STR.5:1 - Problem frame

Use this pattern when the current direction no longer answers the strategic concern, when promising ideas do not yet express different contributions, or when something should change but the worthwhile contribution is still unknown. Ask where the person or organization could contribute, to whom, and through what capability and resource logic.

A strategic direction explains a contribution to pursue and the reasons for pursuing it. It guides later choices as a conditional filter: which proposals fit, which do not, and which need a missing answer. Its working result here is a set of different proposed directions, with enough substance to compare or develop them. If the receiving problem is still unconfirmed, the first useful return can instead be a provisional problem and contribution with the question that would confirm, change or reject it. That is not yet a complete direction, and neither result is a funded programme.

The practical gain is to distinguish “what might be worth pursuing” from a list of attractive activities. A new platform, training programme and customer visit may support one direction; listing them separately does not produce three directions.

Reuse an adequate direction or an applicable development-advice result when the missing work is only a bounded choice or commitment. Generating alternatives is not obligatory when no credible alternative could change the present decision. Consequential claims about demand, capability, financing or protected obligations need their own evidence and authority before dependent action.