This canvas and workbook were borne out of frustration and a sense of possibility. We’ve worked in various tricky and complex contexts where we were confronted with a raft of responses ranging from: ‘quick fixes’, ‘offthe-shelf solutions’, ‘transplanted solutions’, to ‘we’re stuck’. We’ve seen the effects of analysis paralysis, diving down wombat holes (the Australian alternative to rabbit holes!), and getting lost in problems that were not really the problem. So, we started to explore ways in which we could work with people to ‘zoom out’ and focus on how they could frame and name problems more effectively, recognise different types of problems, and start to ‘learn’ their way into responding. We developed some of our own ways of helping people, and we borrowed some of the great tools and frameworks others have used to support better framings and responses to problems. We drew these together in a canvas to help people spend more time framing problems rather than jumping headlong into problem ‘solving’. We found that this approach helped people to develop better skills to analyse problems and to reflect, test, and learn about possible responses more effectively. The response from teams we’ve worked with has been very positive – and we’ve refined the canvas via feedback and testing. In 2022 we shared the canvas in one of our social media posts and were inundated with requests for deeper explanations of each of the segments. In response, in 2023 we are making our Problem Framing Canvas workshop materials open source through this workbook.

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