Titanic Outcomes: Teaching Problem-Solving Skills In Execution Education Using Historical Events

Integrating historically remarkable events into the educational curriculum is an effective way to teach students problem solving skills, a core leadership competency. This experiential exercise, tailored to an Executive Education leadership course, involves a team activity based on the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Teams are invited to solve a complex problem in a classroom setting, accessing a range of diverse learning resources. A key learning outcome highlighted by the activity is the importance of questioning the problem context before attempting to solve it. The activity promotes active communication, teamwork, and raises awareness of how bias can impact problem-solving approaches. This activity can be used with a range of graduate courses in management curricula as well as in other leadership development programs such as Executive Education.