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Getting corporate projects done means facing into and overcoming significant challenges.  And lots of them. 

Research has shown delaying decisions or failing to make timely choices leads to increased project complexity, higher costs, and reduced overall success rates. 

For many people, facing into and overcoming challenges on projects is super stressful.  ‘Where do I start?’, ‘How to work out the best option?’, ‘How do I consult with the right people?’, ‘How do I make sure the solution to the challenge is implemented?’ are common concerns I hear from clients in my coaching practice. 

One proven way to help you overcome stress when faced with challenges on projects is to use a simple and reliable model or process that guides you towards making decisions and taking action to implement them.  Trust the process!  Taking action relieves stress and maintains momentum which is key to delivering project results.    

In this article, I’ll share the 3DI Challenge Solution Model – Disclose, Discuss, Decide and Implement, a simple to use four step approach I developed from experience and research into decision making that will relieve stress and help you get more projects done by enabling you to take action faster to overcome significant challenges.

What is a project ‘challenge’ and why does it cause stress?

OK, lets start by framing what I mean by a ‘challenge’ for a project.   In my experience, a challenge is an obstacle that must be overcome to achieve the results you need from the project.   A challenge becomes significant when there is no clear and obvious path to move forward, the stakes are high and involving the expertise and input of others is necessary to find the right approach. 

Challenges cause stress for many people working on projects – particularly if you have to juggle a project with your other day to day responsibilities, there is significant uncertainty or ambiguity and limited time to ponder what to do.  The stress comes from intense feelings of discomfort in not knowing how to decide what action to take to keep moving forward and feeling pressure of limited time to act.  The more discomfort we feel, the greater the stress.

Stress affects how our brains work and in particular how we make decisions.  When people are under significant stress, their ability to think clearly, evaluate options objectively, and make optimal decisions can be compromised.  

Ema Tanovic, a psychologist with the Boston Consulting Group in Philadelphia, who has also researched the consequences of uncertainty at Yale University says, “Uncertainty can intensify how threatening a situation feels.”

Research into stress and decision making has also found it can have an amplified effect on how men and women view risk.  In research conducted by Mara Mather and Nichole R. Lighthall, they found stress can lead to males taking on more risk and females less risk when under stress.  Your personal experience may differ to the research results, however, it highlights stress can cause us to make sub optional decisions that can have negative impacts on project results. 

How does having a mental model or process help reduce stress and overcome challenges?

Mental models and processes help us make sense of complexity and ambiguity.  Research has found that structured decision-making processes, characterized by clear steps, information gathering, and analysis, are associated with higher decision quality and improved decision speed.

Mental models help us break down complexity and ambiguity into more manageable chunks, making it easier for us to understand and navigate.   Think of Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model, Jim Collins’ Hedgehog Concept and McKinsey’s Three Horizons Framework.  They relieve us of stress because they provide confidence there is a way to move from the discomfort of unknowing to the comfort of clarity and action. 

Trying to solve a significant project challenge without a method to guide you is like trying to solve a large jigsaw puzzle without the picture – seriously frustrating and stressful. 

The 3DI Challenge Solution Model

Jim Collins, author of Built to Last and Good to Great once said “it’s really the stream of decisions over time, brilliantly executed, that accounts for great outcomes”.   It’s another way of saying: routinely making and implementing great decisions that overcomes challenges gets you results. 

The 3DI Model helps you firstly understand a challenge with sufficient depth and clarity and then guides you take action by making choices and decisions that lead to outcomes that move a project forward, towards delivering results.  The path of first understanding and then taking action in a structured way helps everyone involved know how and what to contribute and provides confidence you can achieve the best outcome.  This helps reduce stress and make better decisions. 

How do I use the 3DI Challenge Solution Model?

Step 1:  Disclose

The first step is to disclose challenges that people believe need to be resolved.   It also involves inviting the right people to be part of the process.  

Disclosing the challenge means acknowledging and describing it in sufficient detail and with the right evidence so people understand the decisions and actions are needed to help keep the project moving forward.

At times challenges can be difficult to disclose where they personally impact people.  It’s important to create a psychologically safe environment where team members feel comfortable sharing concerns, risks, and potential roadblocks without fear of reprisal or ridicule.  This paves the way for all challenges to be overcome and nothing unsaid floats like an iceberg beneath the surface of the project, waiting for the team to crash into it. 

Actions to help you Disclose the challenge:

• Find a whiteboard, piece of paper or use the 3DI Method Worksheet to write down and describe what the challenge is. 

• Use words to describe ‘what’ is currently happening or not and also ‘why’ it is happening.

• Where you need data to fully understand the extent of the challenge – be clear on what you need and when you need it to help move to the next step.  Data helps remove personal biases from the process which leads to better decisions.

• Confirm when the challenge needs to be solved by.

• Don’t move on until you feel the real challenge is understood by all.  Rarely is the first attempt at describing the challenge the real one.

• Once you’ve described the challenge, so everyone gets it, move on to Discussing it.

Step 2:  Discuss

You’ve heard the phrase “a problem shared is a problem halved”.  The goal of this step is achieving a shared understanding of how the challenge could be overcome and the pros and cons of different options to do this.  Rarely is there just one solution to a problem.   Your job here is to discuss the challenge with the right people and work through options so decisions can be made and actions taken. 

 Actions to help you Discuss the challenge:

• Start with discussing what impacts the challenge has on project outcomes.  Work through impacts on specific project measurables, on stakeholders, the organisations health and sustainability and on other projects.

• Explore effects on project inputs. These include project costs, time, resources and momentum..  These include project costs, time, resources and momentum.

• Determine if there are any constraints that need to be considered in developing options.  These are either must haves (eg certain technology) or must nots (eg. cannot exceed a certain budget)

• All project team views should be canvassed.  Where you need other viewpoints or opinions (such as from stakeholders or sponsors) gain agreement and timeframes on when these will be provided.

• Once all views are expressed, move onto identifying options to address the challenge.

• Create options sufficiently different from each other.  Identify pros and cons of each solution and test them against how each best solves the challenge and the risks that need to be managed.

• Your aim is to ideally have three but no more six options.  Research has found more than six options can cause decision paralysis. 

Step 3:  Decide

Deciding on the best way to solve a challenge means weighing up the pros and cons of each option.  Often, there is one clear winner.  Where there is more than one clear path to solve a challenge, it helps to set out the criteria that will help you make the decision.   To apply the criteria where they are not equivalent, it helps to set weightings to arrive at a  ‘balanced best case option’.

By making a decision, you provide yourself with a sense of direction and clarity.  The act of deciding allows you to take control of the situation and take proactive measures to address the uncertainty, reducing stress.  It provides a framework for action and helps you move forward, even if the outcome is not guaranteed.

Actions to help you make Decisions that will resolve the challenge:

• Determine the criteria you need to make the decision – add weightings to the criteria where they are not equivalent in importance to resolving the challenge.  Sometimes time is more important than money and vice vera.  Each project will have its own set of criteria most important to achieving the results needed. 

• Understand the risks of each options and include these in your considerations.  For example one option may be less cost but have a lot more risk of being successful.

• Determine who needs to participate in arriving at a recommendation and who has the authority to make the decision and endorse actions needed to implement it.

• Options should be discussed until there is either consensus or at least a majority in favour of one. 

• Sometimes you have to go back to the discussion step where new information comes to light that requires the options to be reconsidered.

Step 4:  Implement

Time to take action!  Break the decision into parts that can be implemented.  Be clear on what needs to happen, by when and with what desired outcome.   If there’s a clear order to when things need to be done make sure that is known by all.  If you keep actions in a register, add these to it and note when an update on progress is to be provided to make sure there’s traction on solving the challenge.

Actions that help you Implement decisions to resolve the challenge:

• Owned: The solution needs to be owned by someone.

• Outcome focused: Be clear on the outcome needed for each part of the decision. Be as specific as required to make sure there is no confusion over what needs to happen.

• Timeboxed:  Timeframe to complete the action(s) needs to align with achieving overall project results and agreed to by the person owning achievement of the outcome.

• Resourced: Where support or additional resources are needed make sure these are understood and able to be made available.

• Informed:  Inform stakeholders impacted by the decision and what this means for them.  Where support and alignment is needed work on strategies to achieve this.

• Monitored: Set timeframes to check in on progress and test to make sure the challenge has been overcome.

Overcoming challenges is part of the excitement and, at times, stress of working on projects.  Using a simple and structured approach is like having the picture to a jigsaw puzzle, it guides you to gather pieces of information, analyse them, and fit them together to overcome the challenge, with a lot less stress!

Give the 3DI Challenge Solution approach a go and let me know what you think.  You can download the 3DI Model and Implementation Guide from the resources section of our website.

At ThinkClear Group we help people in corporate roles excel at delivering projects.  If you’re looking to level up your project delivery skills and fast track your career, click here -> to book a discovery session today.