Creative Problem Solving Through Design Thinking & Collaborative Leadership for PMOs

Problems in project and PMO environments are rarely only technical: politics, ambiguity, competing priorities, silos and untested assumptions make them hard, and conventional problem-solving approaches often fall short. The session set out to help participants reframe complex project challenges, apply core design-thinking principles, strengthen collaboration across diverse stakeholders, and use practical leadership techniques to move teams from discussion to solution and execution.

Dr. Mona Carlos A. Zoughaib ran the session as a live problem-solving lab rather than a lecture. A one-word "chat storm" opened it: what makes a problem hard in a PMO? Politics, ambiguity, competing priorities, silos, time pressure and assumptions all point the same way: complexity is rarely only technical, so the solution cannot be only procedural.

She then described the trap PMOs fall into: a request ("build a dashboard") rests on an assumption ("more visibility will fix delays"), the dashboard is delivered on time, and decisions are still unclear. Efficiency is not the same as value. Creative problem solving was presented as a disciplined rhythm of diverging and converging, and design thinking as a human-centered learning loop: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test, moving back and forth as the team learns.

Collaborative leaders, she argued, shift from answer-givers to process architects:

• they invite the edge, bringing users, quiet experts and frontline people into the room;
• they separate ideas from ego;
• they make disagreement usable by asking "What are we missing?";
• they run small experiments that replace assumptions with evidence.

Participants then worked through a live simulation, "The PMO Intake Meltdown": a new intake form that business teams ignore, leaders who want faster prioritization, and teams who see the PMO as bureaucracy. In four timed rounds (facts, assumptions and questions; an empathy snapshot; a "How might we" question with eight ideas; a 30-second prototype pitch) they designed a low-risk experiment to speed up decisions without adding burden, then judged it as desirable, feasible, viable and worth learning from.

The session closed with how a PMO can embed discovery before delivery through lightweight learning gates, from intake and triage to discovery, optioning, governance and delivery, and with a 30-day micro-experiment: frame a request, listen to three users, prototype one changed touchpoint, then test and decide the next move.