Start by organizing all the resources you need to collaborate. Add information about your team and type // to add the meeting’s date to the template. Share the template with your team and invite them to add questions and comments before you meet. If you’re meeting in person, book a room with a whiteboard, markers, and sticky notes.

When you meet with your team, start by explaining the goal of the meeting. Once you’ve set the stage, take a step back and think about the problem as a whole from the perspective of the people affected by it. Use the template to organize your thoughts about the problem’s causes and its impact on business.

Using the ideas generated by the team, craft one concise problem statement that sums up the issue from the customer’s perspective. The problem statement should include who is affected, what is affecting them, why it needs to be solved, and where the problem is happening. Once you’ve created a problem statement, share the page with teammates that didn’t attend the meeting and ask them to leave comments.