Background Note – What's Your Problem?

One of the most important skills a public sector leader must cultivate is the ability to frame a problem. While this may seem trivial, in practice – it’s vitally important to clearly understand which problem you are trying to solve, the key aspects of its context, and the available solution space. This Background Note explains the kinds of questions that must be answered to properly frame a problem. When used as part of a public sector course in management (where the course has a term paper/project component), students can submit a short mid-course paper (the Problem Definition Memo) that explains the problem they intend to solve/address in their final paper, using this Background Note as a guide for the mid-course paper.