Course Objective & Scope
The costliest waste in business is executing brilliantly on the wrong problem—the classic 'slow elevator' dilemma where upgrading the motor costs millions while installing mirrors solves the complaint of perceived wait time for pennies. Grounded in modern Problem Reframing methodology, this course builds the discipline to pause and interrogate how a problem is framed before jumping to execution: surfacing hidden assumptions, looking outside the initial frame, hunting for bright spots, and adopting multiple stakeholder lenses.
Participants bring a stalled or seemingly expensive organisational problem and reframe it to unlock faster, higher-leverage paths forward.
Who Should Attend?
- Strategy, product, operations and business development leaders
- Managers and analysts who must translate stakeholder 'solution requests' into real underlying problems
- Project and programme leads facing stalled initiatives or recurring scope creep
- No technical prerequisites
Key Takeaways
- Prevent Type III errors (solving the wrong problem right) before committing budget and engineering effort
- Deconstruct initial problem statements to strip out embedded solutions and hidden assumptions
- Shift the frame by zooming out to higher goals, zooming in on sub-segments or changing the stakeholder lens
- Spot 'bright spots' and positive outliers where the problem is already solved in adjacent contexts
- Facilitate a 30-minute Rapid Reframing canvas session with executives and cross-functional stakeholders
Curriculum
The Slow Elevator Problem & The Cost of Type III Errors
- Real-world cases of solving the wrong problem with flawless execution
- Unpacking 'solutions in disguise' handed down by executives or clients
Interrogating the Frame: Assumption Busting & Goal Hierarchies
- Surfacing unstated constraints and false binaries embedded in the initial problem statement
- Using the Abstraction Ladder ('Why' vs. 'How') to widen or narrow the problem scope
Looking Outside the Frame: Bright Spots & Positive Outliers
- Hunting for bright spots where the issue fails to occur despite similar conditions
- Borrowing frames from adjacent industries and historical analogies
Multi-Perspective Framing & Looking in the Mirror
- Rewriting the problem from the viewpoint of different departments, non-customers and frontline staff
- Examining how our own team's incentives or processes inadvertently contribute to the problem
Facilitating the Rapid Reframing Canvas & Gaining Buy-In
- Running the 7-step Rapid Reframing cycle in fast-paced business meetings
- Pitching the reframed problem to sponsors and testing the new frame with quick experiments
Other Courses in This Category
-
Structured ideation beyond flawed brainstorming (Brainwriting, SCAMPER) paired with impact/effort and risk-value prioritization matrices; teams turn scattered ideas into an actionable backlog.
- Live Course
- 5 modules
-
Testing ideas before heavy investment using Hypothesis Cards, pretotyping, MVP experiments and validation metrics; teams design rapid experiments to test their riskiest assumptions.
- Live Course
- 5 modules
-
Using generative AI (LLMs) not as a generic copywriter but as a thought partner, devil's advocate, scenario simulator and concept synthesizer; participants build AI-augmented ideation workflows.
- Live Course
- 5 modules
-
Separating divergent and convergent thinking for ambiguous business challenges, root-cause exploration and structured ideation; teams work end-to-end on a live organizational problem.
- Live Course
- 5 modules
-
Analyzing organizational challenges through feedback loops, time delays, system archetypes and leverage points rather than isolated events; leaders map and diagnose their own business systems.
- Live Course
- 5 modules
-
User empathy research, customer journey mapping, problem definition, ideation and rapid prototyping; teams design and test solution prototypes grounded in real user insights.
- Live Course
- 5 modules
Get in touch
