Riccardo Cosentino and his co-host Corail Bourrelier Fabiani welcome Harvey Maylor, their esteemed professor from the MSc Major Programme Management at Oxford, to discuss the transformative power of systems thinking in major project management. Harvey Maylor, a leading academic and practitioner, shares his profound insights on harnessing systems thinking to navigate and resolve the intricate challenges inherent in large-scale projects. “We just make life flipping difficult. And that, for me, is a great frustration that you see really bright, really energetic people really going at a problem, but because of the way the work is organized, it's just really difficult and that their insights, intelligence, energy just gets burnt up by pointless organizational things that don't add any value to them, the organization or the end user or indeed society. ” – Harvey Maylor
Riccardo Cosentino and his co-host Corail Bourrelier Fabiani welcome Harvey Maylor, their esteemed professor from the MSc Major Programme Management at Oxford, to discuss the transformative power of systems thinking in major project management. Harvey Maylor, a leading academic and practitioner, shares his profound insights on harnessing systems thinking to navigate and resolve the intricate challenges inherent in large-scale projects.
“We just make life flipping difficult. And that, for me, is a great frustration that you see really bright, really energetic people really going at a problem, but because of the way the work is organized, it's just really difficult and that their insights, intelligence, energy just gets burnt up by pointless organizational things that don't add any value to them, the organization or the end user or indeed society. ” – Harvey Maylor
Harvey Maylor combines over 25 years of industry experience with academic research to bring a unique perspective to project management. As an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Warwick, Harvey focuses on project management, complexity, and performance. He advocates for practical methodologies like Agile and Lean to enhance project outcomes across various sectors.
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Riccardo Cosentino 0:05
You're listening to Navigating Major Programmes, a podcast that aims to elevate the conversations happening in the infrastructure industry and inspire you to have a more efficient approach within it. I'm your host, Riccardo Cosentino. I bring over 20 years of Major Programme Management experience. Most recently, I graduated from Oxford University Saïd Business School, which shook my belief when it comes to navigating major programmes. Now it's time to shake yours. Join me in each episode as I press the industry experts about the complexity of Major Programme Management, emerging digital trends and the critical leadership required to approach these multibillion-dollar projects. Let's see where the conversation takes us.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new episode on Navigating Major Programmes. I'm joined today by my co-host Corail. How are you doing, Corail?
Corail Fabiani 1:00
I'm great. Thanks, Riccardo.
Riccardo Cosentino 1:03
And Corail will today co-host and lead this podcast and introduce our esteemed guest.
Corail Fabiani 1:09
Hello everyone. Today we're on for a real treat. We are welcoming Dr. Harvey Maylor on Navigating Major Programmes. Dr. Harvey Maylor is effectively an academic superstar in the field of programme management. If you look for his articles online, you will see that they are cited thousands of times, is written for all the prestigious journals, and he published books translated in several languages on the topic of management. He's been the Program Director of the MPLA for the government, which is Major Project Leadership Academy, is a Senior Fellow in management practice and associate professor at the Saїd Business School of Oxford University. Before that, (he) was the founding director of the International Center for Program Management at Cranfield University. He has consulted for an impressive list of multinationals. He's also an eminence associate at Deloitte LLP and is a senior academic advisor at the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building. And I'm sure I'm missing a lot of other hats that you may have Harvey, so I apologize for that. But for Riccardo and for myself, most importantly, you are our beloved Professor during our MSc major programme management in Oxford. And thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
Harvey Maylor 2:26
(Inaudible), good to see you. Thank you. Good to see you, Riccardo. Yes, absolute pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Corail Fabiani 2:31
So today, we would like to focus on one of your specialties, which is the field of systems thinking, as you design the full merges about systems thinking for our masters. And I wanted to start with the academic stuff, because that's your, that's your domain. And you made us read loads of academic paper during our module. And I remember for the preparatory reading, one of them was out of Science Direct, an article written by Arnold and Wade, who claimed to have found the best definition of system thinking, and I'll read it for the listeners, because it's quite something. So there's a system thinking is a set of synergetic analytic skills used to improve the capability of identifying and understanding systems, predicting their behaviors, and devising modification to them in order to produce desired effects. These skills work together as a system. So when I read that, I have to be honest, Harvey, I was scared. I thought, what is this module about? I guess our first question will be, what does it mean, what are systems thinking for you, and most importantly, why did you want to teach this to major programme managers and leaders?
Harvey Maylor 3:42
Okay, so it's a good definition. But for me, this is to start off with it, it's a perspective which allows sensemaking and sensegiving. And it's a tool set. So to start, it's a perspective. So for me, systems thinking has been a bit of a journey. I started my professional life as a production engineer. And in that world, we were looking at systems of flow of goods through factories, and through logistics, setups. And that was a way that we had of looking at the world. And that sort of perspective was how the systems work. How do we make work work was where I started, but that's a perspective and over time, the realization came about that the perspective was useful. But if you focus just at the level where you saw things happening, you're missing a big part of what was going on. So initially interested in manufacturing systems, but then that was very much guided and limited by the manufacturing strategy of the organization, which was then guided and limited by the rest of the strategy of the organization. And over time, the perspective has allowed me just to move up to the point now where we're looking at national endeavors and societal endeavors and saying that again, it's how do we organize work at those multiple levels? So in the case of manufacturing, it's from the shop floor right to the top of the organization, in terms of how do we organize society, it's what's going on, right the way through these multiple levels of systems. So that's the first thing, it's a perspective. The second thing is that sensemaking and sensegiving. The world is a complex place and systems thinking allows me to see how we might analyze what's going on there. So anything is as dull as operational as a queue at an airport, or water joy, my family loved traveling with me, I'm sure you've heard me say, because when I go to an airport, and I have to stand in a queue, I feel that's a systemic failure, that they're putting somebody else's time is more important than mine, the paying customer and getting me to stand in a queue is, is unnecessary. And it's also from if you're thinking about airports that don't make money when people are standing in queues, they make money when I'm buying a cup of coffee in the, in their coffee shop, or if I'm purchasing something in one of the other boutiques available in the airport. So that for me is when you see it helps me to make sense of things. I can see a systemic failure there, that is unhelpful around through to, if you look at it enables you to make sense of recently, we've got a COVID inquiry going on in the UK. And it's, how does it make sense of a preparedness system in a country for a pandemic? And so being able to look at that as a systems person and say, well, fundamentally, that's never going to work. Because there is no overall design. It's a random set of pieces for which there is no guiding mind or code-coordinating voice. And so that second piece sensemaking and sensegiving is initially how do I then make sense of the world around me from airport cues to pandemic preparedness? And then how do you then explain that to others? So, you know, for me, being able to take something that appears on the surface to be potentially chaotic, but then say, okay, but is there some order to this? Is there something that we can then help others then to put in place and design and think about what a future airport organization or pandemic preparedness might look like? So that's the second myth, the first bit was perspective, which is second base sensemaking sense. And lastly, it's a toolset. From the things we explored in the module which are the widely available, there isn't anything that's terribly wonderful or new, other than our ability now to be able to draw these things without relying on particularly my absolutely awful, a non-existent artistic skills, which is a barrier when you're doing things like yourself systems analysis. Now we've got wonderful tools, which can really help with that being able to both analyze and communicate the kinds of things that we're doing. And the toolsets why it's well-supported now, from the very basic loops that we analyzed right at the start of the program. So thinking about the building blocks of systems, in feedback loops, through to very detailed systems dynamics models, much helped by artificial intelligence today, we can do much more analysis than we ever were able to, you can build much better models of the world, enabling us to predict performance, given prior data. So it's a long answer to a short question, but I hope that sets out the the Arnold and Wade definition is really useful as a starting point. But for me, it's very personal, it's that perspective, that allows me to do sensemaking and sensegiving, and provides me with that toolset. And so that's where I started off. Does that make sense?
Corail Fabiani 8:52
Yes, absolutely. And I think you're aware, I think we told you already that we had a little gathering at the end of our masters with all our colleague from the class and we, we were voting for our favorite module. And I have to say that the module about systems thinking came first by by a lot. And I think it's because it was useful for everyone. So as you say, maybe the artistic side is not your favorite pat of it. Whereas I used to work on artistic programs, you know, the sort of complexities that I would see my programs might be different from the complexities that other more technical programme manager would be facing everyday. But we all really use that tool in different ways to help make sense. And I do remember like really using those systems thinking tools, and it really helped me to just understand issues that I was having on on my program for a long time for like for about two years when I arrived and did this module, and I just couldn't really pinpoint what was the root of the issue or how to how to make the issue better. And just having that kind of visual representation with the tools you give us to see where, what was happening in that system, and what was reinforcing this kind of negative loops in my system that really helped me clarify things in my head first, and just like so. So then like, bring better answers on my program. So thank you for that.
Harvey Maylor 10:17
That's very kind. Thank you for that. And it was, it was an absolute pleasure to work with you and the rest of your cohort. These modules, we always wish them to be a process of co-production of knowledge. There's enormous knowledge and experience in the room. But again, how do we make sense of that and help each other to make sense of the environments in which we're working? The human mind is very good at being able to conceptualize things, but if you've got a few tools in the bag to be able to help you, then that's a, that's a good thing. So yeah, no, that was an absolute pleasure and was very deep, though, those were indeed I look back on those days very fondly, as well. So thank you for that. That's, that's really kind.
Riccardo Cosentino 10:56
Yeah, I'd like to pitch in because obviously, I voted for that module to be the best module and I learned so much from it. And for me, it was enlightening because you know, the case study I used where I apply system thinking, I applied, you know, the feedback loops, and really try and understand the dynamics of a very complex mega project. My findings and my analysis and my recommendation on how to intervene in the various systems in the various systems was then validated, because there was my, unfortunately, my project was subjected to a public inquiry. And it was actually fascinating to see how the system methodology that I applied in that course, was validated by actually the commissioner, who did a much deeper obviously dive into the project, and came out with, you know, obviously, they had 170 recommendation, I only had like, five, but, you know, my five were included in the 170. So that was, you know, a testament on what a great tool analyzing system is in terms of understanding the sensemaking process that you describe. So yeah, I just wanted to pitch in and give that perspective as well.
Corail Fabiani 12:08
So while we're on the tools, actually, we wanted to talk about one tool that you introduced to us that I think was also really helpful. It's a tool you introduced in your article, how hard can it be actively managing complexities are in technology project, and the tool is called the CAT tool, C-A-T tool, complexity assessment tool, it assesses the level of complexity of programs or organization of the three categories, so there is the structural complexity, the socio-political complexity and the emergent complexity. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about which type of complexity on programs do you think would benefit more of a systems thinking approach? Or how do you came to create that tool?
Harvey Maylor 12:57
Part of it is that has came about was the recognition that systems that we work in, actually should be designed, and therefore fit for purpose. But often, they are themselves emergent. They, they're not designed, they just sort of they, they're based on precedents that what happened yesterday, and often without a particular guiding mind that's pointing them towards tomorrow. And so the complexities we face are often legacy and not designed in so one of the key parts of the idea behind all the thinking that we promote, is, can we give you some agency can we actually help people to take in hand these things, the way we organize work, because otherwise, we just make it it's a human failing or propensity, we just make life flipping difficult. And that, for me, is a great frustration that you see really bright, really energetic people really going at a problem, but because of the way the work is organized, it's just really difficult and that their insights, intelligence, energy just gets burnt up by pointless organizational things that don't add any value to them, the organization or the end user or indeed society. So there is the sense of look, we make life difficult. And then the categorization approach just says, can we then have a better conversation about this thing? If we, if we think that complexity isn't necessarily a good thing. By the way, there are some people who believe that it's good because it makes us adapt and generally there is, there is a time for that. But generally, we just make life too difficult. If you could take some of those things away. You'd have capacity for people to be able to be more adaptive to do some of the more creative stuff. But the idea was then how could we firstly talk about it? So we talk about the process of complexity being understand. So what's going on there? Can we develop a language and express these complexities or difficulties? What makes our life difficult? So to lead in the context of a major programme, what do we need to do? You know, what, what's standing in our way? The second thing is, can we then reduce that? And that's been really fascinating to watch in so many organizations as they've gone through that process of saying, right, okay, we're not going to let this thing just become unmanageably difficult, we're going to take it in hand. And we're going to do some things about these complexities before we start. But once we started we can have complexity reduction. Complexity buster program is one of the government departments that use this and that was, that's terrific, that's great to see that people are taking that off. And then once you understand what you (inaudible) understand what you've done to reduce, can you then go to the respond piece and say, look, we've got a bunch of complexities here. What's a good way to actually work with these? Not simply the old project management thinking but there's one best way to run your project using this body of knowledge or that methodology, come on, think about it, can we tailor what we do in a more intelligent and nuanced way? And so for me, there's that was the requirement and the the complexities themselves, the structural, which is about the hard stuff. So it's scale or pace of the project, we have to deal with those, and how might you deal with those what would actually reasonably be good at dealing with scale and kind of break it down. We've got systems and processes that are really reasonably well-defined to deal with that. So systemically, that has been our area of focus. But actually, when you go into so many projects today, the areas that are really hurting them are the other two, so the sociopolitical, so that's power, people, politics, conflict, genders, those are the things that's a sociopolitical complexities, basically all the soft stuff. And that's the areas where we see this far less systemic effort applied. And yet, if you use the tools of soft, the soft systems tools, and we could think about how do we create trust, for instance, as you know, as a classic loop, how do you build trust with people? One of the first thing is you have to, you have to know something about the other people, which then feeds that therefore, there's less questions to ask. So there's less doubt. So people know they can, that they can rely on you, which is a can be a reinforcing circle of trust building. There's so many areas where so many systems where there's that total lack of trust, as a result of which we put in things like some really negative loops. And so if you don't have trust, then you put in place scrutiny. And the scrutiny loops is, it's a horribly net, we call it a negative loops or negative effects in so many cases we scrutinize things which means people take time, have to respond and take time to work with that scrutiny, which means they don't have time to deal with any of the root causes or big issues that they're facing, which means that things don't improve, which means that they get subjected to further scrutiny. And it's, again, it's those kinds of causal things that are within that area, because there's a lack of trust, you know, sociopolitical problem that we see all sorts of things happen. So that's an area of focus. And then the other ones, the emergence, which is uncertainty and change, again, as it often conflicts with the ideas of the responses to structural complexities, so bureaucracy systems, which are very good at dealing with scale, in particular, so break things down and then join them up, again, the emergent stuff is actually is really difficult. And if you've got lots of emergence, then you've got the real tension with your strong process. So you've got to have disciplines, we absolutely say that you have to have disciplines in the way we run stuff. But where you have considerable uncertainty and change, there has to be then that ability, particularly people to be a bit more entrepreneurial, you need the strategists, you need people who can deal with that ambiguity to come in there. And so systemically, we see that actually, we're very poor at generally dealing with that ambiguity. We're good in some areas, but in others that's dealing with the sociopolitical, and generally, when you get where you have organizations and projects, where they have the disciplines in place, and the structural stuff's fairly well taken care of. We've been doing it for a lot of years, we know what those processes look. So in terms of areas for focus, it's, I think the big area is in major programmes. How do you get the balance? And how do you get all the three of those working together? And of course, being a systems person, I'm never going to pick out one, just one little bit and say, well, let's pull that out and we'll work on that. It's now how do those things then work together in totality, and what results do they have? And so this is the point of it's about it's always a balancing act, but also but it's also a separation (inaudible). So some bits of your program, you will undoubtedly want to run almost like a manufacturing process. So, and you're less (inaudible). Other bits, particularly early stage, you're going to have to work really, really hard on the politics, big P, small p, that inevitably around when you're trying to get approvals. Are people supporting it? Or are just causing yourself to ignore that at your peril? But also we moving in the right ways? Or, actually, are we moving things fast enough? Time, time is not your friend generally on these things. So think things, which just reinforces the last piece that things are always dynamic in our world. So whenever you think you've got your arms around the particular complexity today, tomorrow might be a bit different. So therein lies one of our big challenges. But those are the that's the complexity to not thinking. And the, it gives, again, gives great ways to people to make sense, how do they make sense and talk about the difficulties that they're facing? But also, how can they explain it to others, and show that there may be, this is something that's worth actually managing that and saying, we're not just going to be victims or takers, we're going to exert some active agency and take a more active approach to managing the complexities that we face. And that's, that's all part of that sort of that systemic view.
Corail Fabiani 21:28
Thanks to you, Harvey, I do remember some of your former students, early students of the MST using the CAT tool in their companies and organization and showing the power it has to just highlight different types of complexities and help manage them. Would you have an example for us of programs where systems thinking approach helps unlock or help program managers resolve issues that are linked to those complexities?
Harvey Maylor 22:00
There's many, but one that immediately comes to mind is the very early days in prob about six or seven years ago, one of our participants on Major Projects Leadership Academy had just taken over one of the biggest programmes in government. It was in absolute tatters, it was red-rated. And it was widely regarded as an utter poison chalice for anybody who took it on. Working with him was, it was a real pleasure because during his first in one of his first actions was to realize that they'd have 13 major reviews in the previous three months. And exactly that scrutiny loop that I was talking about before, because they were so busy being scrutinized, they had no time to actually deal with any of the fundamental challenges that we're facing in that program. And it was just poorly designed. It was it was ridiculous. It's notion was the supply chain will deliver. No, they weren't, the supply chain had no more idea of what was wanted than anybody else. And so to make themselves a much better client, they had to take the time they had to, they have to stop the scrutiny. So what we talk about in systems terms is breaking some of those feedback loops. In that case, we call that a, it's an, it's a feedback loop that was having profoundly negative effects. And so what he had to do was convince his prime secretary to allow us a period of time without additional scrutiny. Now this in public sector is very, very difficult to do, but successfully negotiated, he was able to have nine clear months, where he was able to redesign the program. Take back, if you like, the knowledge of how the program was going to run going forward and design, what it was going to look like going forward. And the rest of this is history, because very quickly, that program stopped being a major policy problem for government. It will, I'm being careful not to mention its name, not out of any but it is a particular particularly toxic, always going to be politically toxic as a program. But it was in terms of the delivery, he totally, he re-engineered it. And he was, he was a systems thinking person, he saw where the problem was, break that scrutiny loop, which is what we say to leaders, look for the loops that are dragging your programs down., and that was an absolute classic. Similarly, we were just I was we just published a report on the future further education sector in the UK. So I'm mentioning that because it was literally two weeks ago that that happened. And the findings there were that one of their negative loops is that because they have such a problem recruiting people, the people who are employed are deeply stressed. And so they're not always available for work, which creates further stress on others, as you can see, the loop keeps going. And so, again, the analysis there was well, in terms of how we're working with people, we've got to find better ways to break out of that, when somebody can't, if you're lacking the resources to deliver, you can't just continue to squeeze the ones that are left, because all you're doing is, is making the place even worse to work. So some real really difficult challenges as I was simplifying them. But it's just coming up to a hard reality of saying, guys, fundamentally, you can't just keep squeezing the resource and hoping you'll get the result that you want. It's not working. So identifying some of those negative things that need to be broken, but very much the positive loop that we wanted to create, and was almost in place. And we did the analysis with leaders from right from government departments down to leaders of major colleges, and all stakeholders in between. And one thing that was clear was that it's suffering because nobody actually understands what further education and skills as a sector actually does. And actually, if they don't deliver, our economy is going to be in big trouble. Now, this is fundamental, from technology skills to carrying skills, you name it, and everything in between, fundamentally, economy cannot grow unless you've got a very high performing further education and skill sector. And we have deep shortages in anything from programmers to people who can work (inaudible). You know, this is, this is our challenge as an economy that we cannot map we cannot do without further education and skill sector absolutely targeted at working with those areas, amongst many others. The challenge there was nobody knows what these people do, or the value that they deliver to the economy. As a result of which they're the bottom of the list when it comes to additional funding and government. Local businesses don't think they're particularly valuable. And it's all that what was missing in that reinforcing loop that positively was that recognition of the importance of the work that they did. And so for many of us, and just just to illustrate this, for many of us, if you said, well, what does your local college do? And so any contact I have as a citizen, and where I live, is noticing the occasional advert on the back of a bus that says come and do a course in x, y, and Zed. And if that's the only promotion that they have, it's not surprising that the reputation of that sector is not being promoted. To (inaudible), actually, you're the fundamental to, you know, that if we want this growth and this economy to be healthy, and people to be have good meaningful work, we need that that sector to really be thriving, at the moment is what it would diagnose. It was absolutely clear. There's a big hole in that loop. So the key things that we're going to do is actually work out what is the message about this sector being absolutely fundamental, and then have that as a program of work to put in place promotion, that shows local businesses, this is a place to invest, that shows people with technical skills that yes, it's good to give one day a week to come and be a teacher in this space, to show local and national government that this is something that they should invest in, because it will generate returns. And so these are the kinds of things where, again, from what I know, relatively, whether you're trying to break the negative loops the scrutiny loop, or that you're trying to increase that reputation loop, those are the things that are pretty fundamental, whether you're running an organization, a major programme, or look at looking at the entire sector, and how that wants to improve. Are you with me? Those, so those are just a couple of things that I've worked with. Really the one, the major government program really stuck with me, because it was such a bold move on the part of everybody concerned to say, no, we're going to break the scrutiny loop. Yes. Well done. That's leadership, is where you do something that's fundamental everybody's going no public money, oh, hang on a second, you're wasting public money by continuing to do the scrutiny. Right? Stop it. Let the people do their thing. (inaudible) That's where you get the real benefits out of this. And that's the, those of me are just they're just two of many, many examples where I will be clear, both of those are examples where there haven't been negative side effects. Yeah, that's the only thing you've got to recognize when we do these kinds of analyses, because we've just got to look out for those unintended consequences.
Corail Fabiani 29:58
Thanks for those really great examples. And they resonated like I was thinking about a lot of things when you were talking especially like this idea that sometimes just having those tools like those visual tools to show what are those loops, like (inaudible) also a way to communicate the right behavior to senior leaders. Because, as you say, like just, someone might say, okay, we need to stop the scrutiny in the meeting. But like before you get the buy in from everyone, that is like, those kinds of really useful ideas are intervention into a system that is not working right, you kind of need to show and demonstrate that they, they are the right thing to do. They think sometimes the systemic thinking approach means that you can show on the visual, okay, here is what is happening. And everybody can agree that this is the system. And this is the issue there that is blocking that has all those other consequences around it. And what you're saying as well about unintended negative consequences of an intervention can also be shown on this visual. So you can have a look at this feedback loop and say, okay, this is what we're suggesting, we are going to do to solve this issue there in our system, and then do some, like run some hypotheses of what will be the consequences of us, like using this funding to do that, or to support this or doing that action. And here, here is how we think it will impact the system. And I think it's so helpful to just be able to show it to everyone so that you can convince everyone that you are proposing the right, like a useful solution to an issue.
Harvey Maylor 31:43
I think the power in that last in the second example was that we were able to show that there was a gap, that they everybody was working really hard. I mean, within the sector, if people are working way properly hard, they're doing really good things to improve. But unless you're able to build that reputation, unless people have recognized thats actually the value, then it's almost it's almost empty. You know, it's, it has a minor local effect. But that's it. If you're talking about how do we work at a sectoral level, then you need a, you need something a bit more fundamental. And so the power there was, and we want to create, we want this to be a good loop. And of course, it's not gonna last forever, it will last for a it's for a time, which is why the skills in this area are so important that you can keep going and keep going with the analysis. Keep thinking in this way. So putting that just that reputation piece in place, it's relatively straightforward. So I'm, I'm very hopeful that because all it does is it, it closes the loop on all the other good stuff they're doing.
Corail Fabiani 32:54
I was thinking about a minor example that's similar, not really similar because it's (inaudible). It really rings true, I was working on the public app program where the client was constantly referring to the app program that we were building as the cherry on top of the developments. And somehow that created a sort of culture or image that this was the last thing that we should care about. Because this is just the cherry on the top right? Like the rest is the hard, like, the big thing, the important thing, and this will be the cherry on the top. And just doing this kind of systems analysis, just (inaudible) this as like, okay, we should talk about this program in a different way and highlight how it's part of the development it's not something that we need to focus on. At the end, it is as important as the rest of the program. And I think that's the kind of elements that you don't necessarily think of as blockers in the delivery of your programs. But using systems thinking can just like suddenly flag this kind of thing that you didn't necessarily have in mind. So I have a bit of a silly question to follow up on this is how would you recommend that major programme leaders integrate systems thinking approach into the planning and delivery of their programs? If they, if what you're talking about right now is kind of neutral to them or they've not really thought about using this tools before now?
Harvey Maylor 34:18
It's honestly a question too, because actually, this stuff is hard. And it takes time. And it takes thought and without a lot, for me, and I'm not meaning to be unkind to everybody. But not everybody can do it. The tool set seems very simple. But actually you do need people who can stand back from something and get the right level of perspective. So one of the just before I answer that, I will answer your question because it's a really good one. But the one of the things that we notice when people start trying to do systemic analysis is they'll either go too high and they end up very with very superficial findings, or they go too low in the level that they're aiming at. They just end up with something that's completely overwhelming. There is a real art in being able to pick up. And where is the level we're going to be able to work out here that makes sense. So number one is, there is there's an experience piece. The second bit is not everybody can do it. And what it does, it requires what we say is at a higher level of conception of the world. And so there are many people and they're, find people that are not, this is not a pigeonholing judgmental thing. But there are many people who they see the world in terms of what's in front of them. And then we call that a level one. Conception. So it's more operational, more immediate. And then there are once you go up, as you go up the levels, what you notice is people are able to, they see things differently, not just as an opportunity to fix this particular problem in this context, the next level up is where can we fix this problem across, you know, what they're doing over there, and what they're doing over there. So you could see its application in multiple places, then the level three would say, well, can we fix this issue for the way we run projects in the future? So that's a level three. Level four would say why don't we change what parameters can we change to make sure we don't need to have to get to that position again? Are you with me? There's a there's levels of conception. and it's the higher level. So firstly, you need somebody who's higher level, and you then need somebody who can give it time. And then the great thing is there are people who really enjoy doing this stuff. So my answer to your question is, how do you do this? Again, the notion is really powerful, you know, incomplete leader, complete team, you need someone who's got the who can do this stuff, and has time to do it. Who can stand back from what's going on, but also, but also be involved, but to have the capacity to be able to stand back and say, look, here, here's what we think is the right level of systemic analysis that will help you as a leader to understand what's happening now, but also then build the systems of the future so that you can see where it is that you're going to. And so how do you integrate it? Well lead it as a major programme leader, for goodness sake, lead it, but it's amongst everything else you have to do in your day job, it's probably not going to be very high on your priority list. There are people who love doing this stuff, go find them, bring them in develop them, look after them well, and that would be my complete team, complete team have somebody who can work on that systems piece for you and show what's what the challenge is now, be able to model and but also be able to model the future. And not just in soft terms, but be able to start feeding the good folks who like data, who can start to build some quantitative models, which gives you then predictive capability, but also explanatory capability as well. So that we know those, I think are some of the the ways to bring it in. Because just expecting people to do it on the side of the desk, often with limited skills, who might not be the right people to do it. That's probably hard. And it takes time. And it takes thought, as you found during winter, from your own experiences that this isn't something if you have a go at it just you can do some quick and dirty stuff. I mean, that's the great thing, you can do quick and dirty. Yeah. And if you've got somebody see something, then they can express it using the terms that we've used already. In this discussion, you can do that. But if you're going to do something that's actually pretty meaningful, you're going to need to dive in, and then come back to a level where you can abstract and make sense. And that's getting us all part of just this is it's not in the same way as it is an art it's I wouldn't say it is art. Currently I would be (inaudible).
Corail Fabiani 39:06
Thank you, Harvey. Riccarod, did you have another question around systems thinking?
Riccardo Cosentino 39:11
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm a, I'm a civil engineer, also I'm an engineer in our hearts so numbers are, numbers are at the core of what I do. Is this stuff quantifiable when we do this analysis, or is it just a sensemaking tool? Can this be quantified? So when we're looking at system when we're looking at relations, is this a qualitative approach that we take into to the analysis or are there tools available that could help us quantify this?
Harvey Maylor 39:42
The toolsets spans the entire range of qualitative through to deep quantitative and but generally, I would recommend the starting point is you start with qualitative piece. So you start to get some some understanding just in qualitative terms, how do things relate together? There's a lovely study published a number of years ago, which did exactly that. It started off just looking at the interrelationships between the performance of different entities in civil engineering context, and the, the what that enabled them to do. And they built it up, they showed the logical linkages between on-site performance and the overruns and level of on cost and time. And they were able to build this up as an increasingly complex model, once they're satisfied, satisfied the qualitative piece, they then actually wanted to go and use data to be able to start to model what was happening in some of the areas. And so for instance, that particular study showed very conclusively how incredibly sensitive those costs and time overruns were, to the level of rework that was being experienced on-site. So tiny change in the level of rework on site was causing massive changes in the levels of overrun, and on cost and time. And is, is that a natural build up that started with started with a fairly simple qualitative model somebody understanding what's the logical impact of one element of a system, in that case, a production system, a site production system, one element on another, and then somebody going out and collecting the data and says, well, we know at this point, that was the level of and that was the impact that was having that was the level of rework, it was taking x amount of time, and being able to begin to build a model in quantitative terms that then showed hang on a second, we've got a system here that really isn't performing. And because if we can put what we need is tiny levels of rework, and where we've got is massive levels of rework, and that was having totally disproportionate effects on time cost over. So the implications, there were very clear, we were getting better with data. I think the other application isn't just the full system modeling, but just looking at logical linkages between things. So when we're testing our assumptions, so the assumption that, you know, front, the level of front end loading in a program has an impact on the outset. Here, that's a deeply held belief now. Yeah. But that has only come because some very smart people have gone and quantified how much front end loading has been put in place. And then related it to then looking down at the following these major programmes down the road and saying, right, what has been the out the the impact of that on what's the association with or without? And so here with me, there's different ways of just bringing in that quantitative approach from it. So, but it all starts off with understanding how the system's operating, we usually do that in qualitative terms for a start.
Thank you. Yeah, that's super interesting. Corail, I don't have any other questions (inaudible) if you have any other questions?
Corail Fabiani 43:07
Well, I just, last time, we saw you, Harvey, you were working on no less than, I think, seven academic papers, or something like that. So I just wanted to ask you, if you want to share a little bit of what you're doing at the moment, what you're interested in, where we can look for your work?
Harvey Maylor 43:25
I'm gonna share a few of those. I think the first paper I really should work on is why the multitasking that's brought about by working on several separate academic papers is a really, really bad idea. Any system that's full of work, you remember this? Yeah, don't stuff more work into it, because it doesn't make it more efficient. Alright, so that's the first lesson, which I must write a note to myself about at some point. However, for now, just there's, I think there's just there's a few that we're actually presenting over the summer at various conferences. And that is just to give you a few headlines from those and what they're entailing. Some work I've been doing for a while with Dr. Alex (inaudible). So you will have worked with and I'm sure you've thoroughly enjoyed Alex's take on the world. We found a nuclear power bills in Canada that is being delivered on time or early and on budget or under budget. Okay, so how did they do that? That is the obvious question, and what have they done? So that's the first one. We're presenting the International Research Network on projects next week in Stockholm. And that was called anatomy of a unicorn. And of course, that's so important that if we took, if we're after a net zero economy, regard, I'm not going to get into any arguments about you know, isn't nuclear a good thing or a bad thing? But if we want to keep the lights on, we do need some baseload power and nuclear is very good at providing that until proper renewables and nuclear is classified as a renewable now, but until real renewables are available. So having, being able to have nuclear baseload is absolutely fundamental to many of our economies. But that pursuit of, though, of that objective being put in doubt, because of the hundreds of nuclear builds that we've looked at, this is the first one where it's actually coming on time, on budget. And it's that fundamental financial risk that many governments have stepped back from underwriting. And so progress and development in nuclear has very much stalled because of the risk, the same in the cost and the time overruns are, we just can't afford to do that. So there is that, so, big and therefore big, big implications for (inaudible). So that's the first one and what have they done there? Well, actually, in and again, good illustration of the systemic things in isolation, if you picked up some of their, the things they've done, you'd look at them as experienced program people and go, yeah. So what, what's the clever bit, the clever bit is the way they've integrated them. And what they've done is continual holistic checks, and that holistic pieces, join it all up. And don't just say, oh, yes, we've done it now well done, like, join it up and see does it work. And as a system of work, that we're continually designing, stopping, if it wasn't working, if the system wasn't delivering what they wanted, they stopped. And when you're on a really tough shedule, the last thing anybody wants to do is stop. But in complex systems, often the paradox works against you. And so we're very impressed with that. And we were, the people in that world are prepared to go, no, hang on, this isn't working, stop. Rather than just plow on, work harder. Yeah. The contract is more, get them to beat the subcontractors more, no, stop. If the system isn't working, how are we going to make it work? And so that one's a really nice piece in the sense of they've done all the stuff we know about, but they've actually pulled it together, and also played the paradox work use the paradox of particularly aggressive schedules to great effect, well done, then. We've got some work on governance, which is the start of asking a dumb question. So all of my portfolio has to have a dumb question somewhere. And one of the dumb questions is, so what do major project leaders do? And we got what we assume we know, we deliver and develop teaching programs, and it becomes it and we say, well, this is what you do. And this is what we're going to do to help you. Well, actually, no, can we do something that just, I think we're at a similar stage in development of major programme leadership, to what management and leadership generally was quite a number of years ago. And there were some very influential studies there, which actually followed leaders, chief executives, of businesses, and so what is it that you do? What do you spend your day doing? What are you really doing? And then therefore, if we understand that, how can we help in terms of what research do we need to put in place? What learning? So we've got that and part of that is just starting off with a sense of what what is it we're asking them to do formally? So we started off. So again, that's, that's a nice piece with two wonderful colleagues, Alex, and the very famous Dr. (inaudible) giving us a wonderfully hard time about efficiencies in various bits of our methods, and so absolute (inaudible).
There's a one that's really exciting for me, which is integrating, we've done it in practice integrating the subjective and objective approaches to quality up to quality, not so much objective approaches to complexity and how we work with them. And that was done with a major organization over about two years and we worked with five major projects. And what we showed was that they would do their own assessment of the project, which was very objective. (Inaudible) they stood outside the project looked in and said, right, this is what we think is happening here. These are the risks, this is the value of it, therefore it has this rating. And we then went on the inside and did the subjective view. So structural, sociopolitical, emergent complexities, and then compare the two. So what did the outside view tell us? And did it align with what we were saying when we went inside the project, and on all five cases, did it align? There was some disconnect. And what that did was gave us a really powerful way of analyzing some of the challenges that project was facing. You know, in one case, it was about 100 million Euros in value, and it was failing completely. And if I just say the reason when we, outside, we looked at it, it was absolutely fine. It was nothing problematic. We went inside and we looked at it, we saw that it should have been highly emergent. Because it was a very high innovation project. There was some fantastic technology being tried out. And it was, it should have been pretty great. The challenge was that it was, everybody in the team rated their structural complexity as off the scale, again, took a little bit of time to unpick that one and say, well, why is the structural complexity off the scale? The structural complexity is off the scale because you're working inside a highly bureaucratic organization and they weren't doing their paperwork properly. So, and it was literally killing the team, they were spending all day doing paperwork not doing what they should have been doing, which is developing this wonderful technology base that they've got to work with. So just very simple intervention, there was, let's get a good PMO stand alongside them do the paperwork, let's let the good folks who are technology specialists, be technology specialists. And all of a sudden, we went back six weeks later, structural complexity was down, emerging complexity was up, they were trying all sorts of things. And all of a sudden, right, that's functioning, you will meet that as that was real excitement with that. And some real personal, great stories from within that project. Imagine if you just everybody's frustrated in it feeling bad about things all the time, that what really turned it around, it was just that being able to put those two approaches together. And that brings me to the last one, which says a lot I'll just share is that this is slightly more esoteric. But I think if you read the stuff, and I know, you guys have read tons of stuff on major programmes, and it's all a bit hard systems, we can analyze organizations in this way. And they have these characteristics for working with yourselves, your colleagues, others from other programs that we run, it's clear that just there is something that's really human factor about when you get a group together in a major programme. And we think we've spent far too long looking at kind of the body, the heart, the tangible, and not enough time looking at the soul. Do programs have soul? So I'm going to put that back to you. Can I leave that with you? Sorry, I haven't pre-warned you of this question. So guys, what do you think? Does, given your experience of major projects, where, or major programs, where they've worked, where things were happening, has there been soul? What do you think?
Corail Fabiani 52:26
Thanks (inaudible). But I love it. I completely that I don't know, like, where I'm gonna follow your (inaudible). I agree with that I always felt and maybe it's because I'm (inaudible) engineer, but I love arts. I have like these two sides in me already. But I do feel that in the programmes that go bad and in the providers that go well, there is something about the synergies between people that there is something that is not yeah, that we can call the soul into program and I feel like if it was just the hard systems, we wouldn't have issues anymore on our programs, because the hard systems that we've explored that part of systems thinking so much, and you know, we're not in the age now, although I'm saying this, and it's probably not true, because human error is still there. But when you think about the example of the NASA that had an issue with the different metrics, and on their spaceship, etc, I felt like you would think years and years later, we don't have that many technical. It's not the technical that is kind of putting down your program. It's something else. What do you think, Riccardo, I put it back to you?
Riccardo Cosentino 53:44
Yeah, no, I, look I, maybe I'm oversimplifying, maybe I'm (inaudible) like the business school lingo, but like it's a culture, right? I mean, the soul, I equate it to a culture. And so any organization has a culture. And I think the reason major programmes are difficult is because it's typically was temporary organization, as we learned, but also like, if we look in practice, you know, if you're looking at a large construction project, you have joint ventures. So now you have organizations coming together. So the, you know, it's a bit of a crapshoot. What kind of soul is going to develop from the merging of two souls. But yeah, in my opinion, if we think of soul as the culture of the organization, for sure, it's, it's fundamental and it's gonna and that's why a major programme, I go back, that's so hard, is because it's temporary, it's people coming together on a temporary basis, organizations coming together on a temporary basis, and what develops is unique on every project.
Harvey Maylor 54:47
Yeah, it is. I think there's something there in I think it's, we've got a lovely tension with this notion of soul, in that it's quite hard to define So we've spent quite a bit of time working on what what does it mean? And we haven't gone much further than that it's the intangible aspects of groups of people coming together with a particular intent. It's actually sometimes easier to define so less. So we flip it around, and you will, as we encourage you to do you know, what happens when you get the opposite? And so that's, that is an ongoing challenge for us. And actually, should we be trying to define it? Or is it like beauty? Yes, it's in the eye of the beholder. It's perception. And the more you try to define it, the hard characteristics of it, you actually destroy something about it. But it's one of those things that I'm thinking, we've all worked in teams where things gone really well. And there's, but there's been something else there's been a shared purpose maybe, a sense of, a sense of moving forward together, not maybe not across the whole team. But the people. People talk about this. And it is really interesting. I've, we've done some preliminary interviews, where it's a theme that has resonated, and I'm not sure we will have I don't know, if you're in the, in the short term, we'll have to get to the point where we can say, how do you create the soul, but just recognizing that shared intent, and that there is something beyond the mechanisms that we put in place, it's not just a result of the aspect of organizational design, for instance, there's something else there that is a deeply human quality of a collective human effort. And it is probably I mean, again, it's antithetical, really, in an age of AI, where we're arguably dehumanizing, I'm saying actually hang on a second, over here, there's something I don't think we've looked at. And actually, if you could argue that maybe that's that, it's not a hard argument to make, because you'd have, you'd say, well, we spent so long looking at all the mechanistic and organizational things that we can work. But yet it performance in major programmes, is some has not moved in the way we expected, we expected to see things improving significantly, and yet, really hasn't, performance over time, with some notable exceptions, that stay fairly, fairly resolutely poor. So maybe we actually have not looked at the full set of things. You know, it's, Plato talks about this, the body and the soul and give me a physician for the body and a physician for the soul, that that separates them, I need somebody who can first look at the soul and then see what the what the body offers. Are you with me? Is that kind of thinking, that maybe gives us just a lens on something we may have missed not giving enough attention to? That might be something that will give us that next, get the body, right. Of course, yes, do your organizational design all of those good things. But actually, it's got to be a sense of something else here.
Corail Fabiani 57:55
I feel like we all aspire to, to do something greater than ourselves, you know. So there is something about the purpose of what we do that is really important. And sometimes in very large, big organization to say you feel like a cog, right. So you lose a little bit of that purpose (inaudible) maybe something that's between (inaudible).
Harvey Maylor 58:17
Things become so less and so actually sometimes it's easier to define work in those terms. It's soul as work, an organization can be soul as a building can be soul. But anyway, there you go. So there's one that we're sort of throwing the, throwing some things out there and saying, well, does it does any does that last one in that last one in the soul piece, does any of this stick? Or is it, is it an idea that time has not yet come and we probably should take it out in the back and give it an honorable burial. So that's, that's a speculative piece, but the reaction generally has been smiles. Okay. I will think about that one, rather than get out of here. So it's nice. It's so I just want I leave you with to ponder.
Corail Fabiani 59:05
Thank you very much, Harvey. And thank you like we're so grateful given everything you're doing and all you're working on, but you took time to talk to us today that is really kind of you, sir. Thank you for that. It was really a great pleasure.
Harvey Maylor 59:19
Right. It's great. Great talking to you both. Good. Good to see both again.
Riccardo Cosentino 59:22
Thank you. Thank you for making the time. Thank you for giving us the time. I'm pretty sure the listener will truly enjoy this one. So again, thank you and thank you Corail, for being such a grateful co-host. Okay, (inaudible) bye now.
That's it for this episode of Navigating Major Programmes. I hope you found today's conversation as informative or provoking as I did. If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. I would also like to personally invite you to continue the conversation by joining me on my personal LinkedIn at Riccardo Cosentino. Listening to the next episode, we will continue to explore the latest trends and challenges in major programme management. Our next in-depth conversation promises to continue to dive into topics such as leadership risk management and the impact of emerging technology in infrastructure. It's a conversation you're not going to want to miss. Thanks for listening to Navigating Major Programmes and I look forward to keeping the conversation going.
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