Strengthening, Clarifying and Adding Creativity to the Challenge Topic


Once the team has a clear end in mind, consider the business issue from a creative angle for impact. If you’re familiar with the Ladder of Abstraction, this exercise may be familiar. To look at your challenge from a broader, more holistic perspective:


Write your existing challenge statement on a piece of paper:

  • Challenge Statement: I need ideas on how to acquire a new car.


Imagine you’ve solved that challenge, what benefit does that provide?

  • Benefit: I can now get a job, because I have transportation.


Again – imagine you’ve solved that challenge, what benefit does that provide?

  • Benefit: Now that I have a job, I can finally get a home.


Again – imagine you’ve solved that challenge, what benefit does that provide?

  • Benefit: Now that I have a car, a job and a home, I can finally look for a relationship.


Again – imagine you’ve solved that challenge, what benefit does that provide?

  • Benefit: Now that I have a car, a job, a home and a relationship, I’m living the dream.


Challenge Statement to broaden thinking & drive creativity: How can we equate our new cars with the dream lifestyle when marketing? What does it mean to our customers to live the dream? Beyond a car, what else can we offer that makes up the dream?


Instead of just buying a car, we’re really helping people buy a dream for themselves. Using these types of metaphors can help broaden thinking, because it gives people permission to think differently in a relevant direction.


You can also move in the other direction to be more concrete and tactical. This can be really helpful when collaboratively solving problems.


Start again with the challenge statement:

  • Challenge Statement: We need ideas for how to solve slow customer service response times, without hiring more staff.


How will we do that?

  • How: We will decrease the amount of time per call.


How will we do that?

  • How: We will train our customer service team to improve product knowledge.


How will we do that?

  • How: We will determine where the customer service knowledge gaps are.


How will we do that?

  • How: We have the data to tell us where the gaps are, and the largest gap is around 3 of our newest products. Now we need ideas on how to solve for these gaps.


Challenge Statement targeted at the key issue: We have product knowledge gaps around products X, Y and Z. How can we close those gaps to improve customer satisfaction and speed of resolution?


These techniques can really clarify the outcomes you’re looking for and really strengthens the ideas needed.