Thriving at the Edge of Chaos

Managing Projects as Complex Adaptive Systems

Jonathan Sapir

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000732474
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

For many organizations, the way in which projects are managed is a fundamental factor in how well they can prosper in today's marketplace. Unfortunately, the current solutions available to companies for managing projects are proving to be increasingly ineffective in a complex world that is becoming more and more dynamic and unpredictable.

Organization's pay for this complexity in delayed time-to-market, slow response to customer needs, and decreased productivity. While tweaking the current project management paradigm may provide some minimal gains, to have a real impact requires a fundamental change in mindset.

New business models like Uber and AirBnB show us that the most efficient operations in today's business environment behave like complex adaptive systems (CAS) where self-managing participants, following a set of simple rules, organize themselves to solve incredibly complex problems. Instead of trying to function like a "well-oiled machine" where things "work like clockwork", companies like Uber function more like an organism that is alive and constantly changing. They fully embrace the characteristics of a CAS.

Viewing an organization as a complex adaptive system drives a radically new philosophy of project management that is much better suited to the needs of the 21st-century organization and can provide the quantum leap improvement in project production that we are looking for.

This book exposes the assumptions underlying the accepted paradigm of project management, describes the common practices that are based on those assumptions, analyzes why these practices are unhelpful and even harmful, and proposes an alternative, sometimes seemingly counter intuitive approach to project management based on CAS thinking.

By the end of the book, the reader will have a completely new perspective on the way projects can be managed in their organization, and how they can quickly start reaping the benefits provided by a CAS-driven management methodology and supporting toolset that is more in tune with today's business demands - and that turns complexity into a competitive advantage.

UNDERSTANDING COMPLEXITY I

The goal is to thrive at the edge of chaos and surf the emerging wave of reality – and doing it without getting swept away in the tide.

The surfer is constantly getting feedback by taking in information about their present state and constantly making minor corrections in many dimensions (heading, speed, balance, etc.). The weaving is the result of the surfer maintaining dynamic equilibrium while moving toward their goal. Using feedback to stay within the limits of tolerance of the many aspects of their system.

Instead of wasting a lot of time and energy predicting the exact “right” path up front, surfers instead hold their purpose in mind, stay present in the moment, and find the most natural path to their goal as they go.

Chapter 1

The Current Paradigm

The greatest challenge facing project management in the 21st Century is managing the shift from the “command and control” paradigm based in the theories of “scientific management” developed by Taylor and others in the early 20th Century to a recognition of the inherent uncertainty and complexity involved in managing every project, and in particular, projects focused on the outputs of knowledge workers.

Patrick Weaver, Mosaic Project Services

What is a Paradigm?

A paradigm is a way of making sense of the world.

If you are going to manage anything, you have to have to have some representation or model of how it works. A paradigm is the fundamental conceptual framework or model we use for interpreting events and a way of understanding the way the world works. Paradigms are the single most determining factor for any and every outcome.

By definition, we believe the existing paradigm to be the right one and therefore cannot imagine anything other than that at that point of time. If you think that something functions like a machine, your solutions will be based on fixing the machine. We just operate under that paradigm and try to optimize it. We try to do the best we can to keep the mindset, thoughts, and skills in place. At some point, however, we cannot get better within the paradigm anymore. That’s why all the project management systems out there look the same.

This is when we are given a choice: we can either accept that we have reached the end of the line and stay within that paradigm. Or we can shift the paradigm.

A Paradigm Shift is a Powerful Change Accelerator

There’s nothing physical or expensive or even slow about paradigm change. In a single individual, it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a new way of seeing. Of course, individuals and societies do resist challenges to their paradigm harder than they resist any other kind of change.

But if you are able to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm, you hit a leverage point that totally transforms the systems. This is basically the story of Uber and AirBnB. The concept of getting a ride in some stranger’s car or sleeping at some stranger’s apartment seemed ludicrous at first. But once people changed their thinking from “that seems unsafe” to “why not?”, the paradigm shift was complete.

The Current Paradigm

[Reductionism] is the sin of modern life … reducing things to their components and thereby, too often, missing the meaning and message of the forest in a minute examination of its trees.

Charles Handy

Project management, like every other kind of management, is based on an accepted worldview, or paradigm.

The underlying paradigm of project management adopts a perspective which is primarily mechanistic, focusing on well-structured, centralized command and control. If what we are dealing with is a machine, then we just need to specify the parts well, and make sure that each part does what it is designed to do. If things get out of line, we need to get them “back on track”.

Current project management tools and techniques are thus based on the assumption that with enough preplanning and control we are able to ensure that processes and projects will meet their objectives and complete on time. But this approach provides managers with unrealistic expectations of their ability to control outcomes.

So how did we get here?

Newtonianism

Since the time of the Renaissance, the predominant metaphor of science has been that of the machine. Scientists of the time described the universe as a grand clockwork. The planets spun around the Sun in predictable orbits and physical bodies moved in trajectories that could be described with the precision of mathematics. In this universe, the outcome of an action is predictable and repeatable, and outcomes (outputs) scale in proportion to inputs (i.e. more effort results in a larger or quicker output).

The goal of science was to reduce the world to its piece parts, to understand those parts, and then put them back together in new ways to make new things. And if we worked on the parts of these machines and made each part work better, then the whole would work better. This is called reductionism.

ISAAC NEWTON AND THE WORLD AS A “CLOCKWORK UNIVERSE”

■ The world works like a machine – like a clock.

■ “Machines” are simple and predictable.

■ Every observed effect has an observable cause.

■ Even very complicated phenomena can be understood through analysis. That is, the whole can be understood by taking it apart and studying the pieces.

■ Sufficient analysis of past events can create the capacity to predict future events.

■ The outcome of an action is predictable and repeatable.

■ Outcomes (outputs) scale in proportion to inputs (i.e. more effort results in larger or quicker output).

■ Change can be focused on specific areas, holding all other things constant.

In this way we can reduce complexity and risk, develop a plan, and then execute and rigorously control changes to the plan. If this is still complex you will need to take your analysis one step further and look at their components. If you continue this subdivision long enough you will end up with the smallest possible parts. The natural extension of these ideas is that if adequate control cannot be achieved at the current level of decomposition, adding more detail will bring “better control” and that human destiny is controllable.

These assumptions have proven extremely potent in developing our understanding of the physical world. Newton’s “laws of nature” seemed so perfect and universal that they became the organizing principles of all post-feudal societies, including armies, churches, and economic institutions. They can be recognized by the continued use of Newtonian principles in the way we talk about, for example, the economy, which is said to “have momentum”, is “well-oiled”, or is “gaining steam”.

This thinking pervades our view of leadership and management. Organization charts, job descriptions, corporate policies, detailed strategic and operational plans, and countless other artifacts of modern organizational life are deeply rooted in the machine metaphor. These are our attempts to specify, in increasing detail, the piece parts of organizational systems so that the overall clockwork of the organization can better produce the outcomes we desire.

Thus, Newtonianism accounts for the existence of inappropriate and monumental project management methodologies and explains why organizations develop elaborate systems, procedures, and policies in a futile attempt to get a grip on complex projects.

NEWTONIAN NEUROSIS¹

Tim Lister, senior consultant and Fellow of the Cutter Consortium, calls the compulsive need to beat a complex project into a straight line Newtonian neurosis. Sufferers of Newtonian neurosis are called Flatliners. Flatliners relentlessly try to bludgeon every squiggly line in a project into submission through the excessive use of project management tools, rules, templates, policies, and procedures.

Sooner or later, Flatliners realize it’s not working. They typically complain that the organization is not properly supporting them and does not believe in project management. They also admit their own shortcomings. If you were to peek into the head of a despondent project manager, the self-talk you hear might go something like this: “The world is not conforming to my plan. I must not be a good planner or project manager after all. I’d better take more project management courses and get more PDUs [professional development units]. I will do better and promise to use more templates and tools.”

Newtonian neurosis leads to the futile practice of attempting to change the world to fit your plan, which is fiction in the first place. Why would anyone want to change reality to conform to fiction? Newtonian neurosis, that’s why.

Scientific Management

Perhaps the most prominent single element in modern scientific management is the task idea. … The work of every workman is fully planned out by the management at least one day in advance, and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions, describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be used in doing the work.

Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Mana...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• The Edge of Chaos
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Overview
• Introduction
• PART I UNDERSTANDING COMPLEXITY
• PART II PROJECT MANAGEMENT AS A COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index