When I’m asked “Why won’t our familiar project management approach work for this tricky project? Why should we try something that feels uncomfortable and different?” my response is along the following lines …

The project management approach

Project management is extremely useful when:

  • There is agreement on the scope of the problem …
  • Milestones and deliverables are clear and agreed …
  • This kind of problem has been solved before …
  • The appropriate expertise exists and is accessible …
  • There is certainty about what needs to be done …
  • The road ahead is clear even if at times the terrain may be bumpy …
  • The solution will be obvious when achieved.

Even if things don’t go quite according to the prepared plan, an effective project manager/team leader will get things back on track and back ‘on time’ and ‘on budget’.

And once we’ve solved this problem, we can solve another one like it using the same thinking and repeating the same project management techniques.

The collaborative approach

In contrast, the collaborative approach is most useful when:

  • The scope is hazy and everyone sees it differently …
  • No-one agrees when, where or how to start …
  • No-one has solved a problem like this before although many are working on bits of it …
  • Nobody has all the expertise, but everyone has some …
  • Existing knowledge is insufficient; new ideas and new thinking are needed …
  • The way ahead is uncertain; the diversity of views and our natural urge to return to certainty cause conflict …
  • The endpoint may never be reached; it keeps changing with new learning.

Choosing your approach

Working in complexity requires a collaborative approach and a collaborative mindset. It can be very hard for acknowledged experts to admit to not knowing, and for leaders to say they don’t have a solution and need help to find one. To make collaboration work, teams and organisations need particular skills that, in our experience, cannot be learned in a classroom. These skills include:

  • A collaborative mindset or way of thinking (CQ) ..
  • An understanding of the ‘why’ of collaboration ..
  • A practical framework or pathway to follow ..
  • An ability to work in uncertainty, to take risks, to test boundaries ..
  • An ability to experiment, learn new things by trying and sometimes getting it wrong ..
  • Advocacy and enquiry, listening and strategic questioning ..
  • Confidence in collaborative processes and an ability to adapt behaviours to help groups ‘hold the collaborative frame’ and build trust and positive relationships, rather than become divided by differences of opinion, argument or actual conflict.

In our experience, teams and organisations are starting to understand complexity and the collaborative approach needed to tackle it. They accept that the relevant mindsets and skills can only be learned through doing the work and looking over the collaborative parapet to see a new way forward.