Why discovering invisible barriers is critical for success

Vip Vyas and Thomas Zweifel on why peeking into the ‘black box’ of megaprojects is critical to understanding why failure happens.

We know that 65% of megaprojects fail. Either they go over budget, over time or both. Or they don’t meet their objectives. At a current investment of $20 trillion per year in major projects, this would be like flushing $13 trillion down the drain.

Did you know that, by 2027, an estimated 88 million people will work in project management‑related roles? What factors are driving this trend? At least four can be observed. The first is the projects and programmes needed to combat the unprecedented challenges facing humanity. A second driver is the massive Chinese Belt and Road and US Build Back Better initiatives, designed to reconfigure, boost and expand the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of two gigantic economies battling for geopolitical supremacy. Both have already spurred enormous demand for advanced project leadership.

It’s time to course-correct

Then there is the impact of the COVID‑19 pandemic – governments worldwide are making significant investments to help their sluggish economies rebound. Last but not least is the exciting lure of emerging disruptive technologies – such as the metaverse, blockchain, fintech, artificial intelligence – where business angels, venture capitalists, family offices and wealth managers see opportunities for exponential returns.

The project volume is there, but so is the risk. And we have a simple choice. We will either keep going as we always have, playing major projects and megaprojects like a lottery and usually (two out of three) failing. Or we will finally get to the bottom of why megaprojects systematically go wrong so we can course‑correct at the root‑cause level and put in place the critical path to make megaprojects succeed.

A system of failure

There are piles of books on project management: a recent search yielded over 20,000 results on Amazon alone. A smaller number of specialised books cover specific project methodologies. The bookshelf becomes extremely sparse in providing a ground zero, eye‑level view of how large projects function in real time. This gap stems from the fact that relatively few people have worked on complex megaprojects from initiation to final operations. An even smaller number have the time to document, analyse and articulate their experiences in a meaningful way. And virtually nobody has deep insight into the human dynamics of megaprojects. This is a significant gap in the field of project management.

Many projects create an invisible ‘system of failure’ that predictably derails the project and has it spinning out of control. Creating a ‘system for success’ is about creating a project environment, a force field, that sets the project up to win even when the pressure is on and the circumstances look ugly.

What we do in the shadows

There is one thing that consistently goes wrong in megaprojects. One missing element, a critical ingredient that requires a radical rethink and reboot of project management. This one thing is not the technical stuff. And it is not what is in the manual or the Gantt chart. It is the stuff in the background, in the shadows. It is in what people do not say. Or what they do not even see, though the writing is on the wall. They ignore the warning signs.

When megaproject expert Bent Flyvbjerg looked at what goes wrong with megaprojects, he researched extensively the political, strategic and operational crash factors, making vital contributions to the field. In his analysis (and theory), he has also directed the industry towards human factors, such as bias. But, as Einstein is supposed to have said: in theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not. The human element, with all its facets, from blind spots to bias to culture and communication, remains a ‘black box’. We wanted to look at projects from a different angle. The angle we look from is our direct experience with projects. In our book, we open the black box. And we aim to make the human component accessible and actionable.

Gorilla in the Cockpit by Vip Vyas and Thomas Zweifel is out now. Hear Vip Vyas discussing the book in his APM Podcast interview on Spotify, Apple or Google.