Facilitation · American Red Cross · January 2026

Teaching leaders to fall
in love with
the problem.

The Red Cross Design Guild debuted by facilitating a 90-minute problem framing workshop for LEAD — a cross-functional leadership cohort of 24 people. It landed as one of the most valuable sessions the program had ever run, and was invited into annual programming.

Role Workshop Architect & Co-Facilitator
Format 90-min in-person workshop · Washington, DC
Audience 24 cross-functional emerging leaders
24

Leaders across four project teams

90

Minutes from warm-up to homework

∞

Invited into annual LEAD programming

The Brief

Smart people.
Jumping to solutions.

By January 2026, the LEAD cohort was at a pivot point: project teams had just formed and the real work was beginning. The program manager's concern was familiar to anyone who's watched capable people rush past the problem — teams were eager to solve, but weren't spending enough time understanding what they were actually trying to solve for.

We were asked to design a 90-minute session for day two of a three-day DC intensive. It was also the Design Guild's debut — four designers and a senior director of product, facilitating together in front of senior Red Cross leadership for the first time.

Session Design

What would they need to
leave believing?

Before designing a single activity, I met with the LEAD program manager to understand what wasn't working. Three pain points came up: teams struggled to let go of ideas that weren't panning out, they had a fuzzy picture of who they were solving for, and they underestimated how much their assumptions were shaping their direction.

Those became the backbone. We designed backwards from a single question: what would participants need to leave believing, knowing, and able to do? We also made one deliberate cut — no ideation. The goal was to slow teams down before they committed to a solution, not help them generate more of them.

The Session

Six acts in
ninety minutes.

1
LEGO warm-up Build a tower, then tilt it 45 degrees. What would you have asked at the start, if you'd known what you know now? That's the whole point of problem framing.
2
Double Diamond overview Not theory — a practical case for why spending more time on the problem leads to better solutions, and why diverging before converging matters.
3
Five Whys Each person drafted a problem statement, then asked "why is that a problem?" five times. Teams built their core problem in LEGO and compared — discovering their teammates often had completely different mental models of the same project.
4
Assumption mapping Teams separated facts from assumptions, then identified which assumptions were both important and poorly supported. Those became the things to test before committing to a direction.
5
Problem statement anatomy Worked through examples of weak and strong problem statements. Teams rewrote their own using a structured template: who is affected, what is the problem, why does it happen, what is the impact.
6
Tiny tests A practical intro to low-risk ways to validate assumptions before building. Homework: identify one small test to run in the next month before committing to a solution.
What Made It Work

Tools they could use
the next morning.

1

We used their actual projects, not hypotheticals

Every activity was grounded in the real project each team had just been assigned. The tools felt immediately useful rather than theoretical because participants were applying them to work that actually mattered to them.

2

LEGO made invisible misalignment visible

Two people can use identical words to describe a problem and have completely different mental models of it. Building the problem in LEGO and comparing builds surfaced that — fast. Making it visible early is one of the most valuable things a team can do before starting work.

3

Assumption mapping traveled beyond the session

Of all the tools introduced, this got the strongest response. Participants saw immediately how to apply it not just to their LEAD projects, but to how they work day-to-day — a shared language for the difference between what you know and what you're betting on.

Response

Invited back
before we'd left the room.

Feedback came from multiple directions — participants said it was immediately applicable, program leadership said the tools would travel beyond the session, and the program manager extended an invitation to make it part of annual LEAD programming.

"Your ability to guide participants through questioning techniques, assumptions, and structured problem-definition tools was incredibly valuable."
— LEAD Program Manager
"One of the most valuable — and actionable — sessions they've had."
— Product Manager and LEAD participant
Workshop Facilitation Problem Framing Assumption Mapping Five Whys Human-Centered Design Curriculum Design LEGO Serious Play Leadership Development