The AI Framework That Simplifies Problem-Solving for SMBs

Transforming Problem-Solving with AI: My Proven 3-Step Process — Understand, Uncover, Unlock©

8 min readJan 2, 2025

As a consultant for SMB Owners and CEOs, I’ve spent years grappling with the same question: How can we address problems effectively without getting buried in complexity? Small and medium-sized businesses don’t have the luxury of sprawling teams or endless resources. They need solutions that are fast, practical, and easy to implement. This challenge inspired me to develop my U-cubed or U³ Framework, powered by ChatGPT.

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article Transforming Problem-Solving with AI: My Proven 3-Step Process — Understand, Uncover, Unlock© by Greg Twemlow, image by Ideogram

Let me share how this process came to life — a journey that started with a problem I needed to solve for my business.

This article serves as the priority date for the claim of Copyright for the phrase “Understand, Uncover, Unlock©”, dated January 2nd 2025 in Sydney Australia.

This is a simplified version of a Six-step problem-solving model explained in this Medium article.

Defining My Objective: What Can I Learn from Analysing Historical Client Projects?

In 2024, I realised my consulting practice had a treasure trove of knowledge locked away in years of client assignments. From 2015 onward, I had completed hundreds of engagements, but the insights were scattered across Word docs, PDFs, spreadsheets, and emails. Each project represented a wealth of experience — successes, lessons learned, and patterns waiting to be uncovered. Having become quite an expert in using GenAI for my clients, I realised it was the key to mining historical documents efficiently.

The root cause became clear: I didn’t have a centralised procedure to capture all of the artifacts related to client projects. Like many SMBs, I moved so fast that I never paused to organise and reflect. It wasn’t a data availability problem but data usability and the absence of a tool like GenAI.

Once I identified the root cause, the next step was to uncover deeper insights to grasp the problem’s impact fully. That’s when I decided to name my process “Understand, Uncover, Unlock©,” and when I realised I needed a much shorter name, U-cubed or U³.

Discovering Insights: Letting AI Do the Heavy Lifting

Enter ChatGPT. I began experimenting with structured prompts to make sense of my historical data. I’ve now captured the process I developed and outlined it here:

Upload a batch of client documents.
Use targeted prompts to extract trends, challenges, and lessons learned.
Validate insights by comparing ChatGPT’s analysis with team input.

For example, I ran a test with 10 client assignments from the past year. ChatGPT helped me:

Identify recurring client pain points (e.g., scaling teams efficiently).
Highlight patterns in successful solutions we’d implemented.
Uncover missed opportunities for cross-selling services.

What struck me was the speed of the analysis and clarity ChatGPT brought to the process. It eliminated biases, synthesised diverse perspectives, and transformed unstructured data into actionable insights in minutes.

Delivering Solutions: From Problem to Progress

With these insights, I turned to ChatGPT to generate solutions. Here’s how the process unfolded:

Prompt: “Based on these challenges, suggest three actionable strategies we can implement within our constraints.”
Output:

Create a centralised knowledge repository for all client assignments.
Automate tagging and categorisation of new project artifacts.
Run quarterly reviews to identify trends in client needs.

These weren’t just ideas but feasible next steps aligned with my resources and goals. I saw immediate improvements in leveraging historical knowledge by implementing even one of these solutions.

Here’s My 3-Step Framework: Understand, Uncover, Unlock© — the U³ Framework

Reflecting on this experience, I realised the process could be distilled into three simple steps — a framework I called U³: Understand, Uncover, Unlock©.

Understand the Problem: Clarify what’s going on by identifying root causes. Use prompts like, “What’s the challenge in your own words? Why do you think this is happening?”
Uncover Insights: Gather diverse perspectives and assess the impact. Ask, “What happens if this isn’t solved? Who or what is most affected?”
Unlock Solutions: Generate practical, actionable strategies. Prompt ChatGPT with, “Suggest three solutions based on this problem and its constraints.”

The U-cubed framework is more than a method — it’s a mindset shift. It simplifies problem-solving without compromising depth, making it ideal for SMBs navigating complex challenges with limited bandwidth.

Why ChatGPT is the Perfect Partner for SMBs

ChatGPT is central to this process for a few reasons:

Transparency: ChatGPT enables 100% transparency in the problem-solving process. At a minimum, it provides a clear, collaborative record of the steps taken to understand the problem and unlock the solution.
Speed: It synthesises information and delivers insights faster than any manual approach.
Objectivity: It removes emotional bias, focusing purely on facts and context.
Scalability: The same prompts can tackle one-off problems or recurring issues across multiple teams.

Its scalability means the same prompts can efficiently handle a single issue or provide consistency across recurring challenges teams face. Solving today’s problems is valuable for SMB leaders, but building a repeatable system for continuous improvement is more valuable.

What’s Next? Let’s Solve Problems Together

If you’ve ever felt stuck, unsure if you’re tackling the correct issue, or overwhelmed by complexity, my U³ Framework is the perfect toolkit. It’s simple, actionable, and powered by ChatGPT’s AI capabilities.

Applying the U³ Framework allows SMB owners to approach challenges confidently with a transparent, efficient, and actionable AI-powered process. You can copy my U³ Prompt process, which is listed below.

Ready to explore how this framework can fit your business goals? Let’s connect for a free 15 to 20-minute voice or video chat to discuss your objectives and see how U³ can transform your problem-solving efforts.

Understand, Uncover, Unlock (U³) Framework, powered by ChatGPT, to save time and make SMB owners and CEOs feel more efficient and productive in their problem-solving tasks.

Ready to dive in? Here’s how the U³ Framework Prompt Process unfolds step-by-step. Copy all the text below from “Begin Text” to “End Text”, and paste it into your preferred AI.

Begin Text:

This is how you start the U³ Framework Prompt Process

Prompt:

“Please initiate the U³ Framework Prompt Process.”

This command launches the three-step U³ Framework, which guides the user through understanding the problem, uncovering insights, and unlocking solutions to ensure that inputs, clarifications, and iterative refinements are tracked in a single, continuous Chat session.

U³ Framework Prompt Process

The Three Steps of Problem Analysis

1-Understand the Problem

Stakeholders articulate their perspectives on the issue, allowing for a comprehensive definition. The AI captures and synthesises these inputs into a unified problem statement.

Example Prompt:

“Describe the problem from your perspective. Be as specific as possible.”

If there are multiple stakeholders, tag their perspectives. For example, Stakeholder 1 defines the problem this way, and Stakeholder 2 describes it this way.

AI Action:

The AI combines these perspectives into a blended description, identifying commonalities and highlighting discrepancies for further clarification.

Follow-Up Prompt:

“Why do you think this is happening? Keep asking ‘why’ to uncover the root cause of the problem.”

2-Uncover Insights

AI helps quantify the problem’s impact and explores diverse perspectives to enrich understanding.

Example Prompts:

“What happens if this problem isn’t solved?”

“Who or what is most affected by this issue?”

“Are there any new insights or perspectives that change how we see this problem?”

AI Action:

The companion synthesises responses, identifying patterns and gaps in understanding to capture all relevant perspectives before moving forward.

3-Unlock Solutions

AI proposes actionable, feasible strategies based on stakeholder-defined constraints and available insights.

Example Prompt:

“Suggest three potential solutions based on this problem and its constraints. For each, explain how it fits the constraints and its likely effectiveness.”

Iterative Refinement Prompt:

“Would you like to refine the constraints or explore additional possibilities?”

Expanded Prompt:

“Identify recurring themes or systemic opportunities for improvement based on past solutions.”

Tips for Effective Use

Session Continuity:

If the session is interrupted, resume by pasting saved inputs or asking ChatGPT:

“Continue the U³ Framework Prompt Process from where we left off.”

Optional Adjustments:

If the problem is well-defined, skip to Step 2 by prompting:
“Move to Step 2: Uncover Insights.”
Similarly, if insights are complete, proceed to Step 3 by typing:
“Move to Step 3: Unlock Solutions.”

Save Your Results:

Even though ChatGPT will preserve the Chat session after the session, it’s worth saving the results in a Cloud service like Grammarly to preserve the learnings and solutions for future reference.

End Text.

You Could Try a Multi-Step Prompt

Here’s a more guided version of the Prompt, which you could try and gauge which format works best for your problem research scenario.

Multi-Step Prompt: U³ Framework Prompt Process

Context:
You are an AI assistant helping a small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) owner solve a critical operational issue. The goal is to use the U³ Framework (Understand, Uncover, Unlock) to identify the root cause, uncover actionable insights, and propose feasible solutions.

Task:
Guide the SMB owner through the U³ Framework to address their problem systematically. Use the steps and instructions provided below to ensure a clear, collaborative, and transparent process.

Instructions:

1. Understand the Problem

Objective:
Clarify the problem by identifying its root causes.

Prompts:
“Describe the problem from your perspective. Be as specific as possible. If there are multiple stakeholders, include their perspectives separately.”
“Why do you think this is happening? Keep asking ‘why’ until you reach the root cause of the issue.”
AI Action:
Combine all stakeholder perspectives into a blended problem statement.
Highlight commonalities and discrepancies for further clarification.
Output:
A clear, validated problem statement agreed upon by all stakeholders.

2. Uncover Insights

Objective:
Assess the problem’s impact and gather diverse perspectives to enrich understanding.

Prompts:
“What happens if this problem isn’t solved?”
“Who or what is most affected by this issue?”
“Are there any new insights or perspectives that change how we see this problem?”
AI Action:
Quantify the problem’s impact where possible.
Synthesize responses, identifying patterns, gaps, or recurring themes.
Output:
A detailed assessment of the problem’s scope, supported by insights from all relevant stakeholders.

3. Unlock Solutions

Objective:
Generate practical, feasible strategies based on stakeholder-defined constraints and insights.

Prompts:
“Suggest three potential solutions based on this problem and its constraints. For each, explain how it fits the constraints and its likely effectiveness.”
“What constraints should we consider for potential solutions? For example, is there a budget limit, or must the solution be cloud-based?”
“Would you like to refine the constraints or explore additional possibilities?”
“Identify recurring themes or systemic opportunities for improvement based on past solutions.”
AI Action:
Propose actionable solutions aligned with constraints.
Highlight trade-offs and benefits for each option.
Output:
A shortlist of practical solutions, complete with a rationale and next steps for implementation.

Optional Adjustments:

If the problem is well-defined, skip to Step 2 by prompting:
“Move to Step 2: Uncover Insights.”
Similarly, if insights are complete, proceed to Step 3 by prompting:
“Move to Step 3: Unlock Solutions.”

Final Output:
A complete report documenting:

The problem statement.
Key insights and impact assessment.
Proposed solutions, including trade-offs and benefits.

Session Continuity:
If interrupted, resume by pasting saved inputs or asking ChatGPT:
“Continue the Multi-Step Prompt Process from where we left off.”

End of Multi-Step Prompt Format

This structured version ensures clarity and guides the user step-by-step, maintaining transparency while leveraging the U³ Framework effectively.