Aug 21, 2024 | Roundtables
On Tuesday 9th July, ResoLex hosted a roundtable discussion featuring Concordis International; a peacebuilding charity that uses dialogue to support the development of sustainable relationships among communities involved in or affected by armed conflict. The event was led by Peter Marsden, Chief Executive of Concordis International, and Edward Moore, Chief Executive of ResoLex and Chairman of Concordis International. The event allowed industry professionals to explore the complexities of building resilient and sustainable relationships in challenging environments. By drawing on lessons from the third sector, particularly in conflict negotiation, the session aimed to equip participants with strategies to enhance collaboration and resilience in the major projects industry.
The roundtable began with a thought-provoking question; if we can manage conflict and develop collaborative relationships between armed groups, then why do we struggle on major projects?
Peter opened by describing his work directly alongside those involved in, or affected by, armed conflict and how he helps to find collaborative, workable solutions that address the root cause. Similarly, in the major projects industry, there is an understanding of the need to develop collaborative working environments, yet we can often struggle to understand how to establish them. Providing an example, Peter shared his firsthand experience of meeting with a leader of an armed group. The leader arrived with 100 armed and angry individuals, creating an intense atmosphere, where Peter quickly needed to establish an escape route. Through the story, he came to the realisation that he was not in control, and emphasised the importance of meeting on the leader’s terms and relinquishing some of his power to establish trust and develop a relationship with the group.
Peter asked two people to join him for a demonstration. The two participants stood back-to-back and were given a scenario: denounce your partner and go free, stay loyal and receive one year in prison, but if both denounced, they got a five-year sentence. One participant denounced, while the other remained loyal, illustrating the complexities of trust and betrayal. The demonstration highlighted the impact of communication and on decision-making, as participants can learn from past experiences, understand each other’s behaviours, and build trust over time, creating expectations between the individuals involved.
Peter highlighted that each war comprises of a million decisions, influenced by incentives, constraints, opportunities, and threats. The goal is to convince people to adopt a long-term view of their relationships and move away from the instant gratification mindset prevalent in many projects. By understanding and influencing incentives, and addressing constraints, we can guide behaviours towards more collaborative and sustainable outcomes.
Peter’s stories underscored the importance of four key themes:
- Trust-Building: Meeting on others’ terms and understanding their perspectives are essential in creating trust and not creating power struggles.
- Communication and Repeated Transactions: Effective communication and repeated transactions can shift dynamics from adversarial to cooperative.
- Decision-Making in Conflict: Every conflict involves numerous decisions, each influenced by various factors. Understanding these can help create positive incentives and discourage negative behaviours.
- Long-Term View: Adopting and encouraging a long-term view is crucial for fostering trust and cooperation. The ability to communicate and anticipate future interactions can alter dynamics, promoting collaboration over conflict.
Relating Peter’s key themes to the major projects industry, Edward highlighted four key connections:
- Timeframe Orientation: Emphasis was placed on understanding how timeframes influence operations and relationship development. Unrealistic timelines often lead to negative behaviours and culture. Setting up projects and programmes with realistic timeframes is essential for success.
- Dispute Escalation Mechanisms: Effective systems allow for differences to be resolved in a positive manner before escalating into conflict. Upfront agreements and structured planning help navigate complex environments and prevent disputes.
- Horizon Scanning: Quick recognition of issues through horizon scanning and a ‘sense-and-react’ model of action is vital for proactive problem-solving.
- Collaborative Environment: Creating the right environment, where people feel safe and empowered, is crucial for effective collaboration.
Regardless of the industry, there were some key takeaways to enhance collaboration and resilience:
- Creating Systems and Processes: Establishing systems and processes that enable a good culture and safe environment for key conversations enhances collaboration. Additionally, creating systems for dealing with conflicts, such as dispute resolution mechanisms, is essential. Trust in these systems and the people involved is crucial.
- Trust and Culture: Building trust and a positive culture within projects and programme can change the perspective from short-term to long-term, altering incentives accordingly.
- Safe Environment: Creating a safe environment for key conversations and proactive planning is essential for long-term success.
The development of strategies to enhance collaboration and resilience should consider some key questions, such as:
- To what extent can the people we are working with take a long view rather than a short-term view?
- How can we ensure effective communication to alter dynamics positively?
- What mechanisms can we implement to foresee and address potential issues without falling into optimism bias?
The roundtable highlighted the relevance of game theory and the Prisoners’ Dilemma in the major projects industry, emphasising the need for a long-term perspective, effective communication, and systematic relationship management. The event highlighted the importance of trust, structured planning, and proactive issue identification in achieving sustainable outcomes, as well as creating a safe environment for key conversations and changing incentives to significantly enhance collaboration and resilience in complex environments. By integrating these lessons, industry professionals can build resilient, collaborative relationships and navigate complex environments more effectively.
View our event calendar for information on upcoming roundtables and other events.
Jul 28, 2024 | Events
On the 5th of June, we facilitated an interactive workshop in partnership with the Major Projects Association (MPA) and welcomed Manon Bradley, Development Director at the MPA and Emma-Jane Houghton, a commercial specialist with over 20 years of experience in the public and private sectors.
We had an exceptional turnout, with over 50 industry professionals, to explore the impact of leadership in delivering successful outcomes through major projects, specifically the role of clients and delivery team leaders. The interactivity of the session sought to interrogate our beliefs around project leadership and encouraged us to challenge the assumption that clients always know best.
Edward Moore, our Chief Executive, began the session by taking ideas for the punch line to the workshop title. Some of the more coherent responses included “…and created a RACI”, “…and asked one another what was happening”, or “…and appointed a delivery partner”.
Manon then spent a few minutes highlighting the key themes from the MPA report ‘No More Heroes’ which was published last year. The report focuses on leadership capability and the need to address how major projects and programmes are led. Emma-Jane then followed, with her views on the concept of the ‘Incomplete Client’. Her intention was to challenge our existing notions around the role of the client in a major project, and encourage an alternative way of thinking about how we can work together to drive improvements in the way projects are delivered.
Emma-Jane’s observations are based on the recognition that project delivery in the modern world is immensely complex and requires us to step back and rethink the approach to being an effective client:
It is my view that our current understanding and approach to clienting is 2D in a very much 5D world. Clienting has become outdated and is not well matched to today’s spectacularly complex environment and all its rich possibilities – especially the pace of change, challenges, and ambiguity. We spend too much of our industry’s energies stuck in the problems of today pointing at poor performance and lamenting the lack of supply chain investment rather than upping our clienting game.
There were two group activities undertaken during the workshop with the first being to identify activities within the project lifecycle that require leadership. The group were then asked to assign which organisation might be best placed to lead these elements. For example, defining the commercial strategy might be best placed with the Client, but resource management would be led by the Delivery Partner. They then provided explanations as to why these were the best organisations to lead and possible barriers to the identified organisation leading the element. This gave the delegates the opportunity to explore whether the client (or more commonly expected leader) is the right leader for the job or whether the responsibility could be best placed elsewhere. This exercise also allows room for discussion on the types of qualities needed for each leadership role.
The second activity was to take the activities identified in the first exercise and map them across to the project lifecycle. Delegates were then asked to use the Cynefin Framework (pronounced kuh-nev-in) which was developed to help leaders understand their challenges and to make decisions in context. By distinguishing different domains (the subsystems in which we operate), the framework helps recognise that our actions need to match the reality we find ourselves in different phases, through a process of sense-making. The outcome of the exercise was to reevaluate the leadership role and showed that during the life of a project the leader’s ‘baton’ changes hands depending on the phase the project is in and the capabilities required.
During the workshop, the participants were asked to respond to a number of questions to gather their thoughts before and after the exercises. Having analysed the outputs produced by each of the groups and the poll responses, we have been able to pull some interesting insights:
1) There was a highly diverse split of who the Client was perceived to be, supporting the notion that the term ‘Client’ is not fully understood and requires work to clarify and cohere
2) 52% of respondents believed that project decisions were controlled by the project leadership team which demonstrated that the majority see decisions are being governed and driven by the client’s appointed SLT
3) Over 80% of respondents associated the term ‘Client’ with positive qualities, with a strong correlation towards EQ (emotional quotient) centric skills which indicated a preference for softer, less autocratic methods of project delivery
4) Clients were assigned the most leadership responsibilities in a project or programme, highlighting limited leadership from the supply chain. However, there were some responsibilities were across multiple owners such as Funding (Sponsor and Client) and Delivery Model (Client and Delivery Organisation).
The purpose of the workshop was to explore how clienting is done today and whether there needs to be a change in approach, the insights gathered from the workshop strongly allude to the disjointed practices and misconceptions of client responsibilities. There is more that the supply chain can do to support clients achieve their outcomes through effective project and programme leadership.
Emma-Jane’s work developing the concept of the ‘Incomplete Client’ is still ongoing and she would welcome anybody who had anything to share, such as example projects where they have experienced successful clients or have been a successful client themselves. Please reach out to [email protected] to get in touch.
Jul 26, 2024 | Events
Last month, ResoLex was invited to join the International Centre for Complex Project Management (ICCPM) roundtable series, in London. The ICCPM is a not-for-profit organisation, established in 2007 by the Australian government to gather knowledge and best practice from around the world to help improve the performance of complex projects. The global roundtable series is a thought leadership activity, harnessing the collective wisdom of complex project leaders from around the world to produce new insights and practical steps that organisations can take to improve project outcomes. The sessions also provide an opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience, and discover new insights from others across sectors, industries and countries.
The keynote was given by Murray Rowden, Global Head of Infrastructure at Turner & Townsend. As someone with over 30 years of experience in infrastructure delivery around the world, Murray shared his reflections on whether today’s approaches are fit for today’s challenges. His reflections called attention to the artificial nature of the boundaries between disciplines, teams, and organisations, and the impact that these boundaries can have on the delivery of complex projects and programmes. From his perspective, asset owners and operators have recognised that relationships are not where they need to be, and there is a move towards increasingly value-based, long-term relationships with the industry to be able to effectively manage and deliver complex projects.
During the day, we had the opportunity to explore the perspective of complex projects as open systems, interacting with both the internal and external environments, against the more traditional view of projects as closed systems with predefined boundaries. This description provides a shift in focus towards identifying the roles of varied stakeholders and their context or environment in shaping the project’s outcomes.
A number of central themes were explored during the day, with a rich conversation from a broad group of project professionals, clients and the supply chain. Discussion focused on four core areas:
- What is the correct level of collaboration and co-design between the different related functions in a complex project?
- What is the role of project leaders in orchestrating the integration of this intricate web of related, but traditionally distinct disciplines within complex projects?
- How can we/should we best reconfigure project boundaries to align with the full life cycle of assets
- By re-imagining boundaries, can organisations enhance project success rates, optimise resource allocation, and ensure long-term value creation?
Throughout the event, it became increasingly evident that there is a critical requirement to engage stakeholders early from across the project life cycle to define project boundaries and negotiate expectations and desired outcomes. The importance of the client in leading this stakeholder management was highlighted by many, and across the discussions, there was also a strong acknowledgement that the complexity inherent within open systems requires a less hubristic client model. The idea that clients can instead adopt a more collaborative approach with the supply chain, in which we co-design shared outcomes and set up a collaborative culture and behaviours, may allow the client to better support the broad stakeholder requirements and lead to better project outcomes.
The workshop outcomes will be integrated into the wider insights collected from the full roundtable series and will contribute to a better understanding of how we can manage open project boundaries and the relationship with key stakeholders. We look forward to seeing the final outputs of the research and continuing to contribute to the thought leadership in this important area of research.
Led and facilitated by: Collin Smith (ICCPM CEO), and Dr Naomi Mather, (ICCPM Director for Industry Liaison & Member Services)
Feb 27, 2024 | Events
On the 12th of February, two of our Senior Consultants, Tom Chick and Joanna Jarvie attended the ICE’s Big Debate: ‘How do we improve certainty in delivery?’
The topic itself is a question many of us are grappling with, not just in infrastructure, but across a variety of complex projects and programmes in many industries. The debate was a highly informative and engaging event, with views put forward by Mark Hansford, Nick Smallwood, Dervilla Mitchell, Ed McCann, Dr David Prout, David Coles and Mark Thurston.
There was a lot of good debate throughout the evening, with a few key themes that seemed to run throughout much of the discussion:
- Shifting to an outcome-focus
- Planning for success
- Developing people capable of delivering
- Embedding the right environment for the scheme
Tom and Jo have shared their takeaways from the evening structured around these key themes:
Shifting our viewpoint to be more outcome-focused and measuring success based on achievement of the desired outcomes
The usual approach to project delivery fixates on time and cost as measures of success. This occurs even though the purpose for the existence of any project or programme is ultimately to achieve the desired outcomes. Delivering on time and on budget, without delivering the outcomes, is clearly a wasted endeavour, and yet, the success of delivery teams is all too often measured solely on these metrics. There is no point to delivering a project on time and under budget if it does not achieve anything that it set out to do.
Crossrail was raised as an example of a project where delivering against the outcomes has been used to demonstrate success that may outweigh the time and cost overruns. The Elizabeth Line is already the most-used rail line in Great Britain1 and the most highly rated TfL service for customer satisfaction.
One of the things that was raised as an enabler to becoming more outcome-focused, is clearly communicating the importance of these outcomes. Many schemes, like Crossrail, are focused upon providing a public benefit. Being able to clearly articulate these desired outcomes can therefore provide long-term resilience to the scheme through wider approval and support.
Planning for success
The importance of focusing time on planning before diving in to delivery was discussed throughout the evening. Major projects and programmes require detailed planning, team set-up and defined ways of working to ensure that the desired outcomes are understood and achievable. Key to this is connecting with political decision-makers who often put a lot of pressure to ‘get boots on the ground’. It was suggested that communicating with these individuals often does not come naturally to project professionals, however, if we are to reduce uncertainty, educating them on the importance of a considered, planned approach is paramount.
Developing people capable of delivering
The importance of having the ‘right people’ to deliver your project was raised in several ways, with leadership in particular sparking a lot of debate. Relying upon these perceived ‘heroes’ isn’t just unlikely to achieve the desired outcomes, but potentially prevents them from being achieved at all. Rather, the focus should be on upskilling people to build and lead teams that can work together to their own diverse strengths, create alignment, manage the complexity, and deliver integrated major projects and programmes.
This team likewise needs to be bought into the project outcomes and understand why they are doing what they are doing. The 2012 Olympics were used as a great example, in that the vision, messaging and desired outcomes were clear and communicated from the start, with everyone bought in. All of the participants knew what their role was and what they were aiming for. For example, in this particular case, being ready for 2012 was a core desired outcome and critical to the success of the project.
Embedding the right environment for the scheme
The bigger and more complex a project is, the more important it is to manage the interfaces, however, it is also more difficult as these interfaces increase in number and complexity.
On a relatively small and simple project, traditional transactional relationships may suffice, however, the complexities of bigger programmes necessitate cooperative or collaborative relationships to manage the increasing number of interfaces and conflicting priorities.
The ‘right’ environment is therefore different for every project but needs to be established as part of the planning to ensure the needed behaviours and ways of working are articulated and embedded.
The debate showed that there is no one clear simple answer to increasing certainty across the diverse array of mega or giga projects being undertaken, however at the heart of the key themes from the debate lies the need for an effective, diverse team, working together towards clearly articulated and aligned outcomes that define success.
1: passenger-rail-usage-jul-sep-2022.pdf (orr.gov.uk)
Dec 1, 2023 | News and insight, Tools
In a fast changing world, large organisations are increasingly engaged in projects and initiatives that are strategically critical. Such projects are likely to involve hundreds of people from different parts of the organisation working as cross-functional groups. The success or failure of such important initiatives is likely to be heavily influenced by the extent to which leaders and managers can motivated and organise these numerous groups to come together work as a single effective ‘Big team’.
A team of teams
There is an important distinction to be made between ‘big’ and ‘small’ teams. These simple words explain a much deeper concept. Terms like small and big are part of our basic language. They can therefore be seen to be generic, having a wide range of applications. In the context of teams, however, these two words have a precise technical role which helps establish some key differences.
The small team is the unit of production within any large enterprise. Emperors and generals have historically organised their armies and administrators into manageable groups. This is not however a top-down management strategy to create neatly arranged grouping on an ‘org chart’. It is actually a reflection of how humans prefer to work with each other. Groups of people naturally fall into sub-groups as the numbers involved start to increase. This is partly because we can typically maintain close engagement on a regular basis with up to ten people, but beyond that number, communication starts to become more sporadic and building close working relationships is more difficult. The point is that large teams do not exist as a single homogenous whole, shaped by a unitary corporate culture. Instead, a ‘Big Team’ is an organic collection of small groups whose roles and activities shift and change as the project they are engaged on progresses. Organisational success therefore depends upon the extent to which the leadership can enable this assembly of small teams to work effectively together as sub units which make up a single Big Team.
When working with leaders, we frequently hear the desire to create a high-performing team, but without having a clear idea as to what high performance actually entails. What constitutes performance is often subjective, depending upon the expectations of a particular team. When working with a collection of teams that make up a ‘Big’ team, however, performance must be articulated much more clearly so that there is a common understanding by everyone involved as to what is expected.
It is possible to map out a progression of activities that will enable the development of a high-performance environment which has the following features:
- Clear objectives fixed around sponsor and customer needs, giving the team a firm understanding of the desired outcome.
- Low hierarchy allowing direct connections between leadership and other specialist teams.
- Confidence in a low blame culture balanced with an expectation of high accountability.
- Fluid peer-to-peer networks where teams are encouraged to engage directly with one another to explore solutions.
- Strong behavioural norms which support a collaborative culture
Given the right environment, we have identified six primary elements that numerous practitioners have found to have a significant impact on the success or failure of a team engaged on a major project. They work in the following progression:
1. Shared Leadership
Big teams don’t necessarily need big leaders. All teams need some form of leadership but in Big teams, the ability of a number of individuals to take on the various aspects of leadership at various stages is critical to success.
2. Establishing the right project culture
One of the critical elements of success is to build a culture of alignment, but this cannot be mandated. Instead, the leadership team must create the right conditions to allow the desired project culture to emerge and mature.
3. Build alignment
Big teams must be able to focus on the right direction of travel even if they are not yet clear on the exact route. There are a series of practical activities that should be mandated as part of the set-up phase for each team and sub-team the is to be part of a major project. These include setting a clear vision, articulating core values, building interpersonal relationships with other teams, and agreeing a set of common rules for communication
4. Accelerated learning
Fast learning habits allow the teams to explore and experiment moving forward in short bursts of activity and adjusting plans as they go. The team is, in effect, learning how to learn. In a fast-changing environment, however, they may not adjust quickly enough to the new conditions and performance or output is likely to decline.
5. Maintain engagement
Leaders cannot force their followers to be engaged. All they can do is to create the right environment and anticipate the team will find their own drive and motivation. The core engagement activity is around communication and the use of an aligning narrative that informs and influences the messages and stories the teams use to understand what is happening in the wider organisation.
6. Build team resilience
In any complex and volatile environment, individuals and teams will find themselves in prolonged periods of pressure and stress. Team resilience differs from individual resilience in that given the right preparation, team members can learn to support each other so that they work together through periods of difficulty.
Summary
Teamwork is a fascinating and multifaceted subject. The contents of this article have hopefully given you a glimpse of the concepts, processes and structures for setting up a Big Team to give it the best opportunity to succeed. The component parts of leadership, culture, team set-up and team engagement are familiar to anyone who has frequent involvement in major projects. The framework is nevertheless novel in so far as it places the human components at the centre of business planning where as common management practice allows them to drift to the periphery.
There are, however, few shortcuts in the process. Building an effective team requires an investment in time and energy, both in the planning and implementation. The reward for this investment can be significant, improving the chances of bringing the project to a successful conclusion, on time and on budget. We would encourage any leader likely to have an involvement in a complex project to make the effort to move beyond standard practice and take the necessary steps required to build an effective Big Team.
