How Project Leaders Can Tame Unpredictability

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Every week, I carefully curate inspiring articles and share my thoughts, accompanied by motivational quotes. I hope you enjoy this next edition of my Monday Motivation, and I eagerly anticipate hearing your feedback and suggestions for future topics.

This week I would like to focus on the topic of leadership in unpredictable times.? The past five years especially have shown us how many unknown unknowns we may be faced with. The pandemic, supply chain disruption, and now GenAI, are evidence of this. So, what methodologies can we deploy to manage our projects and our people in the face of this unpredictability??

In today's volatile business environment, project leaders face constant challenges from unexpected disruptions. Today’s article, How Project Leaders Can Tame Unpredictability, introduces a powerful technique derived from agile methodologies: “vertical slicing.” The author brings his experience as an agile-product-development consultant to identify the four key areas where new initiatives face unpredictability: human behavior, interpersonal dynamics, technological change and interoperability, and organizational interdependencies. He argues that the agile methodology offers an important tool for dealing with this unpredictability and method for addressing it.

Human Behavior.

Human behavior is unpredictable, especially when it comes to change. Most new initiatives require that people do certain things differently than they did before, so it’s important to begin with a narrowly defined test group that is representative of your broader one before committing your resources to a particular plan. The slice allows you to implement the change you eventually want to see across the board and observe how the people in the test group react to reveal the (potentially unforeseen) challenges of scaling up an initiative.

Interpersonal Dynamics.

Unpredictability increases significantly when strong interpersonal dynamics exist among the people whose behavior you’re trying to change. This is particularly the case when changes to organizational structures or processes affect incentives, careers, or areas of shared responsibility. Unpredictability also goes up whenever network effects are important for your product or service, or when a range of employees, consumers, and other stakeholders will be interacting within the system you’re building or fixing. In such cases, you don’t want to start with a narrow group. Instead, your first slice should encompass a sample large enough to exhibit the dynamics at play while tackling a smaller but still representative behavioral change.

Technological Change and Interoperability.

It is now almost impossible to find a product or service that doesn’t rely on modern technology. And as technology continues to advance at an accelerating rate, we are bombarded with dramatic changes in what we consume and how it’s delivered. To reduce uncertainty when launching new tech initiatives or products, it’s important to focus from the start on integration—within the business, with legacy systems, and with external technologies. The best way to test this category of unpredictability is to create a slice called a “tracer bullet.” Just as gunners use incendiary ammunition to see the trajectory of their shots, you create and test a minimum viable version of the future solution that integrates with all necessary technologies.?

Organizational Interdependencies.

Most projects require collaboration across multiple teams within an organization, and some also involve outside stakeholders. Each of these groups can introduce their own elements of unpredictability, which may increase your risk in ways you can’t control. However, you can slice the interdependencies with an “organizational tracer bullet” that tests, for a single scenario, all the connections among the teams responsible for providing and receiving goods or services. This approach allows you to identify the hurdles that must be overcome to achieve larger-scale collaboration.

Instead of tackling a large project head-on, slicing involves breaking it down into small, manageable tests. By iteratively testing and refining each “slice,” project leaders can:

Reduce uncertainty: Identify and address potential roadblocks early on, such as unforeseen human behavior, complex interpersonal dynamics, technological challenges, and organizational interdependencies.

Increase adaptability: Quickly adjust to changing circumstances and incorporate valuable learnings into the project's evolution.

Minimize risk: Avoid costly mistakes by identifying and mitigating potential issues before significant resources are invested.

By embracing the power of slicing, project leaders can navigate uncertainty, increase their chances of success, and deliver projects more effectively in today’s dynamic business landscape.

Stay on the beat with me and have an amazing start to your week ?

Yours,

Mark

Source

Skornyakov, A. (January – February 2025) How Project Leaders Can Tame Unpredictability. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2025/01/how-project-leaders-can-tame-unpredictability