Plan the various stages and activities of the project and break the tasks down into chunks of work that need to be done. Where possible, involve all members of your team to bring in all perspectives and test the plan against their specialist knowledge. Remember, you don’t know what they know about their jobs and how they see them.

A useful tip is to work backwards from the end goal, identifying all the things that need to be done, in reverse order. You may also find it helpful to run an ideas session with the project team to generate ideas.

Cause and effect diagrams, sometimes called fishbone diagrams or Ishikawa diagrams after inventor Professor Kaoru Ishikawa of Tokyo University (see Figure 2) are useful for brainstorming, exploring different perspectives and working out the factors that might otherwise be forgotten. By going through the process of building one with your team, everybody gains insight into the problem and can explore possible solutions. They will benefit too from sharing each other’s contributions, leading to a common understanding of the problem within the team.