Working Group B: What principles are important in dealing with complexity?

[Stephen Grey]

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Davin

What survey is this?

 

Was there meant to be an attachment?

 

Steve

[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Group B,

The survey we sent out to Fellows of ICCPM:

Dear ICCPM Fellow,

The ICCPM Managing Risk in Complexity Special Interest Group (MRC SIG) has two working groups. Working Group B is tackling the question:

“How can we “wake up” project leaders and stakeholders who are reluctant to accept or apply complexity methods and models?”

We know that trust is an important factor in whether people are willing (or able) to change how they think and work. Yet by itself is not always enough. We would value your experiences, thoughts and insights on the following questions:

How can we establish trust or at least a willingness to engage, with people who are currently locked into ‘reductionist’ ways of thinking and working in and on projects?

What other barriers might prevent project leaders or stakeholders from shifting their perspectives and behaviours?

Or are these the wrong questions? Feel free to make suggestions.

Has only produced 4 responses to date. I wonder if the members of Group B can encourage Fellows they know to also undertake the survey, so we can get a wider range of views for our meeting this Thursday.

Cheers

Davin

[Santhosh Therakam]

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Thanks Davin Shellshear for the transcripts. For some reason I could not find the Zoom meeting invite for 22/07 (change from 2week to 3week interval). Did the rest of the group get updated invites from ICCPM?

Re the questionnaire, great discussion on Stephen’s model and commentary from the group.

I have two suggestions to make:

a. I would suggest the questionnaire to include both leading and open questions

b. Recently I have completed the ‘2021 Global Survey on Transformation and Project Management’ for PMI and PwC which took close to 30mins. They have added a completion bonus from PMI – a free PMI course worth USD280! Can we offer something similar from ICCPM to the participants to encourage their active and truthful participation?

Looking forward to our next meeting. Thanks

[Santhosh Therakam]

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Thanks Richard for sharing your paper with the group and for shedding light on some of the key issues we are facing as PM professionals – BOK v Practice. Great work.

Cheers

Santhosh

[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Group B

Attached is the transcript of Meeting No 6

Happy reading

Cheers

Davin Shellshear

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[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Richard

Thanks for the paper – You get a Facebook like for that one! Good discussion.

I think it is relevant to Group B topic, and just as true as when you wrote it.

I think it would add value if you were to publish today, and may challenge some of the close thinking academic organisations tend to adopt.

Cheers

Davin

[Richard Barber]

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In the meeting today we discussed the dynamics holding the PM profession in ‘traditional thinking’ and practice.   Attached is an unpublishedpaper I wrote in 2001 on that exact topic.  It includes some diagrams illustrating the challange and looks at it from a number of perspectives.    I wonder if I could publish it today, unchanged?

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[Andrew Pyke]

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Team,

Following-up on Ian’s comments, here is IPMA’s complexity framework: https://www.ipma.world/individuals/certification/complexity/

[Andrew Pyke]

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Team,

I just wanted to let you know that I hadn’t forgotten my action from the last meeting, to outline a “monograph” (to borrow from the Australian Risk Policy Institute) on “Waking Up the CEO” (re-titled more politely).   My humble micro-business and less humble clients have kept me diverted, but I have it on my task list.  🙂

[Ian Mack]

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Thanks Davin for the complexity nuances in the behaviour colour model.

 Stephen – Regarding your proposed question, I thought I had posted my thoughts weeks ago. It is repeated here: –> “I do have three points and two questions: (1) I think we will need a lead-in that defines all the terms for clarity (e.g. complexity, design), (2) perhaps we should use ‘Project Team and/or Stakeholders’ and “Teamwork and/or Stakeholder Relations’, (3) perhaps we should also include education by adding it specifically as follows ‘Intensive Early Planning, Design and/or Education on Complexity Methods’ (and I am not sue ‘design’ should be included at all), (4) who would you see us sending this too, I assume not Fellows?, and (5) I feel stupid but I am not sure that I understand how one would select a letter inside a triangle, are they no more than an attempt to show where in the three factors your answer saw the most emphasis?” 

That said, if you think it is too ‘leading’, feel free to ignore. I do not share your concern Stephen as we agreed on a question and if it is off the mark then all we have done is off the mark?

One additional thought comes to mind. If we worry about the question we have posed for ourselves and by extension the questions we want to ask of others for feedback, perhaps we should present out question(s) and then say that ‘if you think that we have asked the wrong questions about why complex methods such as risk analysis and treatment  have not become more accepted and widespread across the globe in the past decade, tell us what you think may be holding back the broader pursuit of such methods in complex endeavours’. Just another prism to offer?

 Ian’

[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Stephen,

I really like the model you have put forward, and particularly appreciate using the triangulated questions – typical of sense maker. The triangle questions force respondents to think a lot more when answering. It seems just putting a cross on a line is too easy and does not encourage deep thought.

I am also happy with the questions you have posed.

What do others think – will the model work, do you have some suggestions to make it better, and how can we avoid letting our own paradigms colour our thinking and questions so we miss essential data?

Cheers

Davin

[Stephen Grey]

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These characteristic types are useful as are the questions that have been proposed to explore advice from people with experience

I am still concerned that we are asking for advice framed by our own understanding of the challenges associated with having complexity acknowledged and taken seriously

Can’t help feeling there will be matters we miss and responses we inadvertently influence due to our expectations being embedded in what we ask

My attempt at a lightweight Sensemaker style approach might not hit the mar, judging by the absence of any feedback, but something that opens the door to unconditioned input from the target audience seems to be worth pursuing

[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Ian,

Your are correct, but as with complex projects, its not quite that simple. Project management teams need all the world views to do their job well – and the blue is essential to ensure good processes, boundaries, schedules, rules and structure are in place.

The problem is that positive world views are needed – each world view has the potential to be expressed in positive, exaggerated and negative ways, and it is the negative and exaggerated aspects that often lead to risk issues. I have attached a small table to show the differences. As an example, a project needs positive red world view to enable timely decision making, focus and action. However, when red is expressed in the exaggerated aspect, we get power play, turf wars, ego gratification, aggression and bullying. All the things we don’t want. Equally, when red is expressed in the negative aspect, we will see inability to confront issues, decisions deferred again and again, lack of focus, undercurrents, sniping, backdoor politics, and issues fermenting and exploding at unpredictable times. Interestingly, as clients move more to collaborative contracts for Infrastructure and Services, I see a lot of negative red in the proposed leadership teams. I suspect that these attributes appear initially as ‘nice’ and ‘collaborative’ – but of course they are not.

It is a straightforward matter to understand the behavioural predispositions of individuals and teams – the tools are well developed. I would point out that in projects, the behavioural predispositions of the team are normally the most important consideration, not just the behavioural predispositions of the project manager.

This does not help us to approach Ministers and Seniors and wake them up, but it may help to understand some of the complexities in attempting to do that.

Cheers

Davin

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Davin Shellshear.

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[Ian Mack]

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An interesting short form paper, thanks for this behaviours set of concepts. I guess this suggests that the real problem children in adopting a complexity mindset and method set is probably the true blue folks, these being very common in the Private Sector I think. And I guess that means that, as part of a strategy to get organisations to embrace complexity, we need to coral the organisation’s Yellow and Orangs folks who can influence the true Blue decision-makers. Ian

[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi All,

On a number of occasions we have been talking about world views as a significant factor in addressing our Group B topic. I thought I would share my understanding on this matter.

A worldview or world-view is defined in Wikipedia as the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual’s or society’s knowledge and point of view. A worldview can include natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and ethics.

Different sources quote the 7 world-views (Theism, Atheism, Pantheism, Panentheism, Deism, Finite Godism, and Polytheism), the 4 world views (post-positivism, constructivism, advocacy/ participatory, and pragmatism), or even the 3 world-views (Honour-Shame, Guilt-Innocence, and Power-Fear), etc. The list goes on.

I would like to suggest that world views are fundamentally important in addressing our topic, as Richard points out when talking about Weltanschauung.

Unfortunately, the lists usually offered (above) are complex abstractions that offer little assistance in understanding how different people might respond to complexity in projects.

From my experience over the last 15 years, working actively with world views to understand behavioural pre-dispositions, I would like to share the attached framework which was developed by Dr Claire Graves (1914-1986). I liken these world views to the prime colours – from which any colour can be derived. The framework of Graves allows any behavioural pre-disposition of individuals and groups to be derived as a mix of the primary world-views.

I have attached a description of the world views as developed by Graves – for interest only.

Analysis over 50 years shows that there an even distribution of world views across the population – there is no skewed difference based on gender, race, or any other demographic factors.

I suggest that the world-views most likely to support a strong interest in project complexity are Yellow and Orange. Some world-views are likely to show little interest, or actively reject notions like complexity.

My personal interest is in being able to understand behavioural risk in projects, and I have used this approach in several large infrastructure and services Alliances and Collaborative contracts across Australia.

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