A great way to learn new things is when we can establish a clear connection between theories and a problem that we would like to solve. Complex theories or management models become much more accessible when we see how they fit with a concrete problem that we are facing.

That’s why we use the concept of a development challenge as a key piece in this training.

Your task is to reflect on your current professional situation. Consider the relationships in your workplace and how they impact your daily work. Look at your self-assessment, maybe your TMS Team management profile and see if you can summarize a challenge that motivates you and that would be important to find a solution to

How to formulate a great challenge

Formulating the actual challenges is often something that raises many questions for participants, so here are just a few simple guidelines to help you along.

As leaders and managers, we are confronted with all sorts of challenges every day. If you look closely, you will realise that these challenges come in two basic forms: problems and puzzles.

Puzzles and challenges are where we need to find the right solution. And there is only one right solution – just like when you are laying a puzzle – you just need to keep at it until you find the solution.

Problems, and sometimes we call them wicked problems, are challenges that we face during the course of our day that could have many ‘right’ solutions. Because the right solution will depend on resources available, the actual situation, who  you are and who are they. A solution that is right for you might be terrible to somebody else. The solution that worked last year is not going to be appropriate this year. The situation has shifted.

Some problems, the really wicked ones represent dilemmas. Dilemmas are situations where neither of the immediate solutions is  attractive because they all have less desirable downsides. But at the end of the day, we need to pick one.

We learn a lot more from working with wicked problems than we do from working with puzzles. 

Once you have worked out how to do a puzzle, you can do that puzzle again, but it often doesn’t help you to solve the next puzzle. On the other hand, once you work your way through a wicked problem, you will have stretched your thinking as you consider many alternatives and different perspectives. That process is valuable learning that can be applied to future wicked problems – not the solution, but the process. So when we tackle wicked problems, we also strengthen our ability to learn. We are, in fact, learning to learn.

And finally, you need to consider the time factor. On this training, we have about 12 weeks. So we need to find a challenge that is juicy enough for us to spend considerable time on it – but it must still be something that we can tackle within the 12 weeks that we have at our disposal.

So in summary, that means that when you think about what challenge to pick, you need to pick a challenge that relates to your relationships, that is a problem, not a puzzle, and sufficiently juicy for us to spend some serious time on it.  

What is something that you feel you would like to tackle, and often this is something you’ve been wanting to tackle for some time but you just haven’t got around to it?

It’s a dilemma or a wicked problem that needs sorting out – but there’s no obvious solution.

Once you have formulated this , send it to me via email – as with everything else during this course, that challenge is confidential – and just between you and me.

So give it a bash; don’t go for perfection in your first shot. Formulate your challenge, send it to me by email so we can get the ball rolling and start learning…?