Living in the duality of complex projects II

Follows part I.

Next are the practices that we organically developed throughout the course of the project.

The dark photo on the left is a railway station somewhere in northern France, when we got on the wrong train trying to come back home to Paris.

The post-workshop beer is a ritual of mine which Mael was happy to partake. Sometimes this would be in the hotel lobby, other times it would be on the train back home. Decompressing with a drink turned our conversations into a reflective one, where we would start to ask ourselves — okay, how are we doing? How’s the client doing? Are we getting to where we want it to be?

And that got us in the habit of orienting our progress with this question, What are the questions we can now answer?. That shifted our mindset from ticking the boxes of planned activities to focusing on outcomes. We had this conversation almost every day, and that became part of how we ran the project.

The third picture is Mael and I on the Airbnb balcony a few days before the conference, putting the final touches to our talk. The whole preparation process made us reflect on the six months of the project. What did we learn, and how are we different now?

We did a lot of modelling throughout the course of the project — process models, service blueprints, pain-gain models, data models, content models, personas etc.

Most of them started as handwritten sketches or Excel sheets to develop the thinking, then converted into nicer-looking ones in Miro once the format had stabilized. We were always adding new models or evolving existing ones so there were many versions floating around.

Every time we hit a big milestone like a key workshop or delivery, we copied the whole board and started working in a fresh copy. That allowed us to do two things:

• Centralize all of the up-to-date models that were needed for the next step
• Look back on specific points in time of the project and be able to see what we understood then

Why trace our reasoning and decision-making process? It helps us recognize that the constraints that we’re taking for granted were based on old assumptions. Or we can build upon a piece of thinking that had slipped from our memory. This tool-assisted reframing is critical to making new decisions with confidence.

At the beginning of the project, it’s Go, go, go go! If we squeeze this, we can do that. If we move that, we can also do this. And Mael said, we’re not going to sprint for six months. We need to plan it like a marathon.

Well, I know how to plan a marathon. I’ve ran… one but more importantly, I know how to train for a marathon. There are phases in your training. In the beginning, you work on your form and build up foundational strength. In the next phase, you work on speed. And so on. Each phase has a different focus. The key is to work on that focus and not jump ahead or try to do everything at once. That’s not how the body is built.

Also, there are rest days in the plan because rest as part of training. And that’s something we had to keep reminding ourselves during this intense project.

On the left is a very early project plan, and on the right is my marathon training plan. You can see the similarities.

Not all projects need to be planned like a marathon. The power is in having a metaphor for how you want to think about your project.

As I mentioned in the section about dualities, complex projects are emotional experiences. Our emotional state of being will impact how we interview a customer, how we facilitate a workshop, how we think through a model…

Having a support system is a no-brainer, and it’s important to have colleagues who are a steady source of moral support and enthusiasm.

What may not be obvious is how to extend it beyond the people we see day in and day out. Peers who we can reach out with what I call the phone a friend option are invaluable. That’s someone you don’t work with directly but have a personal relationship with. They have a different set of skills or expertise in the target domain, and don’t need to know the full project story to provide input. You ask if you can bounce off a couple of ideas, see what they think, and use that to course correct.

For example, I called a buddy who runs an airport. Same, same but different to Eurotunnel, who runs trains. In the early days when we didn’t have a feel for the transportation domain yet, it was very useful in our sense-making to get perspective from a different voice.

Consider your needs for the project and build a support system for it.

What are your strategies for managing complexities? Let me know your thoughts.

This article is a partial write-up of a talk that I gave with Mael Inizan at Intersection 2019 called “Scaling CX: A Story About Building Bridges Together”. Illustrations by Laure de Valon.

Originally posted on my website, where I write about designing the conditions for independent-minded individuals to grow and thrive together.