.

It’s their business that’s on the line, not the consultancy’s, right? So, absolutely, that’s one of the things when you step into a different mindset and kind of, wait. Oh yeah, maybe I actually am part of creating this problem in a sense, as well. That tends to open some new doors for you to move forward, in a way, with stuff that you may have been struggling with for years.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, we’ve surfaced a couple of questions that are useful. I’m curious to know, what are some of the other questions that you find yourself asking in these situations, given that you have made this sort of mental habit that you do? What are the questions that people seem to find really useful?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: One easy one is just to ask if there are any positive exceptions to the problem. So, was there day where your kitchen was actually spotlessly clean? And then asking, what was different about that day? Like, what happened there that didn’t happen the other days? That can very often point people towards a factor that they hadn’t considered previously.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: We got take-out.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: S,o that is your solution. Take-out from [INAUDIBLE]. That might have other problems.

Another good question, and this is a little bit more high level. It’s actually more making an observation about labeling how that person thinks about the problem. And what I mean with that is, we have problem categories in our head. So, if I say, let’s say that you describe a problem to me and say, well, we have a really great product and are, it’s much better than our previous product, but people aren’t buying it. I think we need to put more marketing dollars into this.

Now you can go in and say, that’s interesting. This sounds like you’re thinking of this as a communications problem. Is there a different way of thinking about that? Because you can almost tell how, when the second you say communications, there are some ideas about how do you solve a communications problem. Typically with more communication.

And what you might do is go in and suggest, well, have you considered that it might be, say, an incentive problem? Are there incentives on behalf of the purchasing manager at your clients that are obstructing you? Might there be incentive issues with your own sales force that makes them want to sell the old product instead of the new one?

So literally, just identifying what type of problem does this person think about, and is there different potential way of thinking about it? Might it be an emotional problem, a timing problem, an expectations management problem? Thinking about what label of what type of problem that person is kind of thinking as it of.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s really interesting, too, because I think so many of us get requests for advice that we’re really not qualified to give. So, maybe the next time that happens, instead of muddying my way through, I will just ask some of those questions that we talked about instead.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: That sounds like a good idea.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, Thomas, this has really helped me reframe the way I think about a couple of problems in my own life, and I’m just wondering. I know you do this professionally, but is there a problem in your life that thinking this way has helped you solve?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: I’ve, of course, I’ve been swallowing my own medicine on this, too, and I think I have, well, maybe two different examples, and in one case somebody else did the reframing for me. But in one case, when I was younger, I often kind of struggled a little bit. I mean, this is my teenage years, kind of hanging out with my parents. I thought they were pretty annoying people. That’s not really fair, because they’re quite wonderful, but that’s what life is when you’re a teenager.

And one of the things that struck me, suddenly, and this was kind of the positive exception was, there was actually an evening where we really had a good time, and there wasn’t a conflict. And the core thing was, I wasn’t just seeing them in their old house where I grew up. It was, actually, we were at a restaurant. And it suddenly struck me that so much of the sometimes, kind of, a little bit, you love them but they’re annoying kind of dynamic, is tied to the place, is tied to the setting you are in.

And of course, if– you know, I live abroad now, if I visit my parents and I stay in my old bedroom, you know, my mother comes in and wants to wake me up in the morning. Stuff like that, right? And it just struck me so, so clearly that it’s– when I change this setting, if I go out and have dinner with them at a different place, that the dynamic, just that dynamic disappears.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, Thomas, this has been really, really helpful. Thank you for talking with me today.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Thank you, Sarah.

HANNAH BATES: That was Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg in conversation with Sarah Green Carmichael on the HBR IdeaCast. He’s an expert in problem solving and innovation, and he’s the author of the book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from the Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

We’re a production of Harvard Business Review. If you want more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos like this, find it all at HBR dot org.

This episode was produced by Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Adi Ignatius, Karen Player, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener.

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Future product development tasks can’t be predetermined. Distribute planning and control to those who can understand and react to the end results. —Michael Kennedy, Product Development for the Lean Enterprise 1 There is no magic in SAFe . . . except maybe for PI Planning. —Authors

PI Planning

Introduction to pi planning: a quick overview.

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PI Planning is a cadence-based event for the entire ART that aligns teams and stakeholders to a shared mission and vision.

PI planning is essential to SAFe: If you are not doing it, you are not doing SAFe.

The Agile Manifesto states, “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is a face-to-face conversation.” SAFe takes this to the next level with PI planning.

Where possible, everyone is face-to-face (virtually or physically), and these large-scale PI planning events now occur within many enterprises worldwide. They have clearly shown real financial ROI, not to mention the intangibles that happen when the team of Agile teams creates a social construct that is personally and collectively rewarding.

It may not always be practical for the entire Agile Release Train (ART) to collocate; however, in our current times, COVID-19 has created a situation where this isn’t an option. While physical face-to-face planning has benefits, the unwritten SAFe ‘rule’ is that the people who do the work plan the work. Real-time, concurrent, virtual, face-to-face planning has now proven effective when physical presence is not possible. Indeed many ARTs have been flourishing in creating a hybrid situation where several teams join remotely, as shown below in Figure 1.

The advanced topic article, Distributed PI Planning with SAFe , provides additional guidance and considerations for successfully managing these scenarios.

Figure 1. Face-to-face PI planning. Remote teams are planning at the same time using video conferencing.

PI Planning has a standard agenda that includes a presentation of business context and vision , followed by team planning breakouts—where the teams create their Iteration plans and objectives for the upcoming PI . Facilitated by the Release Train Engineer (RTE) , this event includes all members of the ART and occurs within the Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration . Holding the event during the IP iteration avoids affecting the scheduling or capacity of other iterations in the PI. PI Planning takes two days, although the ART can extend this timebox to accommodate planning across multiple time zones.

Business Benefits of PI Planning

PI planning delivers many business benefits, including:

Establishing face-to-face communication among all team members and stakeholders
Building the social network the ART depends upon
Aligning development to business goals with the business context, vision, and Team and ART PI objectives
Identifying dependencies and fostering cross-team and cross-ART collaboration
Providing the opportunity for just the right amount of architecture and Lean User Experience (UX) guidance
Matching demand to capacity and eliminating excess Work in Process (WIP)
Fast decision-making

Inputs and Outputs of PI Planning

Inputs to PI planning include:

Business context (see ‘content readiness’ below)
Roadmap and vision
Highest priority Features of the ART Backlog

A successful PI planning event delivers two primary outputs:

Committed PI objectives – Each team creates a set of SMART objectives with the business value assigned by the Business Owners.
ART planning board – Highlighting the new feature delivery dates, feature dependencies among teams, and relevant milestones

Preparation

PI planning is a significant event that requires preparation, coordination, and communication. It is facilitated by the RTE and event attendees, including Business Owners , Product Management , Agile Teams , System and Solution Architects , the System Team , and other stakeholders. The RTE must schedule all PI planning in advance to be well prepared. The active participation of Business Owners in this event provides an essential Guardrail on budgetary spending.

For the event to be successful, preparation is required in three major areas:

Organizational readiness
Content readiness
Logistics readiness

The following sections describe these three areas.

Organizational Readiness

Before PI planning, there must be strategy alignment among participants, stakeholders, and Business Owners. Critical roles are assigned. To address this in advance, however, event organizers must consider the following:

Planning scope and context – Is the planning process’s scope (product, system, technology domain) understood? Do we know which teams need to plan together?
Business alignment – Is there reasonable agreement on priorities among the Business Owners?
Agile teams – Do we have Agile teams? Are there dedicated team members and an identified Scrum Master/Team Coach and Product Owner for each team?

Content Readiness

It’s equally important to have a clear vision and context so that the right stakeholders can participate. Therefore, the PI planning must include the following:

Executive briefing – A briefing that defines the current business context
Product vision briefing(s) – Briefings prepared by Product Management, including the top 10 features in the ART Backlog
Architecture vision briefing – A presentation made by the CTO, Enterprise Architect , or System Architect to communicate new Enablers , features, and Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs)

Logistics Readiness

Preparing an event to support a large number of attendees isn’t trivial. This prep can include securing and preparing the space for physically collocated planning. For remote attendees or a fully distributed PI Planning, this also includes investment in the necessary technical infrastructure. Considerations include:

Locations – Each location where planning takes place needs preparation in advance.
Technology and tooling – Real-time access to information and tooling to support distributed planning or remote attendees
Communication channels – Primary and secondary audio, video, and presentation channels must be available

Standard Agenda

The event follows an agenda similar to Figure 2. Descriptions of each item follow. For guidance on adapting this agenda to support planning across multiple time zones, refer to the advanced topic article, Distributed PI Planning with SAFe .

Day 1 Agenda

Business context – A Business Owner or senior executive describes the current state of the business, shares the Portfolio Vision , and presents a perspective on how effectively existing solutions address current customer needs.
Product/solution vision – Product Management presents the current vision (typically represented by the top ten or so upcoming features). They highlight changes from the previous PI planning event and any relevant milestones.
Architecture vision and development practices – The System Architect presents the architecture vision. Also, a senior development manager may introduce Agile-supportive changes to development practices, such as test automation, DevOps , Continuous Integration , and Continuous Deployment , which the teams will adopt in the upcoming PI.
Planning context and lunch – The RTE presents the planning process and expected outcomes.
Team breakouts #1 – In the breakout, teams estimate their capacity for each Iteration and identify the backlog items they will likely need to realize the features. Each team creates draft plans, visible to all, iteration by iteration.

During this process, teams identify risks and dependencies and draft their initial team PI objectives. The PI objectives typically include ‘uncommitted objectives,’ which are goals built into the plan (for example, stories that have been defined and included for these objectives) but are not committed to by the team because of too many unknowns or risks. Uncommitted objectives are not extra things to do in case there is time. Instead, they increase the reliability of the plan and give management an early warning of any objectives that the ART may not be able to deliver. The teams also add the features and associated dependencies to the ART Planning Board, as shown in Figure 3.

Draft plan review – During the tightly timeboxed draft plan review, teams present key planning outputs, which include capacity and load, draft PI objectives, potential risks, and dependencies. Business Owners, Product Management, and other teams and stakeholders review and provide input.
Management review and problem-solving – Draft plans likely present challenges like scope, people and resource constraints, and dependencies. During the problem-solving meeting, management may negotiate scope changes and resolve other problems by agreeing to various planning adjustments. The RTE facilitates and keeps the primary stakeholders together for as long as necessary to make the decisions needed to reach achievable objectives.

Solution Trains often hold an additional management review and problem-solving workshop after the first day of planning to address cross-ART issues. Alternatively, the RTEs of the involved trains may talk with each other to discuss the problems for the ART’s specific management review and problem-solving meeting. The Solution Train Engineer (STE) helps facilitate and resolve issues across the ARTs.

Day 2 Agenda

Planning adjustments – The next day, the event begins with management presenting changes to the planning scope, people, and resources.
Team breakouts #2 – Teams continue planning and making the appropriate adjustments. They finalize their objectives for the PI, to which the Business Owners assign business value, as shown in Figure 4.
Final plan review and lunch – All teams present their plans to the group during this session. At the end of each team’s time slot, the team states its risks and impediments and provides the risks to the RTE for use later in the ROAMing exercise. The team then asks the Business Owners if the plan is acceptable. If the plan is accepted, the team brings their team PI objective sheet to the front of the room so everyone can see the aggregate objectives unfold in real-time. If the Business Owners have concerns, teams can adjust the plan to address the identified issues. The team then presents its revised plan.
Resolved – The teams agree that the risk is no longer a concern
Owned – Someone on the train owns the risk since it cannot be addressed during PI planning
Accepted – Some items are simply facts or potential problems that must be understood and accepted
Mitigated – Teams identify a plan to reduce the impact of the risk
Confidence vote – Once ART PI Risks have been addressed, teams vote on their confidence in meeting their team PI objectives

Each team conducts a vote using their fingers (fist of five) or a digital tool for remote events. If the average is three fingers or above, then management should accept the commitment. If it’s less than three, the team reworks its plan. Anyone voting two fingers or fewer should be allowed to voice their concerns. These concerns might add to the risk list, require replanning, or provide information. Once each team has voted, it’s repeated for the entire ART, with everyone expressing their confidence in the collective plan, as illustrated in Figure 5.

Plan rework – If necessary, teams adjust their objectives until they have high confidence. This additional planning is one occasion where alignment and commitment are valued more highly than adhering to a timebox.
Planning retrospective and moving forward – Finally, the RTE leads a brief retrospective for the PI planning event to capture what went well, what didn’t, and what to do better next time, as shown in Figure 6.

Cleaning up the rooms used for planning (if applicable)
Entering the team PI objectives and stories in Agile lifecycle management (ALM) tooling
Reviewing team and ART events calendars
Determining Iteration Planning and Team Sync locations and timing

After the planning event, the RTE and other ART stakeholders summarize the individual team PI objectives into a set of ART PI objectives (Figure 7) and use this to communicate externally and track progress toward the goals.

Product Management uses the ART PI objectives to refine the roadmap, improving the forecast for the following two PIs.

The ART Planning board is often used during the Coach Sync to track dependencies. It may or may not be maintained (manually) after planning is complete. A digital tool for managing dependencies facilitates their follow-up.

Teams leave the PI planning event with a prepopulated backlog for the upcoming PI. They take their team’s PI objectives, plans, and risks to their regular work area. ART risks remain with the RTE, which ensures that the people responsible for owning or mitigating a risk have captured the information and are actively managing the risk.

Most importantly, the ART executes the PI, tracking progress and adjusting as necessary as new knowledge emerges. Execution of the PI begins with all the teams conducting planning for the first iteration, using their PI plans as a starting point. It offers fresh input for the iteration planning processes that follow. Since the plans created during PI Planning did not consider detailed story-level acceptance criteria, the team will likely adjust the first and subsequent iteration plans.

Solution Train PI Planning

This article focuses on the planning activities of a single ART. However, large Value Streams may contain multiple ARTs and suppliers. In this case, the Solution Train provides coordination using Pre-Plan and Coordinate and Deliver activities.

[1] Knaster, Richard, and Dean Leffingwell. SAFe 5.0 Distilled, Achieving Business Agility with the Scaled Agile Framework . Addison-Wesley, 2020.

[2] Kennedy, Michael. Product Development for the Lean Enterprise. Oaklea Press, 2003 .

Last update: March 19, 2023

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A Blueprint for Meeting Society’s Impact Challenge

Organizations, policymakers, and communities expect business schools to produce graduates who can help design feasible solutions to complex societal challenges.
To become capable problem-solvers, students must be put to work solving personally relevant real-world issues in collaboration with key stakeholders in the community.
With this in mind, Suffolk University has developed a pedagogical framework for delivering immersive hands-on learning that shows students the impact of their contributions and inspires them to make the world a better place.

Society faces ever-increasing existential challenges that demand resilience, innovation, flexibility, and creativity. Rooted in incredible social complexity and global interdependencies, these “wicked problems” are substantial, pervasive, and difficult to solve.

Our graduates will be expected to have the skills necessary to help organizations deliver critical solutions. That means that quality business education must be both experiential and dedicated to making the world a better place. At the same time, however, we have seen an ongoing disconnect between business school curricula and the real-world need for student engagement, student employability, and community impact.

In 2023, we addressed this disconnect by creating and implementing the IMMERSE Blueprint at the Sawyer Business School (SBS) at Suffolk University in Boston. In this framework, IMMERSE stands for learning experiences that are integrative, multisensory, motivational, emotional, relevant, synergistic, and experiential . Guided by this framework, we design our courses to allow students to conduct collaborative research, engage in design thinking, delve into public policy, and tap into other capabilities so that they can define and synthesize the goals, interests, and concerns of multiple stakeholders.

The IMMERSE Blueprint is supported by our school’s curricula that leverages the capabilities of nonprofit, social, public, and private sectors. As we expose students to the realities of all four sectors, we teach them to apply mindful problem-solving strategies to complex challenges. Over the long term, we want the conributions of our graduates to mitigate the negative consequences that society now faces.

Expanding on Experiential Education

Immersive education expands on traditional experiential pedagogy first explored in a 1975 paper by David Kolb and Ronald Fry. Since then, educators have developed strategies that extend beyond Kolb and Fry’s theory, deploying learner-centric modalities that capture students’ attention, stimulate their senses, and foster their active participation in meaningful problem-solving.

As we expose students to the realities of the nonprofit, social, public, and private sectors, we teach them to apply mindful problem-solving strategies to complex challenges .

Quality immersions connect students emotionally to real-world experiences through the contextualization of issues and personal reflections on their learning and contributions. Effective experiential education also supports active and participatory learning through immersive media, including simulations , augmented reality , and virtual reality . Since immersive learning is such a versatile approach, learners can quickly acquire new skills at any stage of technological or social innovation.

The Building Blocks of Immersive Education

The IMMERSE Blueprint synthesizes best practices and research related to innovative pedagogy, faculty and student engagement, and partnerships. It provides a systematic and cohesive framework for implementing immersion-based pedagogy for all graduate and undergraduate SBS students.

The acronym IMMERSE integrates the seven critical characteristics mentioned above, with a goal attached to each, into a common framework:

We now use this framework as a guide to help us design and deliver impactful pedagogies via all types of learning modalities. Our faculty also use these characteristics to evaluate how immersive their teaching strategies are.

This blueprint challenges professors to reframe their teaching styles—to evolve from merely sharing information to creating opportunities for students to deeply experience content. Although not every class will incorporate every element of IMMERSE, our faculty’s ultimate teaching goal is to expose students to as many of the framework’s characteristics as possible throughout their journeys at SBS.

Supporting the Blueprint

We engage in a range of activities to support educators as they incorporate IMMERSE into their teaching. For example:

We deliver extensive faculty information and training sessions on topics such as “How to Debrief Immersive Learning.”
We award IMMERSE-dedicated teaching grants.
We support a growing cross-disciplinary faculty learning community.
We publish a newsletter sharing best practices.
We track implementation and best practices through surveys and other tools.

SBS also continues to build additional infrastructure needed to support IMMERSE throughout our curriculum. This effort includes:

The planned formation of a representative SBS working group.
The continued development of enhanced immersive courses—including the recent reframing of our foundational undergraduate course from a simple review of business topics to a dynamic, integrated, case-based, and client-focused challenge.
Expanded data collection that tracks IMMERSE-related pedagogy implementation, student competency-based learning outcomes, relevant assurance of learning (AoL) policies, and feedback from clients that supply projects to our students.

For instance, we are tracking the relevant learning outcomes of our MBA students, who currently form teams to work on six to 10 real client projects throughout their programs. Based on the data we have collected so far, we have concluded that 97.5 percent of our MBA students meet or exceed AoL expectations for analytic thinking related to IMMERSE criteria.

Examples of Teaching Strategies

In the fall of 2023, we delivered the inaugural version of “Tackling Wicked Global Problems,” our new signature required course for all SBS undergraduates. In the semesterlong course, sophomores take on a single wicked problem project involving multiple external clients and stakeholders. They evaluate the issues and associated challenges, before developing creative solutions. Students will apply the skills they build during this course in their subsequent classes.

The course uses systems thinking as a theoretical lens and supplements this framing with a variety of pedagogical approaches and group activities. In this way, the course helps students gain a fuller perspective on the nature of wicked challenges, enhances their appreciation of the stakeholder interests involved in these challenges, and inspires them to iterate plausible solutions.

“Tackling Wicked Global Problems” follows our framework in the following ways:

After the course’s first run, student feedback was both positive and insightful. One student described the coursework as “a big adjustment to try and tackle a wicked problem and be part of a solution.” Another pointed to the “perspective change [that occurs] when you realize that there isn’t a perfect solution, and there are tradeoffs.”

We found the feedback of another student especially heartening in light of what we want to accomplish through the IMMERSE approach. The student wrote that the new offering was the “best course I have taken to show business is exciting and can solve societal problems.”

Understanding Industry Clusters

SBS has multiple graduate programs in business, analytics, healthcare, and public administration that incorporate immersive learning across their curricula. These include course-based consulting work, capstone classes, simulation-based activities, global travel seminars, and other hands-on learning opportunities.

As we continue to refine the principles embedded in this framework, we know that we can close the relevancy gap between business curricula and the world’s need for real-life impact.

For example, all first-year MBA students enroll in “Understanding World Class Clusters” (WCC), where they learn about economic clusters. During each WCC course, students form teams that analyze challenges facing one of Boston’s four main clusters, which center on the industries of healthcare, biotechnology, technology, and finance.

Student teams receive individual coaching from professors and sponsoring organizations, as they conduct research, deliver recommendations, and coordinate intermediate results with their sponsors. In WCC, our teaching framework is deployed in the following way:

The Value of Immersive Learning Principles

The IMMERSE Blueprint addresses concerns that employers, students, the community, and other societal stakeholders have about whether higher education is truly creating a pipeline of talent capable of tackling tough questions. As we continue to refine the principles embedded in this framework, we know that we can close the relevancy gap between business curricula and the world’s need for real-life impact.

When we deliver hands-on, meaningful immersive education throughout the curriculum, we enhance our students’ analytical and critical competencies, all while equipping them with the life skills and resilience they will need to achieve their personal goals. Most important, we show them firsthand how much positive impact they can have if they apply their newfound skills to society’s complex existential challenges.

collaboration
design thinking
experiential learning
learner engagement
societal impact

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COMMENTS

How to Run a Problem-Solving Meeting
Problem-solving meetings are beneficial for any employee, with any size of issue. Whether there's a one-off problem that just needs a bit of brainstorming time for a solution, or a troublesome employee causing recurring issues, the basics of the problem-solving meeting still apply. It's a useful approach for any case scenario where ...
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Problem Solving Meetings are oriented around solving either a specific or general problem, and are perhaps the most complex and varied type of meetings. Whether the meeting is addressing an identified problem, or it is focusing on creating strategies and plans to navigate the future, there are a rich arsenal of group processes that can be used. ...
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A problem-solving meeting agenda is a structured plan outlining the topics and objectives to be discussed and resolved during a meeting specifically focused on finding solutions to identified problems or challenges. It typically includes items such as problem description, analysis, possible causes, potential solutions, decision-making, action ...
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A problem-solving meeting agenda is a blueprint for conducting a systematic discussion with the goal of identifying, analyzing, and resolving issues or challenges faced by a team, organization, or project. It typically includes items such as defining the problem, gathering relevant information, brainstorming potential solutions, evaluating ...
Solving the Problem with Problem-Solving Meetings
Facilitating productive problem-solving meetings can be challenging. You want to foster an open dialogue and gain buy-in while working toward an ideal solution. To do this effectively, it helps to understand one very important aspect of human nature: how we reason. A Tool for Better Group Reasoning
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A problem-solving meeting is a collaborative session where individuals or a team come together to identify, analyze, and find solutions to specific challenges or issues faced by a company or organization. The purpose of such a meeting is to brainstorm ideas, gather insights from diverse perspectives, discuss possible solutions, and ultimately ...
Problem Solving Meeting Agenda: 4 Effective Steps to Conduct a Problem
4-Step Process for a Problem Solving Meeting Agenda with This Problem-Solving Session Template (or Agenda). Step One: List and brainstorm every potential cause for the problem or challenge. We want to make sure that we solve any structural issues first. These might be open sales positions, known bugs in the software, issues with a supplier ...
What is a Problem Solving Meeting?
Teams use Problem Solving Meetings to analyze a situation and its causes, assess what direction to take, then create an action plan to resolve the problem. You can find an introduction to Problem Solving Meetings in Chapter 25 of our book, Where the Action Is . You may also want to visit the Learn More link, below, for resources to help you ...
How to Run Productive and Inclusive Problem-Solving Meetings
Follow up on the actions. The final step of running a problem-solving meeting is to follow up on the actions that you agreed on during the meeting. You should assign clear roles and ...
A Complete Guide: Planning a Problem Solving Meeting
The goal of a problem solving meeting is to discuss solutions to a problem only after all participants fully agree on the definition of that problem. Everyone attending the meeting should be a part of a group responsible for identifying and correcting the problem. In a decision making meeting, the group is already presented with a solution (s ...
How to Run an Urgent Problem Solving Meeting
1. Situation Report. Ideally, everyone will read the data about the problem before the meeting. Use this first agenda item to ask and answer questions, and make sure everyone fully understands the situation. Ask everyone to wait to share ideas about solutions for the moment; focus solely on understanding the problem. 2.
35 problem-solving techniques and methods for solving complex problems
SWOT analysis #gamestorming #problem solving #action #meeting facilitation . The SWOT Analysis is a long-standing technique of looking at what we have, with respect to the desired end state, as well as what we could improve on. It gives us an opportunity to gauge approaching opportunities and dangers, and assess the seriousness of the ...
How to manage meetings like an expert facilitator
Many meetings are essentially problem-solving workshops (5 Whys, Experience Canvas, Premortem, Empathy Mapping… If you've ever checked out the Atlassian Team Playbook, these are probably familiar!). As the meeting facilitator, it's not your job to have all the answers. It is your job, however, to lead the group to answers. That means ...
Seven Best Practices for Problem-Solving Meetings
Meet at the same time on the same day, even if the group leader can't be there. And never, ever meet for more than two hours at a time. Enforce that limit, because brains fry. Get the Right People in the Room: The problems a group will be working on should dictate group membership (never more than 15 people; more voices than that become ...
The Secret Sauce In The Best Problem-Solving Meetings
Problem-solving, joint sense-making, or curated co-creation. The Secret Sauce. 1. Keep focus on helping someone outside the meeting. Pick your cliché, analogy or song. "The enemy of my enemy is ...
How to Start a Problem Solving Meeting
As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, I have had the opportunity to facilitate hundreds of team problem-solving meetings. When I began my journey as a meeting facilitator, I started like most folks. I understood the importance of having an agenda and a focus for my meeting. My techniques mostly worked, and no one on my teams complained.
Problem Solving Meeting Agenda Template • MeetingFever
A Problem Solving meeting agenda is a guideline or roadmap laid out before a meeting that focuses on resolving specific issues or challenges. It typically involves detailing the problem at hand, elucidating its impact and importance, presenting prior attempts to solve it, if any. It should also involve brainstorming and discussing possible ...
Do You Understand the Problem You're Trying to Solve?
Problem solving skills are invaluable in any job. ... because if you have the idea that you need to spend 30 minutes in a meeting delving deeply into the problem, I mean, that's going to be ...
PI Planning
Management review and problem-solving - Draft plans likely present challenges like scope, people and resource constraints, and dependencies. During the problem-solving meeting, management may negotiate scope changes and resolve other problems by agreeing to various planning adjustments. The RTE facilitates and keeps the primary stakeholders ...
A Blueprint for Meeting Society's Impact Challenge
A Blueprint for Meeting Society's Impact Challenge. The world faces existential challenges. That's why we must design immersive educational experiences in which students learn to solve wicked problems. Organizations, policymakers, and communities expect business schools to produce graduates who can help design feasible solutions to complex ...
There must be a solution to Metro Manila's traffic problem
Again, Metro Manila's traffic problem has moved from small talk, serious opinions, social media postings to the Cabinet agenda. In the 16th Cabinet meeting held April 3, President Marcos ordered government agencies to come up with a comprehensive proposal - not a piecemeal approach - to solve the traffic problem as part of building a better transport system.

How to Run Problem Solving Meetings

Primary Goals in Problem Solving Meetings

Agreeing on the most optimal solution

Key Roles in Problem Solving Meetings

Meeting leader

Meeting participants

Common Challenges in Problem Solving Meetings

Identifying the real problem

Intra-group conflicts

Defensiveness

Time pressure

How to Host Successful Problem Solving Meetings

Identify the problem to be addressed

Define solution requirements and restraints

Brainstorm possible solutions

Evaluate top solutions

Agree on a solution

Better Problem Solving Meetings with MeetingSift

Gather honest opinions through anonymous feedback

Cut meeting time with parallel input

Efficiently identify solutions or acceptable compromises

Easily record and share the final solution

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Tips for Running Effective Problem-Solving Meetings

Problem-solving meetings are some of the most challenging to lead.

Here are a few additional tips to help you run more effective problem-solving meetings:

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How To Run A Problem Solving Meeting

What Is The Purpose Of A Problem Solving Meeting?

How To Run A Problem Solving Meeting: Step-By-Step

Step 1: Identify the Meeting Objective

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Questions To Ask As The Leader Of The Meeting

Exemplary Agenda Template For: Problem Solving Meeting

Step-by-Step: How To Run A Problem Solving Meeting

Problem Solving Meeting Agenda: 4 Effective Steps to Conduct a Problem Solving Session

4-Step Process for a Problem Solving Meeting Agenda with This Problem-Solving Session Template (or Agenda).

Additional Rhythm Systems Weekly Staff Meeting Resources:

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How to Run an Urgent Problem Solving Meeting

When to Use this Process

An urgent problem is NOT:

Our example

Preparation

Important: do not use this meeting to discuss who or what is to blame .

Who to Invite

After the Meeting

Try the Template

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