Facilitating Collaborative Problem Framing

Earlier this year a couple of my colleagues from NouLAB and I were invited to give a workshop on human centred design (HCD) to an audience of public servants. I believe the initial expectation was a workshop on how to build personas or develop a customer journey map, or interview users. In the innovation world it is easy to fetishize tools. But tools aren’t everything.

What is more difficult and more important than tools, are things like mindset, condition-setting, team dynamics, and problem framing. After some discussion we chose to focus on one of the more challenging aspects of our craft: collaborative problem framing.

Some starting assumptions:

• Innovation starts with a problem.
• Co-creation should have some grounding in a shared understanding of a problem.
• Problem framing is hard.
• Collaborative problem framing is super hard.

At NouLAB we underpin most of what we do with Theory U. This is because for all the talk about collaboration, silo-busting, human centred design, and co-creation, in practice people tend to overlook the below-the-surface-effort required to set up a successful co-creation initiative. It is not as simple as getting a bunch of people in a room and running a brainstorming exercise. Designing processes guided by Theory U has helped us work with teams to calibrate their understanding of a problem, empathize with end users, and with each-other.

As with most practices of HCD, nothing is stand-alone. In the case of problem framing, this means involving user groups in the process of framing and drilling down on the problem being addressed, not simply in the idea generation phase. Co-creation means treating the user as an equal and valued member of your team, not a subject to be harvested for insights (Cheryl Li from Ample Labs drove this message home for me at the Code For Canada showcase).

Problem framing is a hard thing to do alone, and can be even harder in a group of clashing opinions, ideas, and personalities. In our work facilitating co-creation, we spend a lot of time upfront, creating the space for teams to coalesce and arrive at a shared understanding of a problem before getting into brainstorming solutions.

Getting the problem solidly framed is critical to bringing a team along a journey that will position them to collectively act in an instant when the time comes.

Often what we receive as a problem definition is really an issue description. A problem definition should achieve the following:

1. Provide context (past efforts, scope, Who)
2. Point to Solution barriers
3. Indicate how you’ll know a solution works
4. Inspire your team and others to act
5. Inform criteria for evaluating competing ideas
6. Agility: It needs to be iterative (this is especially critical when dealing with complex and wicked problems)

Double diamond helps us situate our activities in a predictable flow of divergence and convergence. Below we locate where different activities and outputs fit in our overall practice.

For the activities we follow the breath pattern of divergence, emergence, and convergence. Similar to the “1–2–4-All” liberating structure, each activity starts with a solo round before a group round (Note: if you have time, I would follow the 1–2–4-All format for each phase of divergence, emergence, and convergence). This is the general flow of each activity:

1. Divergence — a) brainstorming many options individually, b) share with the group, then c) brainstorm further as a group;

2. Emergence — a) solo reflection, then b) sorting/clustering as a group and c) reflecting on the options;

3. Convergence — a) solo selection and completion of the problem frame, b) share with the groups and then c) select and form the collective problem frame.

Over the years we have tried many different activities in facilitating collaborative problem framing. Below I have uploaded slides for each activity. Under each, slide one is used to capture in the divergent phase, while slide two is used to capture in the convergent phase.

Activity one – symptoms versus causes

Activity two – identifying actors, outcomes and their relationships

Activity three – mad lib

The Madlib is by far the favourite and probably not for the right reasons. People love templates. It’s important to note that the Madlib is not meant to be constricted in this way forever but is used to get the team started in framing.

While I have presented each of these activities separately, in practice we use a hybrid of all these activities to arrive at a shared problem statement.

Collaborative problem framing is a crucial and under valued craft. OpenNorth | NordOuvert published an excellent report that includes some questions you can use in collaborative problem framing (available here on page 15). When dealing with complex and wicked problems that are ever changing along with our perspectives on them, the solutions require continuous learning and collective action across diverse groups. If we want to be effective in addressing our toughest challenges, then we need to get really good at bringing people together in such a way that allows them to learn together and act in an instant.

How have you facilitated collaborative problem framing? Is this useful? What changes might you make?