3 questions to define your challenge

From the article Being Strategic: The Antidote to Fear, Erika Andersen provides "...a simple approach for defining your challenge--you can use it to clarify any key challenge you want to focus on addressing: departmental, company, or personal."

Ask: What isn’t working? This is where you look accurately at the problems you’re facing, neither overstating ("it's all horrible!"), nor understating ("we’re perfect"). You identify the key factors that concern you. It could be, "my company is doing layoffs and I believe I’m at risk," or "sales are off 20% year over year."

Ask: How can we/I…? Once you’ve looked--clear-eyed and unflinching--at what isn't working, it's fairly easy to frame the challenge. We've found that it helps to put it in the form of a "how can we" or "how can I" question. That helps you state your desired outcome. So, for the challenges above, it might be, "How can I best prepare myself for job loss?" and "How can we strengthen sales while operating as efficiently as possible?"

Ask: Would this feel like success? This is your "checking question." It gives you a way to make sure you've defined the challenge accurately. Just ask yourself, "If I answered my 'how can we/I' question, would I feel I had succeeded in addressing this challenge?" In the first instance above, the answer might actually be "no." You might decide that answering the question, "How can I best prepare myself for job loss?" would feel too narrow and reactive… wouldn’t feel like success. You might, instead, make your question, "How can I create a strong career path that will serve me even in difficult times?"