S4E85: Delivering Perfect Projects and Why We Make a Mess of Them with Prof. Eddie Obeng - a podcast by Val Matthews & Dale Foong

In this week’s pod, we welcomed Eddie Obeng to talk about how to deliver perfect, all engaging projects and why we actively and intentionally make a mess of them!
Originally from Ghana, Eddie has a background in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering as well as Economics and Business Management. He started his career as an engineer at Royal Dutch Shell before becoming the youngest Executive Director of a European Business School when he moved to Ashridge Business School.
He is the First author to popularise Project management through the Financial Times Best-seller All Change. Also author of 9 other books including Perfect Projects and New Rules for the New World as well as hundreds of articles and papers.
He is also a world-class educator and has delivered TED talks.
The main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows:

Some people forget what the job is about when they are paid. People need to ask why we are changing things
People should not confuse transformation and projects
Covid has shown the world that we need to transform
If you know the definition, then it should not be classed as transformation
It is rare for traditional project managers to be able to successfully deliver transformation projects as they typically know their scope whereas the answer is not always clear on transformation projects
Sometimes Project Managers who deliberately let their complex projects fail often get more airtime and credit from the leadership teams because they know it is difficult to manage
Most project reviews are backwards-looking, however, change constantly therefore management should be forward-looking rather than backwards
There is no such thing as a hybrid project!
Complexity without the fun is just hard work
Leadership is about following. There is no need to overcomplicate this
Incidence is not a useful guide to activity e.g. number of people using a PM methodology in a survey
Bubble diagrams allow people to map out project complexity

Here are links to some of the topics that were discussed:
Eddie Obeng – TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/eddie_obeng_smart_failure_for_a_fast_changing_world
Five Monkeys Experiment: https://workingoutloud.com/blog/the-five-monkeys-experiment-with-a-new-lesson
Qube – Virtual Meeting Space: https://qube.cc/what-is-qube/
This episode is proudly brought to you by JustDo.com, PlanAcademy.com & InEight.com
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Join us next week where we’re joined by Sarah Schutte to discuss how to make law work for the construction and engineering industry.
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Stay safe, be disruptive and have fun doing it!
Dale and Val

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