Part 3 - A Different Way Of Thinking About Projects
(Part 3 in a series celebrating the 5th anniversary of my book The Complex Project Toolkit. You can catch up on the previous two newsletters here)
For complex projects, we bought the wrong thinking model.
The DNA of traditional project management is built on scientific management. However, projects are fundamentally creative and emergent, and therefore, design thinking is better suited to navigate the complexity.
Project management, as many of us know it, grew up on the foundation of scientific management. It operates on the logic that Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henri Fayol introduced to business a century ago, and that Henry Gantt carried into project delivery: plan, organise, staff, direct, and control.
This approach rests on a core belief of classical science: that an external, objective truth is waiting to be discovered. It breaks a problem into smaller parts to study them, assuming that the same experiment will always produce the same result. As Descartes put it, it removes the "flawed individual" from the equation.
The scientific method is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It gives us buildings that stand up, crops that grow and control of energy. It is a perfectly valid approach when determining an objective truth like: How much weight can this bridge hold? Or how far is it to the moon?
Science is Brilliant, Until People Show Up
The trouble is that a complex project has no objective truth waiting to be uncovered. It is much more like the question of ‘What is the greatest song ever written?
Reality is actively created by the people in the room: their unique perspectives, their agendas and the implicit constraints they agree to honour (like a collective pact not to hold anyone accountable).
When truth is socially constructed, gathering more data does not help you converge on a single answer. Instead, it simply surfaces more perspectives, more questions, and more room to disagree.
Along with being subjective, complexity is connected, so pulling it apart into its component pieces creates confusion because those connections are part of what gives the situation its meaning. More insight comes from stepping back to look at the whole system rather than diving into endless detail.
More analysis doesn’t help when people can change their mind
Design Thinking Provides an Alternative Model
Many people equate Design Thinking with visuals and product design ("posters and toasters"), but it is much broader than that.
Design thinking deals directly with topics that are subjective, creative, and emergent. It focuses on bringing together differing points of view, focusing on what could be (rather than just analysing what is), and taking a holistic (rather than reductionist) view. It can hold ambiguity longer rather than rushing to tame the problem and put it in a box.
Applying these concepts to project management shifts the focus away from plans and status reports towards an alternative set of skills. The ability to Connect world views rather than analyse the data, to Simplify the messy situation without losing its essence. Project leaders need to know how to Hold Space for ideas to emerge but also find a Way to get things done (because left alone, designers will refine any deliverable for as long as you let them).
Where does it work?
Design Thinking works well when the situation is wicked and emergent and ill-formed. There are a few giveaways to the project being complex, including:
The overall project "vibe" gives a far more accurate assessment of the project than coloured ticks on a status report.
Decisions you thought were finalised keep getting reopened and revisited.
Detailed resource spreadsheets prove less useful than direct conversations when assessing team overload.
What’s Next?
To open up to a design-driven approach, consider these questions:
When things get confusing, is there greater insight in asking for more detail, or stepping back to look at the whole system?
Will things progress faster by defending the plan or trying to work out why the critics hold their point of view?
Will delivery confidence increase with stronger documentation or by asking whose perspective is missing from the room?
I have seen a shift from a document-driven, analytical approach to an interactive, co-created process reduce a billion-dollar project's schedule by six months. Matching the operating model with the nature of the complexity creates fundamental shifts in project performance. Despite what you might’ve read, it is possible to improve time, cost and quality by buying into a different thinking model.
Coming up in Part 4: Lego blocks and intractable problems.
Want to dive deeper into these ideas?
Download the first section of the book for free at www.kieranduck.com.
Grab a copy on Amazon or email me directly at kieran@kieranduck.com if you would like a signed copy.
(These ideas are adapted from Chapter 4, which provides further structure around design thinking frameworks.)
