When promoting a key challenge, you want people to develop a shared sense of purpose so that everyone is moving in the same direction, but projects often feel more like assignments than invitations.

Why agree upon the challenge to solve?

Better alignment among teammates and wider stakeholders eliminates wasted effort. Direction is more important than speed and a well-framed challenge can serve as a common point of reference for developing and evaluating future ideas. 

There are different ways to agree upon a challenge. You might:

• Develop a project brief

• Select a challenge from an existing backlog

• Rank challenges based on some given criteria

What makes a good approach? One that:

• Is informed by existing research and insight

• Puts the challenge into context

• Invites broad exploration

• Avoids providing a solution

• Promotes and provokes action

We recommend you work with teammates to:

• Review your key identified challenges

• Rewrite your challenges as “How might we…” questions

• Discuss and group similar items

• Select the best challenge questions

• Use your challenge questions to frame research, kickstart ideation, and anchor future work sessions

What does asking better questions look like?