A Four-Step Approach to Overcome Challenges

In 2006 Roz Savage was attempting to row the Atlantic Ocean in a small 7-metre (23-foot) boat. As she set off, little did she know ahead of her were the worst conditions the race she was taking part in had ever seen. It was her first time attempting to row across an ocean and, by her own admission, felt a long way out of her comfort zone.

Tropical storms and huge seas were set to cause havoc. During one particularly bad storm, huge waves broke her spare oars. Her first set was already damaged. Now she was almost literally up the proverbial creek without a paddle and she was only halfway through the crossing.

She wasn’t ready to give up. She paused and assessed the situation. Two oars were beyond repair, but she had hope for the other set. Looking around she spied a boat hook and had an idea. She split it in two and then, with some duct tape, used it to splint two of the broken oars. She was back underway again.

That lasted for a while but gave out. Using her ingenuity once again, she took the wheel axles from the spare rowing seat and used them to make the oars usable. Eventually, that too gave out and she then used one of the broken oars.

On top of this, she had to deal with tendonitis, sores, and key equipment like her satellite phone breaking. Each time, she either found a solution or just carried on if there wasn’t one. At times it all seemed overwhelming but when it did, she would just focus on the next day, the next rowing shift or just the next 10 strokes. Whatever seemed achievable.

After 103 difficult days, she finally reached Antigua and the end of her crossing.

“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.”

Moliere

Snakes and Ladders

Life is like a game of snakes and ladders. More often than not, despite best-laid plans, challenges come up and threaten to derail us. We can either slide down the ladder and wave the white flag. Or we get up, brush ourselves off and find a solution.

One of the financial services organisations I worked at had the concept of a PACE moment. It is one of the most useful and widely applicable tools I took away from my years in banking.

• Pause

• Assess

• Challenge

• Execute

1. Pause

Pause, breathe and accept before moving forward.

Give yourself a moment, an hour, a day, or whatever is needed to take a moment and step back. This could be putting a pause on a project or taking a timeout.

Accept the situation.

Resisting a situation increases the suffering and takes vital energy. Of course, we want things to be different, but wishing doesn’t make it so. We might ask ourselves, ‘Why me?’ or tell ourselves, ‘It’s not fair.’ We allow frustration to build.

Say you’re stuck in a traffic jam, getting frustrated and angry obviously aren’t going to change things. Sitting there shouting at the traffic or banging the steering wheel with a fist won’t part the traffic as the sea did for Moses. Instead, by doing this we are turning up the dial on our suffering.

“Suffering is resistance to what is.”

Eckhart Tolle

Resistance keeps us away from solution mode. As Holocaust survivor and psychologist Dr Edith Eger says, we need to move from ‘Why me?’ to ‘What now?’

Take your time, breath and bring your attention to what is in your control — your response, in the shape of your thoughts, feelings and actions.

Managing our emotional response is vital to overcoming challenges. Finding solutions and making decisions is rarely improved by an emotionally charged state.

2. Assess

Assess the situation and what the options are to overcome the challenge. We move into, ‘What now?’

Like Roz looking around the boat, come up with solutions. Where are you and where do you need to get to? What are the options to get you there?

Go with some blue-sky thinking. In other words, come up with creative and novel ideas not limited by current thinking or beliefs. Don’t be constrained by practicalities, capabilities or perceived infeasibility. By thinking outside the box, you allow truly creative solutions to emerge.

Those initially crazy and implausible solutions could take you to one that is achievable and practical.

This is something I need to get better at. During an expedition I led down the Nile I got to experience a great example of problem-solving in a high-pressure situation.

On day six we were attacked by a hippo. It was day one in hippo territory with weeks of dealing with these feisty blighters ahead of us.

The accepted approach when in hippo-infested waters, is to slap the surface of the water with your paddle. They pop their heads up from their slumber beneath the surface to see what’s going on. You then spot them and paddle around them.

That’s all well and good on a wide river, but where we were there wasn’t adequate space to put a safe distance between us and them. One of the rafting guides Peter came up with a solution. Instead of trying to paddle around them, we would get out of the raft, onto the opposite riverbank and tow the raft past them. It was a genius idea and one we put into practice many times.

Invest time in coming up with multiple options. Try not to let panic or frustration push you to jump on the first idea (what impatient me tends to do). If you’ve got people around you, brainstorm.

3. Challenge

Narrow down your options by challenging them. Look at each of the options and consider the potential outcomes, what could go wrong and what has not been considered. You might ask someone to be the devil’s advocate.

Consider creating a ‘red team’ if you have the resources. This was developed by US military and intelligence agencies based on the devil’s advocate approach. It’s used to overcome cognitive bias and group thinking.

The red team is tasked with thinking critically about the problem, recognising biases in the proposed solutions and uncovering weaknesses and unseen threats as well as challenging decision-makers in their assumptions.

If you’re solo, then try to be your own devil’s advocate.

Identify what you don’t know. Then reduce the information gap if you can. Annie Duke, a professional poker player, advises considering the three Ps: preferences, payoffs and probabilities. This helps unpack what you don’t know and increases the quality of your decision against a set of potential outcomes from your solutions.

1. Preference — for the potential outcomes of the decision. This is individual and influenced by previous experience, beliefs and your goals and values (and has the potential to cloud your judgement).

2. Payoff — how it affects your progress toward the goal. The upside and downside potential — what you stand to gain vs the negative potential for each option (risk).

3. Probability — take into account the likelihood of these outcomes. This is likely to be a guess, but this will

Once you’ve done your assessment, pick your solution.

4. Execute

Work out the plan and steps required. You might consider the milestones on the way to the completion point to help track your progress.

Then put it into action. Take one step and then the next. Keep evaluating your progress.

Challenges can wear us down and make our reaching our goals seem overwhelming. In this case, we have to follow Roz’s approach and focus on the next stroke. Or however far ahead we can aim without feeling overwhelmed. They become mini-milestones.

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”

Joshua J Marine

As you successfully reach each milestone, when you‘ve overcome the obstacle and when you achieve your goal — celebrate! Take time to congratulate yourself, your team and whoever was involved. Reflect on what worked, what you could have done differently and bank the experience.

Where we get to is less of a measure of who we are. Instead, it is how we respond to the challenges we face and overcome.

That is far more a reflection of who we really are.