017: The Hidden Reason Billion-Dollar Projects Overrun Even With Stage Gate

Every major capital project team will tell you they have a stage gate process. According to Iwona Wilson, having the process and having the capability to use it are two completely different things – and the gap between them is costing the industry hundreds of millions per project.

Iwona Wilson is co-founder and CEO of Wolfson Peace Consulting and author of Where Projects Are Won or Lost: A Practical Guide to Early Decision Framing and Governance. With 20 years across oil and gas, mining, and capital projects in Australia, the UK, and the US – including over a decade teaching decision gate process at one of Australia’s largest energy producers, she’s built her career around the question most organizations don’t ask until it’s too late: are we making good decisions, or just passing gates?

Iwona Wilson is co-founder and CEO of Wolfson Peace Consulting and author of Where Projects Are Won or Lost: A Practical Guide to Early Decision Framing and Governance. With 20 years across oil and gas, mining, and capital projects in Australia, the UK, and the US, she specializes in decision gate process, opportunity framing, and building the organizational capabilities that separate projects that deliver from those that overrun.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/iwona-wilson/

What You’ll Learn

1. Having a stage gate process is not the same as having decision-making capability Most organizations have phases, templates, and mandatory gate checklists. What they’re missing is the ability to frame opportunities, challenge assumptions, align stakeholders across functions, and measure decision quality. When companies call Iwona for help, it’s almost always after a major overrun or project cancellation – not before. The process without the capability is an approval system, not a governance system.

2. Projects are won or lost before the FID – and most organizations ignore this The final investment decision gets all the attention. But by the time it arrives, the team is emotionally, politically, and financially committed. Real leverage lives in the assess and concept phases, when assumptions are still negotiable and changes are cheapest. Iwona’s rule: all decisions are equally important, but not all carry the same consequences. The early ones carry the most — because no one’s watching yet.

3. Six dimensions of decision quality – and why commitment is always the weakest Iwona teaches the decision quality wheel: appropriate frame, creative alternatives, relevant information, values and trade-offs, sound logic, and commitment to action. The quality of your decision is only as good as its weakest dimension. Teams can produce brilliant analysis and clear options — and still have no one willing to own the outcome. Commitment is where good decisions die.

4. Opportunity framing workshops work because they’re designed to be uncomfortable

Traditional meetings self-censor. When real disagreement surfaces — what researcher Sam Kaner calls the “groan zone” – most leaders schedule a follow-up and call it progress. Opportunity framing workshops use a neutral facilitator to carry teams through that discomfort intentionally. Teams that do the hard work early execute faster and encounter fewer surprises. “An opportunity framing workshop can be really messy,” Iwona says. “But this is the cost of alignment.”

Resources Mentioned

• Decision Analysis — David Skinner (founder, Society of Decision Professionals)
• Where Projects Are Won or Lost — Iwona Wilson and Austin Wilson (available on Amazon)
• Society of Decision Professionals — sdpro.org (Houston chapter, University of Houston student chapter)
• Wolfson Peace Consulting — www.wilson.biz
• Decision gate training and cohort — academy.wilson.biz
• Upcoming: Global Project Management Forum, Riyadh (September); PMI Houston Conference (August)