Collaborative Problem Solving Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Team Leaders, Project Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-IC-030

Before you join: Participants should have experience working in teams, contributing to meetings and addressing operational, service, policy, project or customer-related issues.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Complex operational, policy and service problems rarely sit within one function or have a single correct answer. Teams must reconcile different evidence, priorities, professional judgments and levels of authority before acting. Without a disciplined approach, meetings produce premature solutions, recurring disagreements, unclear ownership and decisions that are difficult to implement. Collaborative problem solving gives teams a repeatable way to define the real problem, generate credible options, test assumptions and reach decisions that people will support.

This course develops the methods used to turn a mixed group into an effective problem-solving unit. Participants learn to frame issues with stakeholder and assumption analysis, investigate root causes using Five Whys and fishbone diagrams, and map system effects that simple fixes may miss. They use structured creativity methods including Six Thinking Hats, brainwriting and SCAMPER, then evaluate options through weighted decision matrices, impact-effort analysis and cost-of-delay thinking. The course also covers psychological safety, productive disagreement, facilitation, decision rights, stakeholder engagement and learning from implementation.

Teaching combines short instructor briefings with realistic cases, facilitated group work, decision simulations and structured reflection. Cases can reflect public services, banking operations, programme delivery, customer experience, technology change or cross-functional improvement work. Participants apply the methods to a current workplace challenge and leave with a collaborative problem-solving toolkit, including a problem frame, stakeholder map, option evaluation and implementation plan. The five-day instructor-led course is available in classrooms in 50+ cities or live online and includes a certificate of completion.

The course is suited to managers, project leaders, technical specialists and professionals who must bring people together to resolve important issues where evidence is incomplete, interests differ or implementation depends on several teams.

What you will be able to do

  • Frame ambiguous business problems using Is/Is Not analysis, stakeholder mapping and measurable outcomes
  • Diagnose underlying causes using Five Whys, fishbone diagrams and systems mapping
  • Facilitate psychologically safe discussions that surface dissent, assumptions and competing interests
  • Generate solution options using Six Thinking Hats, brainwriting and SCAMPER prompts
  • Evaluate alternatives using impact-effort matrices, weighted decision matrices and cost-of-delay criteria
  • Design safe-to-fail experiments with hypotheses, measures and decision thresholds
  • Establish decision rights using RAPID, RACI and documented escalation rules
  • Produce a collaborative problem-solving plan for a live workplace challenge

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Lead problem-solving meetings with clearer structure and stronger participation
  • Separate root causes from symptoms before recommending action
  • Contribute creative options without relying on unstructured brainstorming
  • Handle disagreement without allowing status or personality to dominate decisions
  • Build a documented solution case for a current workplace issue

For your organisation

  • Reduce repeated meetings caused by vague problem definitions and unclear decisions
  • Improve cross-functional ownership of operational and strategic improvement work
  • Identify risks, assumptions and unintended consequences before implementation
  • Increase the quality and traceability of team decisions
  • Create practical experiments that test ideas before major resource commitments

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can define a shared problem scope, identify stakeholders and establish clear decision boundaries.

  • Problem framing distinguishes symptoms, constraints, stakeholders and decision boundaries
  • Is/Is Not analysis sets a disciplined scope for inquiry
  • Stakeholder maps identify affected parties, expertise, authority and information needs
  • Problem statements specify desired outcomes, measures, constraints and ownership
  • Assumption mapping separates validated facts, beliefs, risks and knowledge gaps
  • Define decision rights using RAPID roles and escalation routes

Participants can investigate causes systematically and distinguish evidence from unsupported explanations.

  • Question-storming produces alternative problem questions before proposing solutions
  • Five Whys traces observable failures to testable causal hypotheses
  • Fishbone diagrams organise potential causes across people, process, technology and policy
  • Systems mapping reveals feedback loops, delays and unintended consequences
  • Distinguish correlation, contributing factors and root causes using evidence
  • Frame causal claims with confidence levels and disconfirming evidence

Participants can create discussion conditions that encourage contribution, challenge and informed disagreement.

  • Psychological safety behaviours invite dissent, questions and early error reporting
  • Working agreements establish participation norms, confidentiality and response expectations
  • Active listening uses paraphrasing, probing questions and accurate summarisation
  • Interest-based dialogue separates positions from underlying needs and concerns
  • Conflict protocols address task disagreement without personal blame or attribution
  • Facilitation interventions rebalance airtime, status effects and conversational dominance

Participants can use structured creativity methods to generate varied, relevant solution options.

  • Six Thinking Hats separates facts, risks, benefits, feelings and possibilities
  • Brainwriting 6-3-5 generates ideas without early verbal anchoring
  • SCAMPER prompts systematic variations to products, services and processes
  • Analogy transfer imports solution principles from unrelated domains
  • Constraint reversal converts fixed assumptions into productive creative prompts
  • Nominal Group Technique combines individual generation with structured sharing

Participants can compare options objectively and explain the rationale for selection decisions.

  • Affinity diagramming clusters raw ideas into meaningful opportunity themes
  • Impact-effort matrices rank options using delivery burden and expected value
  • Weighted decision matrices compare alternatives against agreed evaluation criteria
  • Dot voting exposes preference patterns without substituting for analysis
  • Cost of delay clarifies urgency across competing initiatives
  • Selection criteria test strategic fit, feasibility, equity and risk

Participants can select appropriate responses to uncertainty and design evidence-producing tests.

  • Cynefin distinguishes clear, complicated, complex, chaotic and confused situations
  • Experiment canvases state hypotheses, interventions, measures and decision thresholds
  • Pre-mortem analysis identifies likely failure modes before commitment
  • Assumption tests prioritise uncertainty by impact and ease of validation
  • Safe-to-fail probes generate evidence under bounded cost and exposure
  • Learning reviews convert results into revised options and next decisions

Participants can choose suitable decision methods, record rationale and secure action commitments.

  • RAPID clarifies recommend, agree, perform, input and decide roles
  • RACI identifies accountable ownership and required consultation for implementation
  • Consensus, consent and consultative decisions suit different risk conditions
  • Decision logs record rationale, dissent, evidence and review triggers
  • Escalation rules resolve deadlock while preserving legitimate minority concerns
  • Commitment checks translate decisions into named actions and deadlines

Participants can design and facilitate structured sessions that move groups toward decisions.

  • Visual facilitation makes issue structure, dependencies and decisions visible
  • Meeting design aligns purpose, participants, inputs, methods and outputs
  • ORID questioning moves groups from observation through reflection to action
  • Gradients of agreement reveal support levels beyond simple majority votes
  • Parking-lot protocols protect scope while retaining unresolved issues
  • Remote collaboration norms manage turn-taking, visibility and asynchronous contributions

Participants can build support for recommendations by addressing stakeholder interests and objections.

  • Stakeholder analysis anticipates supporters, blockers, influence and engagement needs
  • Force-field analysis identifies drivers and restraints affecting proposed change
  • Interest-based negotiation develops options before bargaining over positions
  • Message maps connect recommendations to stakeholder concerns and evidence
  • Objection handling tests concerns, reframes trade-offs and records commitments
  • Implementation charters define outcomes, sponsors, resources, milestones and risks

Participants can evaluate collaborative problem-solving results and plan continued application at work.

  • After-action reviews examine intent, events, results and lessons
  • PDCA cycles structure iterative improvement after initial implementation
  • Team performance indicators track quality, speed, adoption and learning
  • Retrospective protocols convert friction into specific process adjustments
  • Personal application plans identify a live challenge, allies and milestones
  • Peer accountability arrangements schedule follow-up, evidence review and adaptation

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Collaborative problem-framing template
  2. Stakeholder and assumption map
  3. Root-cause analysis worksheet
  4. Structured ideation prompt set
  5. Weighted decision matrix
  6. Workplace application plan

Who should attend

  • Team Leaders — need repeatable methods for resolving cross-functional operational problems
  • Project Managers — must build agreement on priorities, risks, decisions and delivery actions
  • Department Managers — need to improve decisions involving competing team requirements
  • Business Analysts — translate evidence and stakeholder input into well-defined problem statements
  • Programme Managers — coordinate multiple contributors around complex implementation choices
  • Technical Specialists — contribute expertise effectively within mixed-discipline decision groups

Skills and tools covered

Problem framingRoot-cause analysisCreative ideationGroup facilitationDecision designStakeholder alignment

Tools and standards

Six Thinking Hats, SCAMPER, Cynefin Framework, RAPID

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short briefings to introduce each method, followed by case analysis, group exercises, facilitated discussions and decision simulations. Participants work with realistic scenarios involving service failures, process bottlenecks, competing stakeholder demands and implementation risks. Facilitators model questioning, listening and intervention techniques used in difficult group discussions. Individual and peer feedback helps participants refine problem frames, option assessments and decision plans. The final sessions focus on applying the methods to a live workplace challenge and planning follow-through.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience working in teams, contributing to meetings and addressing operational, service, policy, project or customer-related issues. Familiarity with a current workplace problem is useful because the course includes application planning. Participants should be comfortable discussing evidence, trade-offs and differing viewpoints. No prior training in innovation methods, facilitation, design thinking, statistics or formal project management is required. The course does not assume responsibility for direct reports, although managers will find the methods immediately applicable.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

You should have experience contributing to workplace meetings and addressing operational, project, service or policy issues. No prior training in facilitation, innovation, design thinking or formal analysis methods is required.

Bring details of a real problem or improvement opportunity that requires input from more than one person or team. You may also bring non-confidential process data, stakeholder information or current decision papers if these will help your application planning.

The course suits managers, project leaders, analysts, specialists and programme staff who need to solve issues with colleagues from different functions. It is particularly useful where priorities conflict, evidence is incomplete or implementation depends on shared commitment.

Design thinking courses commonly focus on user research, prototyping and service design, while facilitation courses focus primarily on running meetings. This course combines problem diagnosis, structured creativity, option selection, group decision-making and implementation follow-through.

You will leave with templates and an application plan for a current workplace challenge. The methods can be used in team meetings, improvement workshops, project reviews, incident analysis and cross-functional planning sessions.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides about 6.5 contact hours. The five days progress from problem framing and diagnosis through ideation, decision-making, facilitation, stakeholder engagement and workplace application planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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