Facts may need to be gathered and objectives may need to be outlined. Taking the time in the beginning to identify everyone's concerns helps create a shared understanding of the problem as well as increasing awareness about the problem's multiple dimensions. Although you can never learn everything about the problem, you can learn enough to define the current situation and the desired situation. Once the problem is defined, then the board should work to understand and analyze the root causes to make sure the potential solution addresses the cause of the problem. It is important to understand the difference between causes and symptoms of the problem.
Causes are reasons for the problem.
Symptoms are something that indicates the presence of the problem. For example, a board may experience meetings that continually run into the night. This is a symptom of a problem. The problem cause may be ineffective meeting management skills. Brainstorming is a technique for finding a variety of ideas in a short time and can be used at all stages in the creative problem solving process.