ABSTRACT
So what? As we said at the beginning, if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always get. And if what you get isn’t good enough, you need to do something else. Trouble is, we are conditioned by many things – our past, our training, our language, our culture. These have become enculturalised to the point where they are articles of faith – we espouse a value set that encourages cynicism and mistrust, believes that process alone can save the planet, doesn’t think that the previous generation had a clue, applies a rationalist/positivist/ empiricist philosophy and confidently expects that the external environment will enter a state of suspended animation for the whole of the project lifecycle. O brave new world! That has such people in it!
Let’s imagine we are faced with a major, complex, project that has never been done before, has to succeed first time, has multiple stakeholders each with their own view of what would constitute success, must be delivered by an agreed date, cannot exceed its budget once it has been established, is highly publicly visible and which will be rigorously audited to ensure no wastage of money or resource. What would we do? (Hiding behind the sofa might appear attractive, but let us assume that option is closed to us; having said which, it may sometimes be the better option in circumstances where pride, overconfidence or eagerness to please makes us say ‘yes’ when invited to lead the impossible).
