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

[Davin Shellshear]

#16894

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Hi Simon

I found that paper through a reference from

‘Complexity and leadership’ edited by Kiran Chauhan, Emma Crewe and Chris Mowles. A Routledge Book. If you like the PhD thesis, the book will really engage you.

You may be amused by the attached paper as well – Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations

Happy reading

 

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[Simon Springate]

#16893

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Thanks Davin – love the paper and have skimmed it (more of a book than a paper)

I see resonance for why the way we deliver projects hasn’t changed – (read Project for ‘people’).  The last paragraph below is particularly apposite regarding complex projects.

<i>I sensed a desire for the day to be over so that they could get back to their endless tasks. (P133)</i>

<i>why I might have felt ‘stuck’ and disappointed with my work at NEWTECH. I think this was because I continued to follow a process designed to elicit an outcome <u>that I no longer believed possible</u>. (P145)</i>

<i>I don’t know what to do’. After describing the situation, he asked the group how they might handle it. Others jumped in and shared similar examples or made suggestions. There were no prescriptions nor frameworks in the sense of ‘if….then’, just a conversation with examples and offers of support. (P149)</i>

<i>the goal of HR and LD programs is [should be] to help leaders deal with the everyday messiness and complexity of their experience at work</i>

<i>”There is staggering complexity in the interdependency of people in a large organization…. It is astounding that we continue to hold fantasies that single persons or small cliques of persons can steer such complexity to achieve targets that they have set in advance (Griffin, 2002: 218).” I used to believe in this ‘fantasy’ about leadership as it is commonly conceptualized in the dominant discourse, believing that leaders can stand outside of a situation and determine how it will unfold, despite experience suggesting the contrary (P154)</i>

<i>In taking the time to slow down and reflect on my practice, I believe I am honoring the memory of my former second supervisor, Professor Doug Griffin, who cautioned me, drawing on Alexander Pope, that ‘some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon’.</i>

 

[Davin Shellshear]

#16891

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Hi Group B

Whilst we play with the topic of leadership, you may find the linked article

https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/handle/2299/22541

Title is: Taking Experience Seriously – A critical inquiry into consultant-led leadership development programs

to be of interest. I think it challenges many of the orthodox views of leadership, and reinforces some of the principles that have come up in Group B such as ‘lived experience’.

Cheers

Davin

[ian mack]

#16888

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Rob – Thanks for the note, perhaps some clarifications?

I am not sure which ‘competency standards’ you are talking about. No matter – your point seems to be that the royal ‘we’ may have let projects become too complex to execute successfully? (This for me breaks a critical rule in governance, which is the measure of whether the client organisation can govern it) Alternatively (or as well), your point may be that we have not got the standards (which I assume includes experience) and training right? I would therefore assume that you wish for our working group to consider tackling “the development requirements for leaders of complex projects”?   Ian

[Davin Shellshear]

#16878

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Hi Group B

We have been talking a lot recently about leadership and followership.

I thought I would post an article that reflects a lot of how I see these subjects.

For you interest, and perhaps amusement

Cheers

Davin

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[Rob McMartin]

#16853

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Ian,

Sorry to hear you will miss the meeting, at least this time it is voluntary.

In regard to complex project management versus Project Management versus General Management.  I have been giving this a lot of thought, I stayed quiet in one spot and everything, I have reached the conclusion and I would like to share.

Some of you may know of my personal division of projects into five distinct areas:

• Simple projects (things that we humans have been doing since the stone age)
• Complicated Projects (simple projects and technology used in a new way to deliver projects, think existing technology used in a new way to deliver projects)
• Complex Projects (I think we are all up on that one)
• Megaprojects Projects (projects worth billions affecting the lives of millions of people)
• Complex Megaprojects (Project that are above a billion affect millions of lives and use technology/interfaces across multiple areas)

Now this may just be simp0listic thinking (probably what I am good at), but when you look at the current state of project management and project managers a good 80% of project managers and their competency standards (PMI, AIPM, IPMA, APM, etc) all deal with what I would class as the Simple to Complicated range of project management.

We all know the high level of failure of projects, based on Standish Chaos Report, Flyvberg’s findings, AIPM surveys, etc.  My personal take is that modern projects attempt to implement too many things, even a simple construction project now has to integrate so many different systems and have so many internal and external dependencies and interfaces that they are beyond the current scope of what people are trained, or experienced, they certainly are beyond what the Competency Standards cover.

 

[ian mack]

#16851

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Hi Team – I have enjoyed reading all the articles highlighted since the last meeting, many superb points! I specifically noted many new insights for me on the optimism bias article relating to the military (thanks Rob). As ti training of apprentices, I have also seen that as strong mentors to the project teams – and there are lots of games and simulations already out there – in National Defence, we used boards to assess candidate readiness to be qualified to new levels of complex leadership after time in the trenches and some mandatory training at each level.

In the file enclosed, I have included what I saw as the key points from the last meeting. Then, I have pulled some articles (nothing terribly deep but decent primers) and offered some related thoughts on two subjects that came up during the meeting: followership (rather than leadership) and general management (and its place in leadership, if any).

As a final point, I have an unavoidable conflict to our next meeting so I will be absent next week – apologies.      Ian

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[Simon Springate]

#16825

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Re management training V. experience and the relevance to complex Projects.

I am no educator, but it feels like this is where an apprenticeship would win out over a formal course.  Perhaps the ‘training’ needs to take another form, such as a game, scenario play or similar.  the Major projects institute runs such an event;

MPA

[Davin Shellshear]

#16817

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Hi Group B

I contacted Colin Smith re what is happening to the documents Group B has produced. he has provided a very comprehensive reply, see below:

Hi Davin,

Thank you for your email.   I have read the notes arising from the Working Group B Meeting however, I have not yet had time to read the other paper.  I have opened it and skimmed the content but will need to return to it when time permits to digest it fully.

At first glance and based on the group’s first paper I have no doubt that this paper is extremely valuable.

I have marked up some comments in the notes document so long but I’m happy to set up a meeting to discuss further and indeed had planned to set up a meeting to introduce Dr Nam Nguyen to you and Rob McMartin as co-chairs of the SIG.    My comments are not comprehensive or exhaustive, just here and there where some things caught my eye.

This is also part of my response to your and the Groups queries.    As previously, mentioned the lack of progress with the first paper is simply due to a lack of capacity.  We fully intend to produce a ‘published’ document with the first paper and the second one.    We have only recently replaced Stephen Seminguit with Sebastian Winter and Sebastian has had a full plate trying to settle in.  The first paper is now with Sebastian and some work has already been done on it but now Sebastian has COVID!!  So it really just is a capacity constraint.

Enter, Dr Nan Nguyen (summary profile attached).  We have appointed Nam (starting date today) as our Director of Research and Development in part as part of our attempt to deal with our capacity constraint.  I intend to involve Nam in the management of the SIG back end as well as other areas identified in Group B’s notes e.g. course curriculum improvement and new course design and development etc.   I want to introduce Nam to at least you and Rob so that when he attends the first SIG meeting at least the 2 co-chairs have prior knowledge of who Nam is and his role at ICCPM.  Nam’s Phd is also in the area of Risk Management!  Note, we do not have in mind that Nam would attend every SIG meeting as he will have other responsibilities including course deliveries that may conflict with SIG meetings but I do see Nam being involved and responsible for the SIG back end and also for potentially starting new SIGs etc.

Given Nam’s academic background I also have in mind for Nam to be the curator of Connect articles and so forth including reviewing the SIG papers to ensure that they are formatted and checked for any possible edits before they are made public documents.

In brief, we have in mind to produce the papers into professionally formatted / ‘published’ whitepapers as outputs of the SIG.  Once done they will be made available to all ICCPM members free of charge behind the membership curtain.  Keeping in mind that our continued existence is dependent on ongoing revenue generation we also have in mind to make paid-for copies available to download for non-members at $15 AUD incl GST.  This is in and of itself not expected to be a significant revenue stream but we want to demonstrate value to members by showing item prices of these valuable pieces of output so that there is a compelling reason to join as a paying member.  For example if you attend X number of webinars, x number of Roundtable workshops, join a SIG, and access x number of reports per annum you have exceeded the value of an annual membership therefore, buy a membership.

We also have in mind all the things that are discussed in the notes namely;

• Advertise the paper in our newsletter, on social media, on our website, etc.
• Base an article on it for the Connect e-magazine
• Do a Webinar on the paper
• SIG presentation of sorts at the PCGS conference in August (we can provide more detail later on this one).
• Use it as a potential prompt for future Roundtable topics
• Use it as part of a feedback loop for potential course curriculum updates and/or for new course development.

I am hoping that with Nam on board and Sebastian increasingly up to speed we will have more capacity going forward to expedite some of these actions.

I am delivering again for the next two days back to back but will try to co-ordinate diaries and set up an introductory meeting with you, me Nam and Rob and send you a meeting invite.

Regards

Collin Smith

Managing Director and CEO

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[Rob McMartin]

#16816

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Good morning all,

I would like to get the groups input on, does general management training hold for project management.

While general management is based around Taylor and the other management principles, do they really have any basis for complex project management.  Certainly, there is some management training required, especially when dealing with the day to day issues, but when dealing with complexity what skills are needed from general management. if any.

Is Project Management, a system of skills above general management skills, or are they completely separate.  Is the fact that we base everything on PM around the general management principles.  If so, is this one of the reasons for project failures, because we focus to much on managing everything, putting things into order, so they can be captured, measured and managed, or is the very nature of complexity chaos, to be met challenged and adapted to deliver.

Possibly, we as project managers are already adept at identifying the noise buried in the message.  We are probably all very good at seeing the signals in a project when the project is struggling and determining where the problem lays and responding accordingly.

How did we get here, is it experience, how much of what we have been taught was of use to us, or was it really just experience, that can’t be taught, but must be lived.  Nature, or nurture.

Is the general management training of any use to complex project management, or should we seek to identify where the differences are and focus on those.

Apologies for the long winded question.

 

 

 

[Rob McMartin]

#16814

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In response to the Conspiracy of Optimism, I have added the Flyvberg article on Sublimes:

 

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[ian mack]

#16811

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Thanks for both Davin!   Ian

[Davin Shellshear]

#16808

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Hi Group B

Attached is the transcript of our last meeting.

We have a finished product – FANTASTIC – that we ill now pass onto ICCPM plus our suggestions on how it might be used.

Now the search for our next project that we want to look at.

I have also attached a paper on the conspiracy of optimism – a suggestion from Andrew.

Cheers

Davin

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[Rob McMartin]

#16807

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Saw this this morning

 

The Typology of the Human Element in Projects – QUTeX Blog

[Davin Shellshear]

#16806

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Hi All

The topic of AI in project management keeps emerging.

Thought you might be interested in the attached talk about some risks associated with AI.

https://vimeo.com/809258916/92b420d98a

Cheers

Davin

[Author]

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