On 20th Feb, Richard Barber spoke at the NZDIA members' meeting in Wellington about the challenge of breakthrough performance in multi-party programs and projects.
Almost always, multi-party programs experience undesirable emergent outcomes that were not foreseen, even though in hindsight the risks were visible and could have been better managed. Emergence is a characteristic of all complex programs, and cannot be managed effectively simply through good intentions and collaboration across the parties. It requires a whole-of-system view, supported by soft-systems analysis of what is happening.
Richard described a case study where a small amount of whole-of-system work led to critical new strategic insights for a major program. The discussion that followed was about how in practice to include whole-of-system work as part of business-as-usual in large Defence-Industry acquisition and sustainment programs.
If this interests you, contact Richard at rbarber@riskiq.com.au.
