HOW BIG THINGS GET DONE is a welcome exposé of the difference between successful and failed projects. It’s a refreshing read for someone like me, who gets exasperated by the amount of wasted time, money and people that I see on projects. Prof. Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner have created a book of smart and simple principles to improve the delivery of anything. Supported by many real and compelling examples (with huge detail in the 90 pages of notes and bibliography, at the end for those who want more), they capture “the surprising factors behind every successful project, from home renovations to space exploration” in an extremely readable style.
At Imminent we have spanned various sectors, but especially financial services and infrastructure, and we constantly see the same problems and opportunities in very different worlds. We’ve proved that by applying simple improvements to ways of working and the way change is managed, that it’s not uncommon to be able to save 30% of time, cost, and an immeasurable amount of stress - and actually get a better outcome. Flyvbjerg and Gardner recount similar experiences, and much more, using clear language and excellent case studies. But as someone famously said, simple isn’t necessarily easy.
Here are a few of my favourite principles from the book:
· Think slow, act fast – how often do teams charge into something to please a client, a boss, a shareholder, a politician, before thinking it through? We tend to talk about Design Thinking, stepping back to ‘design the right thing’ before you ‘design the thing right’, and the authors eloquently describe the pitfalls avoided and gains achieved from taking time at the beginning. They ask the questions: “What’s the worst that can happen in planning? What’s the worst that can happen during delivery?” and show how you limit your exposure to risk in delivery by taking time to think. We particularly find the benefits of this in multi-disciplined teams, where they usually haven’t worked together before; deliberately designing how we are going to do things is massively helpful across the project or product lifecycle.
· Think from right to left – we have developed a challenge we call “Outcomes over Outputs” where we systematically stop people thinking about what they are going to individually produce and deliver and get them to concentrate on what the outcome needs to be; the “why” of our work. Sometimes the best answer might be to actually not to do anything, or to do something surprisingly different. The book brings this to life, showing how focussing everyone on the purpose is key.
Anything that doesn’t deliver value to the outcome is waste. When you have a whole team constantly examining if what they are doing is adding value to the outcome then you definitely are in the right space for success.
· Pixar planning – the authors use the iterative process of Pixar as a great example of how refining - the story, the characters, the style - all takes time; but by the time they go into production they have validated everything multiple times. It’s like “think slow, act fast” in rapid and regular iterations. In infrastructure engineering and construction we see that the technology is now available, to model and rehearse digitally (just like Pixar) before putting a spade in the ground, but it is just not used enough. Design clashes and errors are found too late and become incredibly expensive to fix during construction. The authors quote several examples from Frank Gehry’s work, where he embraced modelling technology early and adopted “supercharged iteration” (a phrase I loved), constantly modelling, testing and “Digitally Rehearsing” with the whole team. Similarly, we have applied software techniques of Agile delivery and continuous integration to infrastructure design and construction (using BIM, 3D, 4D, 5D modelling) and seen huge benefits in cost and collaboration. See this video about the design and construction of Bergen Art & Design School from my friends in Norway.
· What’s your Lego? – All too often we see teams re-invent and re-invent again, failing to build, measure, learn and then reuse. Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner use the analogy of Lego, to get the small, tested elements and use them repeatedly to construct the big. Frequently the opportunities in infrastructure for modularity or offsite manufacture and onsite assembly are missed, and in the same way the learnings from change initiatives are overlooked on the overall programme. The power of experimentation to validate elements before scaling is underrated.
I thoroughly recommend HOW BIG THINGS GET DONE and hope it will have an impact on those who procure and deliver projects. There is something in here for all of us to pause and learn, whether we are clients, programme managers, designers, delivery teams or change managers. Citizens deserve more from their taxes, customers deserve more from products and services, and the pleasure of delivering value can be more satisfying for all of us.
If anyone would like help in your organisation in improving “how big things get done”, then we’d love to chat. info@imminent.works
Thank you to Jacobs, Hymans Robertson and Atkins for their bravery – especially Suzanne Moore, Paul McKay, Adam Street, James Nash, Donald Morrison, Jon Hatchett, Sorcha Derkx-Mullan, Lesley Waud, Bharat Gala, Bisrat Solomon Degefa, Dan Bishop, Geetha Ramamoorthi, Haima Haldar (She/Her) , Sam Rees, Martin Geach and my friends in Norway, Per Roger Johansen, Sven Wertebach and Astrid Renata Van Veen – who have let us work with them over recent years to try new things, learn from their experiences and improve purpose, productivity and ultimately profit.