Upstream Challenge Framing

Skill-Building Workshops Coming Soon!

Are your teams burning valuable resources working on the wrong set of challenges? Are you making giant assumptions regarding what the challenges are? Are hidden assumptions embedded in the methods you are using?

Today, organizational leaders in all industries are faced with making sense of and prioritizing a vast landscape of challenges facing their organizations. In a continuously changing world, those challenges can range from mega to mini, from long standing to real-time emergent.

The ability to rapidly defuzz and order challenges visually in a way that is sharable has already become a key innovation leadership skill of the 21st century. At Humantific we call this strategic sensemaking skill, Upstream Challenge Framing.

What makes it different from product, software, service and experience related framing is that this is upstream from any preconceived notions of what the challenges and solution paths might be. In Upstream Challenge Framing, we open the aperture to the possibility that you might not fully understand what the challenges facing you actually are.

At the very least, you probably do not fully understand the challenge context. With openness of mind, we set out to defuzz, order and construct a visual map of the challenges that shows, often for the first time, the connections between challenges, from broad to narrow.

Before you go boil the ocean, or assume you just need yet another software tweak sprint let’s understand the challenge context. Turning the lights on in challenge landscapes is the purpose of Upstream Challenge Framing. Mastering this framing skill is not always a walk in the park, but its value-add is well worth the effort.

This is a real-time strategic framing skill that makes most sense to organizational leaders engaged upstream from run-of-the-mill (“Agile-like”) project briefs. This skill will be most valuable to leaders who have already figured out that “Agile” is assumption-based, weak on strategic framing and not a silver bullet. This session will provide an introduction to Upstream Challenge Framing. Our advanced Humantific Academy workshops provide advanced skill building.

This is a preliminary announcement for upcoming introductory skill-building workshops in New York, Los Angles, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, Singapore.

If you have interest in attending one of these upcoming sessions in one of these cities feel free to let us know. Attendance will be limited.

Email: kickitup (at) humantific (dot) com

Humantific Skill-Building

We receive many requests for training in Humantific skills. In this regard, some years ago we created Humantific Academy inside which is the Complexity Navigation Program containing three interconnecting streams of innovation leadership skill; Strategic CoCreation, Design Research and Visual SenseMaking. These are skills geared for organizational leaders facing continuous change and rising complexity in their marketplaces. Unlike “Agile” these are skills geared for business contexts where the challenges are fuzzy, complex requiring significant unpacking and inclusive multi-disciplinary stakeholder involvement. These are skills geared towards the creation of inclusive innovation cultures. For more info send us an email.

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