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Reframe it to the positive
Getty Images/iStockphotoPhoto-Ivan-balvan

By Renee Goyeneche

I'm sure you've heard the suggestion that if you're having difficulty solving a problem, you should try to "think outside the box." Meaning, of course, that you should put aside traditional thinking and take a new and creative approach to overcoming a challenge. It's good advice, but easier said than done, because many times we don't even realize that we're "in the box."

That's because much of our decision-making and problem solving is done on a subconscious level, where our minds use learning mechanisms known as schemas. Schemas are thought patterns that provide context for new learning based on prior experiences. Our minds recognize familiar situations, then make logical leaps that help us problem-solve. We do this intuitively; schemas are saved to our unconscious mind and are retrieved and utilized as circumstance dictates. It's a useful mechanism in everyday life because we're able to approach challenges with a frame of reference rather than having to reinvent the wheel every time we problem-solve.

The downside of schemas is that they are prone to logical errors and may classify something inherently solvable as "impossible" simply because our prior frame of reference suggests that's where it belongs. That negative categorization can create a mental stumbling block, undermining our efforts to find workable solutions and leading to a "this is hopeless" mindset.
Schemas most often negatively affect our problem-solving abilities when they're founded on logical fallacies such as:
Personalization, when we hold the blame for things where we have no actual responsibility.

Example: I'm responsible for my friend's unhappiness tonight because he/she didn't like the movie I suggested we see.

Overgeneralizing, when we cast judgement in a specific way, dismissing the fact that every situation offers its own unique set of circumstances.

Example: I scored poorly on this test. My math skills are too weak to pursue an accounting degree.

Black and white reasoning (the "all or nothing" mindset), when we make an either/or judgement, with no opportunity for middle ground.

Example: This new recipe didn't turn out the way I expected, so dinner is ruined.

Arbitrary inference, when we jump to conclusions based on a few data points, without a full understanding of the situation.

Example: I submitted three different job applications, but no one contacted me for interview. I must be unemployable.

Catastrophizing, when we magnify the importance of an issue. (It usually manifests in one of two ways: we either view a current situation as an unredeemable disaster or imagine a future full of hardships and futility.)

Example: I didn't make this important sale. My business is destined for failure.

If we operate under any of these logical fallacies, a schema can become a self-imposed limiter that prevents us from recognizing the unique nature of each new challenge. It's important to remember that although an issue may look or feel like something we've experienced in the past, it may differ in significant ways and require a completely different problem-solving technique.

Here are 3 practices that allow you to combat negative schemas and reframe a problem:

1. Brainstorm. Try to come up with at least 3 different alternatives that allow you to resolve an issue in different ways. For example, imagine that you want to attend a lecture but can't because your childcare provider is not available during those hours. How might you still get that information?

Possible options might include trading favors with a friend so you can attend the lecture, asking someone else to record it for you, or watching a video of it online later. If your goal really is to hear that lecture, any of the three might prove a viable option, even if it's not your first choice.

2. Break free of assumptions. Disregard your if/then beliefs and consider other factors. Doing poorly on a test or in a class doesn't mean you're "too stupid" to pursue that career you've always wanted. Take a good look at your learning environment and study schedule-have you set yourself up for success? There might be a study guide that would prove helpful, or perhaps working things through step by step with a tutor would help you retain information more effectively.

3. Remove yourself from the equation. Be objective. If you were giving problem-solving advice to a friend, what would you advise them to do? It can be difficult to separate yourself from an issue, so if you're unable to see your options or take a creative approach, ask for some external feedback from your community. Then, be open-minded. Consider any proposed solutions carefully, even if they go against your natural impulse. When you're stuck, those are exactly the type of suggestions you need.

"Thinking outside the box" means more than just being imaginative- it requires us to put aside negative associations and preconceived ideas. In doing so, we create a new schema- one that allows us to move forward with confidence in our own creativity and problem-solving abilities.
Renee Goyeneche: I am a writer and research editor focusing on information that benefits women, children, and families. Find me on and blogging at Imperfect Perceptions

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How To Encourage Positivity By Reframing A Problem

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I'm sure you've heard the suggestion that if you're having difficulty solving a problem, you should try to "think outside the box." Meaning, of course, that you should put aside traditional thinking and take a new and creative approach to overcoming a challenge.

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Written by Sam Altman · Illustrated by Gregory Koberger · Spanish translation

We spend a lot of time advising startups. Though one-on-one advice will always be crucial, we thought it might help us scale Y Combinator if we could distill the most generalizable parts of this advice into a sort of playbook we could give YC and YC Fellowship companies.

Then we thought we should just give it to everyone.

This is meant for people new to the world of startups. Most of this will not be new to people who have read a lot of what YC partners have written-the goal is to get it into one place.

There may be a part II on how to scale a startup later-this mostly covers how to start one.

Your goal as a startup is to make something users love. If you do that, then you have to figure out how to get a lot more users. But this first part is critical-think about the really successful companies of today. They all started with a product that their early users loved so much they told other people about it. If you fail to do this, you will fail. If you deceive yourself and think your users love your product when they don't, you will still fail.

The startup graveyard is littered with people who thought they could skip this step.

It's much better to first make a product a small number of users love than a product that a large number of users like. Even though the total amount of positive feeling is the same, it's much easier to get more users than to go from like to love.

A word of warning about choosing to start a startup: It sucks! One of the most consistent pieces of feedback we get from YC founders is it's harder than they could have ever imagined, because they didn't have a framework for the sort of work and intensity a startup entails. Joining an early-stage startup that's on a rocketship trajectory is usually a much better financial deal.

On the other hand, starting a startup is not in fact very risky to your career-if you're really good at technology, there will be job opportunities if you fail. Most people are very bad at evaluating risk. I personally think the riskier option is having an idea or project you're really passionate about and working at a safe, easy, unfulfilling job instead.

To have a successful startup, you need: a great idea (including a great market), a great team, a great product, and great execution.

Mediocre teams do not build great companies. One of the things we look at the most is the strength of the founders. When I used to do later-stage investing, I looked equally hard at the strength of the employees the founders hired.

What makes a great founder? The most important characteristics are ones like unstoppability, determination, formidability, and resourcefulness. Intelligence and passion also rank very highly. These are all much more important than experience and certainly "expertise with language X and framework Y".

We have noticed the most successful founders are the sort of people who are low-stress to work with because you feel "he or she will get it done, no matter what it is." Sometimes you can succeed through sheer force of will.

Good founders have a number of seemingly contradictory traits. One important example is rigidity and flexibility. You want to have strong beliefs about the core of the company and its mission, but still be very flexible and willing to learn new things when it comes to almost everything else.

The best founders are unusually responsive. This is an indicator of decisiveness, focus, intensity, and the ability to get things done.

Founders that are hard to talk to are almost always bad. Communication is a very important skill for founders-in fact, I think this is the most important rarely-discussed founder skill.

Tech startups need at least one founder who can build the company's product or service, and at least one founder who is (or can become) good at sales and talking to users. This can be the same person.

Consider these criteria when you're choosing a cofounder -- it's one of the most important decisions you'll make, and it's often done fairly randomly. You want someone you know well, not someone you just met at a cofounder dating thing. You can evaluate anyone you might work with better with more data, and you really don't want to get this one wrong. Also, at some point, the expected value of the startup is likely to dip below the X axis. If you have a pre-existing relationship with your cofounders, none of you will want to let the other down and you'll keep going. Cofounder breakups are one of the leading causes of death for early startups, and we see them happen very, very frequently in cases where the founders met for the express purpose of starting the company.

The best case, by far, is to have a good cofounder. The next best is to be a solo founder. The worse case, by far, is to have a bad cofounder. If things are not working out, you should part ways quickly.

A quick note on equity: the conversation about the equity split does not get easier with time-it's better to set it early on. Nearly equal is best, though perhaps in the case of two founders it's best to have one person with one extra share to prevent deadlocks when the cofounders have a fallout.

Although it's necessary to build a great product, you're not done after that. You still have to turn it into a great company, and you have to do it yourself-the fantasy of hiring an "experienced manager" to do all this work is both extremely prevalent and a graveyard for failed companies. You cannot outsource the work to someone else for a long time.

This sounds obvious, but you have to make money. This would be a good time to start thinking about how that's going to work.

The only universal job description of a CEO is to make sure the company wins. You can do this as the founder even if you have a lot of flaws that would normally disqualify you as a CEO as long as you hire people that complement your own skills and let them do their jobs. That experienced CEO with a fancy MBA may not have the skill gaps you have, but he or she won't understand the users as well, won't have the same product instincts, and won't care as much.

If I had to distill my advice about how to operate down to only two words, I'd pick focus and intensity. These words seem to really apply to the best founders I know.

They are relentlessly focused on their product and growth. They don't try to do everything-in fact, they say no a lot (this is hard because the sort of people that start companies are the sort of people that like doing new things.)

As a general rule, don't let your company start doing the next thing until you've dominated the first thing. No great company I know of started doing multiple things at once-they start with a lot of conviction about one thing, and see it all the way through. You can do far fewer things than you think. A very, very common cause of startup death is doing too many of the wrong things. Prioritization is critical and hard. (Equally important to setting the company's priorities is setting your own tactical priorities. What I've found works best for me personally is a pen-and-paper list for each day with ~3 major tasks and ~30 minor ones, and an annual to-do list of overall goals.)

While great founders don't do many big projects, they do whatever they do very intensely. They get things done very quickly. They are decisive, which is hard when you're running a startup-you will get a lot of conflicting advice, both because there are multiple ways to do things and because there's a lot of bad advice out there. Great founders listen to all of the advice and then quickly make their own decisions.

Please note that this doesn't mean doing everything intensely-that's impossible. You have to pick the right things. As Paul Buchheit says, find ways to get 90% of the value with 10% of the effort. The market doesn't care how hard you work-it only cares if you do the right things.

It's very hard to be both obsessed with product quality and move very quickly. But it's one of the most obvious tells of a great founder.

I have never, not once, seen a slow-moving founder be really successful.

You are not different from other startups. You still have to stay focused and move fast. Companies building rockets and nuclear reactors still manage to do this. All failing companies have a pet explanation for why they are different and don't have to move fast.

When you find something that works, keep going. Don't get distracted and do something else. Don't take your foot off the gas.

Don't get caught up in early success-you didn't get off to a promising start by going to lots of networking events and speaking on lots of panels. Startup founders who start to have initial success have a choice of two paths: either they keep doing what they're doing, or they start spending a lot of time thinking about their "personal brand" and enjoying the status of being a founder.

It's hard to turn down the conferences and the press profiles-they feel good, and it's especially hard to watch other founders in your space get the attention. But this won't last long. Eventually the press figures out who is actually winning, and if your company is a real success, you'll have more attention than you'll ever want. The extreme cases-early-stage founders with their own publicists-that one would think only exist in TV shows actually exist in real life, and they almost always fail.

Focus and intensity will win out in the long run. (Charlie Rose once said that things get done in the world through a combination of focus and personal connections, and that's always stuck with me.)

Hiring is one of your most important jobs and the key to building a great company (as opposed to a great product.)

My first piece of advice about hiring is don't do it. The most successful companies we've worked with at YC have waited a relatively long time to start hiring employees. Employees are expensive. Employees add organizational complexity and communication overhead. There are things you can say to your cofounders that you cannot say with employees in the room. Employees also add inertia-it gets exponentially harder to change direction with more people on the team. Resist the urge to derive your self-worth from your number of employees.

The best people have a lot of opportunities. They want to join rocketships. If you have nothing, it's hard to hire them. Once you're obviously winning, they'll want to come join you.

It's worth repeating that great people have a lot of options, and you need great people to build a great company. Be generous with equity, trust, and responsibility. Be willing to go after people you don't think you'll be able to get. Remember that the kind of people you want to hire can start their own companies if they want.

When you are in recruiting mode (i.e., from when you get product-market fit to T-infinity), you should spend about 25% of your time on it. At least one founder, usually the CEO, needs to get great at recruiting. It's most CEOs' number one activity by time. Everyone says that CEOs should spend a lot of their time recruiting, but in practice, none but the best do. There's probably something to that.

Don't compromise on the quality of people you hire. Everyone knows this, and yet everyone compromises on this at some point during a desperate need. Everyone goes on to regret it, and it sometimes almost kills the company. Good and bad people are both infectious, and if you start with mediocre people, the average does not usually trend up. Companies that start off with mediocre early employees almost never recover. Trust your gut on people. If you have doubt, then the answer is no.

Do not hire chronically negative people. They do not fit what an early-stage startup needs-the rest of the world will be predicting your demise every day, and the company needs to be united internally in its belief to the contrary.

Value aptitute over experience for almost all roles. Look for raw intelligence and a track record of getting things done. Look for people you like - you'll be spending a lot of time together and often in tense situations. For people you don't already know, try to work on a project together before they join full-time.

Invest in becoming a good manager. This is hard for most founders, and it's definitely counterintuitive. But it's important to get good at this. Find mentors that can help you here. If you do not get good at this, you will lose employees quickly, and if you don't retain employees, you can be the best recruiter in the world and it still won't matter. Most of the principles on being a good manager are well-covered, but the one that I never see discussed is "don't go into hero mode". Most first-time managers fall victim to this at some point and try to do everything themselves, and become unavailable to their staff. It usually ends in a meltdown. Resist all temptation to switch into this mode, and be willing to be late on projects to have a well-functioning team.

Speaking of managing, try hard to have everyone in the same office. For some reason, startups always compromise on this. But nearly all of the most successful startups started off all together. I think remote work can work well for larger companies but it has not been a recipe for massive success for startups.

Finally, fire quickly. Everyone knows this in principle and no one does it. But I feel I should say it anyway. Also, fire people who are toxic to the culture no matter how good they are at what they do. Culture is defined by who you hire, fire, and promote.
I wrote a blog post with more detail.

A quick word about competitors: competitors are a startup ghost story. First-time founders think they are what kill 99% of startups. But 99% of startups die from suicide, not murder. Worry instead about all of your internal problems. If you fail, it will very likely be because you failed to make a great product and/or failed to make a great company.

99% of the time, you should ignore competitors. Especially ignore them when they raise a lot of money or make a lot of noise in the press. Do not worry about a competitor until they are beating you with a real, shipped product. Press releases are easier to write than code, which is easier still than making a great product. In the words of Henry Ford: "The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time."

Every giant company has faced worse competitive threats than what you are facing now when they were small, and they all came out ok. There is always a counter-move.

Oh yes, making money. You need to figure out how to do that.

The short version of this is that you have to get people to pay you more money than it costs you to deliver your good/service. For some reason, people always forget to take into account the part about how much it costs to deliver it.

If you have a free product, don't plan to grow by buying users. That's really hard for ad-supported businesses. You need to make something people share with their friends.

If you have a paid product with less than a $500 customer lifetime value (LTV), you generally cannot afford sales. Experiment with different user acquisition methods like SEO/SEM, ads, mailings, etc., but try to repay your customer acquisition cost (CAC) in 3 months.

If you have a paid product with more than a $500 LTV (net to you) you generally can afford direct sales. Try selling the product yourself first to learn what works. Hacking Sales is a useful book to read.

In any case, try to get to "ramen profitability"-i.e., make enough money so that the founders can live on ramen-as quickly as you can. When you get here, you control your own destiny and are no longer at the whims of investors and financial markets.

Watch your cash flow obsessively. Although it sounds unbelievable, we've seen founders run out of money without being aware it was happening a number of times (and read Paul Graham's essay).

Remember that at least a thousand people have every great idea. One of them actually becomes successful. The difference comes down to execution. It's a grind, and everyone wishes there were some other way to transform "idea" into "success", but no one has figured it out yet.

So all you need is a great idea, a great team, a great product, and great execution. So easy! ;)
Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Erica Carpenter, Brian Chesky, Adam D'Angelo, Drew Houston, Justin Kan, Matt Krisiloff, Aaron Levie, Gabriel Leydon, Jessica Livingston, Dustin Moskovitz, David Rusenko and Colleen Taylor for contributing thoughts to this.

Back to Table of Contents

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To have a successful startup, you need: a great idea, a great market, a great team, a great product, and great execution.

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These are my notes and learnings from the superb book titled 'What's Your Problem?' by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg Firstly what is NOT Reframing?

Reframing is not Analysis
Analysis is when you ask 'why is this problem happening'? Analysis is where you dive deeper into the finer details of the problem. Reframing on the other hand is a much higher level activity. It starts (though isn't restricted to) before Analysis. It is when you ask, What problem are we trying to solve? Is this the right problem to solve? Reframing is about being able to look at the big picture and think of the problem from multiple perspectives

Reframing is not about finding the real problem.
Its about finding a better problem to solve.

Reframing begins with asking this question 'Is this the right Problem to Solve?' What are the Advantages of Reframing the Problem?

It generates more options

The way you frame a problem determines which solutions you come up with

Examples of Problems (think how you would solve them before you look at the answers ;-) )
Problem 1: Slow Elevator Problem:

You are the owner of a building. Th building has a old elevator. Your Tenants have been complaining of the elevator being too slow and threaten to cancel their leases if the elevator is not fixed.

Problem 2: Baggage arrival at the airport: It takes way too long for your baggage to arrive after you have landed at an airport.

Problem 3: The long Train Journey: The 3 hour Train Journey from one city to another is very long. We need to shorten it.

In each of the 3 Examples, we need to know that the problem is already framed and presented to you. Much like it happens in the real world. Someone tells us what the problem is and our natural instincts is to jump into finding a solution. We are biased towards taking action. However reframing is taking a pause. It isn't about endlessly delaying action, its about going in a small loop rather than jumping into action straightaway.
Reframing the 3 Example Problems

Problem 1: The Slow Elevator Problem
Our natural inclination to solve it is this way:

Make the Elevator faster

Replace the Elevator with a new one

Change the Algorithm to make it faster

...Is this the Right Problem to Solve?

Everyone in the building has the same lunch break time. Can we request the companies to scatter the lunch break?

How can we make the wait time more pleasant?

How can we keep the users of the elevator engaged while they wait for the elevator to arrive?

Problem 2: Baggage Arrival at the Airport

Buy a new faster conveyor belt that delivers the bags faster

Train workers to get more efficient at baggage handling and transfer from the plane onto the conveyor belt

Hire more people to speed up the process

...Is this the Right Problem to Solve?

How can we make the wait time more pleasant?

How can we keep the passengers engaged while they wait for their bags to arrive?

How can we increase the time it takes between passengers deplaning the aircraft and arriving at the baggage receive section?

Problem 3: The long Train Journey

How can we make the 3 hour train journey faster by 30 minutes?

We can build a faster train

We need faster tracks

...Is this the Right Problem to Solve?

How can we make the 3 hour train journey pleasant?

Can we include Wifi on the train?

Can we provide more meals on the train?

How about some newspapers and magazines onboard?

Types of Reframing
Exploring within the Frame: In this approach you look for unexplored avenues within the same problem.
First Frame the Problem
Changing the Frame: In this approach, you change the framing of the problem altogether.

What problem are we trying to solve here? - Always ask this question at the start so that we actually state the problem before we get started on other things.

Step 1: Write down the problem

Step 2: Determine the type of problem.

There are (most often) only 6 types of problems

Each problem is composed of only 6 Pieces (6 Slices of Pizza!)

The 6 types of problems are:
To determine the type of problem, I take my learnings from the book Unfolding the Napkin. In his book, author Dan Roam states two very important things:

Who are all the players in this problem, and what do they do?

What makes this thing different from that one? Which do I prefer?

Who is in charge and who else is involved? Where does responsibility lie?

Challenges that relate to things, people and roles such as:

2. How Much Problems

Do we have enough of X to last as long as we need?

How much do we need to keep going? If we increase this can we decrease that?

Challenges that involve measuring and counting such as:

3. When Problems

What comes first, and what comes next?

What do we need to do, and when to get everything done on time?

Challenges that relate to scheduling and timing, such as:

4. Where Problems

Where do all these pieces fit? Whats most important and what matters less?

Where are we going now? Are we headed in the right direction, or should we be moving elsewhere?

Challenges that relate to how things fit together and work together such as:

5. How Problems

What will happen if we do this? What about that?

Can we alter the outcomes of a situation by altering our actions?

Challenges that relate to how things influence one another such as:

6. Why Problems

What are we really doing and why? Is this the right thing to do or should we doing something different?

If we need to change, what are our options? How can we decide which of these options are best?

Challenges that relate to seeing the big picture such as:

Now that we know that there are only 6 types of problems, we need to know that each of these problems consist of the same Six pieces! - Six Slices of Pizza!

The Six elements that make up any problem are:

After framing the problem, Reframe! Here are some techniques

Ask these questions:
Know what is Functional Fixedness to look at non obvious things. Light Bulb Problem
What's missing from the current problem statement?
Are there elements we are not considering?
Is there anything outside the current frame we are not paying attention to?
Titanic and the Iceberg
There are three light bulbs in your room. But for some reason the switches are located in the basement on the ground floor and they aren't labelled. You'd prefer to minimize the number of times you have to use the stairs. The question is: How many trips do you have to make into the basement to figure out which switch works with which light? For the record, the lights all work, each switch affects only one light bulb, and all three light bulbs are turned off when you start.
2. Look beyond your expertise Look at prior Events
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg in the north Atlantic and sunk later. Of its 2,200 passengers and crew, only 705 survived, plucked out of 16 lifeboats by the Carpathia.
Imagine how many more might have lived if crew members had thought of the iceberg as not just the cause of the disaster but a life-saving solution. The iceberg rose high above the water and stretched some 400 feet in length. The lifeboats might have ferried people there to look for a flat spot. The Titanic itself was navigable for a while and might have been able to pull close enough to the iceberg for people to scramble on.

For example what happened the last time an employee tried to innovate? (This can shed light on why employees resist innovation)
3. Rethink the Goal
You can sometimes shed new light on problems by noticing what happened before the slice of time you are currently focusing your attention on.

Ask these questions:

Are we pursuing the right goal?

Is there a better goal to pursue?
4. Examine Bright Spots
Are there other ways of achieving the goal?

This is about looking for situations or places where the problem is not as bad, or where it may even be entirely absent. Paying attention to such positive exceptions can give you a new perspective on the problem, and may even point you directly to a viable solution.

Maybe you are having arguments with your spouse that goes nowhere. The root cause could be you always have arguments when you are tired, hungry and haven't had sufficient rest. Now remember discussing the same thorny topic after being sufficiently rested, fed. Wasn't it easier to solve the problem rather than calling each other names? That's your bright spot! A time wherein you solved a similar issue before! So remember it the next time you launch into an argument!

Ask these questions

Who else deals with this kind of problems?

Where is the problem not?

Have you already solved the problem once before?
5. Look in the mirror
Are there parts of the situation that are positive?
6. Take others perspectives
Sometimes we are the cause of the problem. Why not look into the mirror and ask ourselves if we are causing the problem?
References: Find Innovation Where you Least Expect It Why We Can't See Solutions in Plain Sight Functional Fixedness - Wikipedia
The problem with taking perspectives is we simply don't ask for other people's perspectives. We dive straight into solving the problem without asking for other people's perspectives. So the first step is to recognize it and simply ask for as many different perspectives possible.
https://www.amazon.com/Unfolding-Napkin-Hands-Problems-Pictures/dp/1591843197
Unfolding the Napkin by Dan Roam
https://www.amazon.com/dot-Sutherland-Thinking-marketing-genius-ebook/dp/B078TGN6PL/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dot+rory+sutherland&qid=1590178590&s=books&sr=1-1
Dot: Rory Sutherland by Mike Dariano
https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Solutions-Difficult-Business-Problems-ebook/dp/B0855C79BS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=invisible+solutions&qid=1590178626&s=books&sr=1-1
Invisible Solutions by Stephen Shapiro

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A very Powerful Tool for Problem Solving- Reframing

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These are my notes and learnings from the superb book titled 'What's Your Problem?' by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg Firstly what is NOT Reframing? Reframing is not Analysis Analysis is when you ask 'why is this problem happening'? Analysis is where you dive deeper into the finer details of the problem.

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This guide will explain the key parts of a Project Roadmap. Read about workstreams, activities, timelines and other elements in a good Project Roadmap.

A Project Roadmap is a simple presentation of Project Ambitions and Project Goals alongside a timeline.

A Project Roadmap is NOT the place for detailed project plans and detailed information.

What is a Project Roadmap used for?

1. To quickly communicate project plans & goals.

2. To manage stakeholder expectations.

3. To generate a shared understanding across the teams involved.

4. To communicate plans with other important teams/organisations.

What does a Project Roadmap include?

Must Have: The Project Goals articulated; at least in the deliverables listed.

Must Have: A timeline - to show when things will happen

Must Have: The high level titles for the big deliverables (don't get into the detail!!)

Should Have: The workstreams in separate "Swim Lanes".

Should Have: Milestones of key events, when you expect them.

Could Have: Areas of high risk.

Could Have: Areas where you have dependencies.

Key Characteristics of a Project Roadmap

1. It gives a sense of the Project Goals

1. Either explicitly in plain words "The goal is ..."

2. Or in the deliverables listed

2. It shows the plans for a project in simple terms

1. not too detailed

2. Just the high-level titles for each deliverable

3. You should not have more than 4 per year for any workstream

3. It is on 1 side of paper (or 1 slide)
So - keep it simple and focussed!

4. It shows project plans alongside a timeline

5. It shows the order of the deliverables; what's first, and what comes next!

6. You can read it and understand it in 3 mins

7. Anyone who picks it up can understand what it's about

1. The titles and deliverables are in plain language

2. Avoid acronyms and team jargon

8. It has your name on it - so people can contact you with questions

Step-by-Step guide to creating a Roadmap

See our Creating a Roadmap guide here.

Creating a Roadmap can have useful side-effects

The process of creating a roadmap, with key project stakeholders and team members, can be incredibly useful on its own:

1. It ensures that the team and stakeholders understand capacity

2. It forces priority decisions

3. It promotes a shared understanding in the wider team

Roadmap Examples and Samples

This entry was posted in Agile Lean Project Management Product Management Help Project Management Roadmap and tagged Milestone Product Project Project Management Roadmap on by .

About Jeff Armstrong

Jeff Armstrong is a business professional with a background in Lean & Agile Project Management, and in Product Management

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What is a Project Roadmap? A 101 for Roadmap basics.

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This guide will explain the key parts of a Project Roadmap. Read about workstreams, activities, timelines and other elements in a good Project Roadmap. A Project Roadmap is a simple presentation of Project Ambitions and Project Goals alongside a timeline. A Project Roadmap is NOT the place for detailed project plans and detailed information.

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If your solutions are not good enough, maybe you're just focusing on the wrong problems

I wrote an article earlier this year on how Design Thinking methodology can help you create and validate your design hypothesis within your product team. In summary, the process of generating and testing good design propositions relies heavily on the problem space: how well you know your audience and how clear are the pain points and main blockers your users are facing on their way towards small and big successes. This means that the solution to a problem depends on how we frame the problem.

The Double Diamond diagram by Ari Tanninen

Our problem statement will define the direction we take on the solution space. In this case, no matter how dedicated and efficient is your process in developing the new solution, the results will never be satisfactory if we are addressing the wrong problem.

In surveys of 106 C-suite executives who represented 91 private and public-sector companies in 17 countries, 85% strongly agreed or agreed that their organizations were bad at problem diagnosis, and 87% strongly agreed or agreed that this flaw carried significant costs - Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg

I know this scope is related to design field - more specifically to the design thinking process - but it is not at all restricted to designers and related roles. In fact, design thinking is a methodology utilized by many great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business, of course.

Let's take Trump's border wall for example. Yes, it's a lame example - but a good metaphor about problem framing.
I know this is a topic for a different conversation but, just for the sake of this article, let's assume that Donald Trump is legitimately concerned with the American population and the immigrants in the United States and therefore he is willing to treat illegal immigration as a real and serious issue.
Prototypes of President Donald Trump's border wall in San Diego, California.

Why building a wall? The problem statement Trump makes is that illegal immigrants come to the United States by foot or by car through the Mexican border, which is why a physical barrier will stop them from coming in. Surely, this happens. But do all immigrants enter the country the same way? Of course not. Are all the illegal immigrants in the country coming from Mexican border? Of course not. Does a wall impede those people of entering the United States anyway? It will make it a little bit more difficult, but for sure it won't stop them from coming in. On top of that, racist and stereotypical opinions are determinant for the president of the United States when he asserts that all Mexicans and Latin-American immigrants are criminals, rapists and drug dealers.

By the way, in confrontation to this statement, the recently elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that everyday immigrants commit crimes at a far lower rate than native-born Americans. This means that the budget for the wall construction is exorbitant and, if ever executed, it will cost a lot for the American tax payers.

Even if this come to be the greatest wall ever built - impenetrable, resistant, elegant - it won't solve the real issue of illegal immigration. Plus, it will jeopardize investments from stakeholders and generate frustration around both North-American population and immigrants. However, if this is an issue of problem framing or just an evil political game, it's another topic.

I believe this is a convenient metaphor because it's a relatable topic (I guess almost everyone has heard about Trump's border wall) with a real problem (illegal immigration) but that has not been addressed properly, leading to a controversial project that has been masked as the "ideal solution". Against this backdrop, I would like to present a small story around the "Slow Elevator Problem" that is in essence the perfect analogy for how we think about problems and why so many teams invest in the wrong answers.

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I wrote an article earlier this year on how Design Thinking methodology can help you create and validate your design hypothesis within your product team. In summary, the process of generating and testing good design propositions relies heavily on the problem space: how well you know your audience and how clear are the pain points and main blockers your users are facing on their way towards small and big successes.

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Problems can become opportunities when you change the way you think about them. With reframing you take your problem and ask: What's the opportunity here? Click To Tweet

In your home, putting a new frame on an existing picture is a way to find new value in something that you concluded "no longer fit the decor." Through your innovation, you look at this picture with a new perspective. You also make something positive (saving money!) out of what seemed to be a problem (junk in your home!). This concept of finding another frame (perspective) in which to view a situation is called reframing.

What is Reframing?

Reframing is a mental coping strategy that people use to deal with a negative event. It's is also known as cognitive reframing.

The e-counseling platform website, BetterHelp.com explains reframing as follows:
When life presents us with a situation, we usually decide what meaning the situation has for us almost immediately. That meaning is the 'frame' we give it. We don't have to continue viewing it in that frame, though. Instead, we can give it a different meaning by changing the way we think and feel about it.
Reframing is positive when you choose to take a difficult situation and make something positive out of it.

As PsychologyToday.com explains, it is optimistic thinking - seeing a glass as half full instead of half empty.

Reframing is a positive coping strategy that allows you to manage stress in the workplace. It is emotional intelligence in action. Click To Tweet

A Real Life Example of Reframing

Imagine yourself as a child waiting with several friends for a fruit snack after an afternoon of hard play. Each friend receives their own special fruit from your best friend's mother: cherries, peaches, grapes, and apricots. You are happy to get your fruit as you know it will be special (since this is your best friend's mother)-that is, until your bowl of lemons arrives.

After receiving your lemons, you have two choices. The first choice that comes to your mind is to feel sorry for yourself as you now realize how much your best friend's mother does not like you. As an innovative child however, you think differently.

You look on this problem as an opportunity!

You take your lemons and go home and make lemonade and then sell glasses to your friends. With the money you earned, you go and buy your favorite tropical fruit.

In effect, you make lemonade out of lemons.

This is the essence of positive reframing: taking what appears to be a difficult situation and finding something positive to make out of it.

You put another frame (perspective) on the situation you face. You look for other ways to view your situation.

Making lemonade from lemons is the essence of reframing. Take your difficult situation and see what positive result you can make from it. Click To Tweet

Why is Reframing Important in Business

Reframing is a critical tool for promoting innovation and creativity in the workplace and it is very effective for problem solving. Senior leaders and operational managers who use this tool also improve their own emotional intelligence as they "smartly" manage their own emotions and the emotions of others to effect meaningful change.

The power of reframing is that it forces you to harness your creative and innovative thinking to achieve breakthrough solutions. It is original, out-of-the-box thinking!

When you use positive reframing, you view problems differently.

Instead of first exploring how to get the problem to go away, you first ask yourself, What is the opportunity here?

Innovative and creative thinking begins when you view problems as opportunities. Problems are often your chance to make needed changes whether they occur in your life or in the workplace. This is the power of reframing. It gives you the opportunity to make valuable changes in the workplace by turning a problem into an unanticipated opportunity.

Workplace problems occur! It's how a manager perceives and reacts to the problem that determines success or failure. Click To Tweet

Two Business Examples of Reframing

Consider two examples frequently used in management and leadership training.

The first is about Tom Watson, the founder of IBM. One of his employees made a very costly error that cost the firm ten million dollars. The employee had to meet with Watson in his office. As the employee entered the office he said, "I suppose you want my resignation." Watson looked at him and said in disbelief, "Are you kidding? We just spent ten million dollars on your education."

From this point forward, you can bet that Watson had both the attention and cooperation of the employee. This is reframing. The mistake had already occurred and the money was lost; Watson chose to see this mistake as an opportunity to salvage some value from this employee.

Example 2:

The second example of reframing is about the psychoanalyst, Milton Erickson. Erickson was a master at helping his clients to solve their problems with reframing. In this example, a father brought his strong-willed daughter to see Erickson, so Erickson could "fix her." As the father explained, their daughter always had her own opinion to express rather than just listen to him or his wife and accept what they had to tell her. The father explained that he and his wife did not know what else to do with her.

Erickson thought about the problem and actually did not provide any advice. Instead, he reframed the situation for the father and got him to look at the situation from another viewpoint.

What did Erickson say? Erickson replied to the father, "Now isn't it good that she will be able to stand on her own two feet when she is ready to leave home?" This silenced the father as he understood the impact of Erickson's reframe. He now understood that his daughter's independence was not a problem to be eliminated. Rather, his daughter's independence was an opportunity that he and his wife needed to channel appropriately so she would not accept poor treatment when she became an adult.

How to Apply Reframing in the Workplace

If you manage or lead a group, use reframing as a tool to have your team assist you in innovative and creative thinking.

For example, with a budget cut, have your team assist you in coming up with recommendations for changes in work operations.

Present the budget cut as an opportunity rather than a problem. Have them help you identify less meaningful work and overly difficult processes that can be adjusted or eliminated.

Next, rather than accepting common organizational thinking that more has to be done with less (I suspect you dislike that saying as much as I do), argue instead for doing less with less!

Challenge the assumption of doing more with less with the input you received from your team. Quantify the recommendations and then present them to your senior leadership. By reframing the budget cut as an opportunity rather than a problem, you have engaged your team, improved morale, identified organizational change that badly needs to occur, and proved your worth to senior leadership. Those results are not bad at all for just a slight adjustment in your thinking and approach to a problem!

The next time you face a difficult problem reframe it and find the hidden value that comes with every difficulty.

The saying, Every Cloud has a Silver Lining, is true.

We just have to find the silver lining and use it positively to our advantage.

Video: What is Reframing and How to Use it in the Workplace

Every cloud has a silver lining. Reframing is making the effort to find that lining and use it. Click To Tweet

Written by Robert Tanner | Copyrighted Material | All Rights Reserved Worldwide

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Reframing for Innovative and Creative Problem Solving

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Problems can become opportunities when you change the way you think about them. With reframing you take your problem and ask: What's the opportunity here? Click To Tweet In your home, putting a new frame on an existing picture is a way to find new value in something that you concluded "no longer fit the decor."

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Validation Board - FREE tool for testing startup ideas, stop wasting time and money

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The Validation Board is a great tool to help entrepreneurs stay focused on taking action while implementing the Lean Startup process.