Project failures are rampant. Seven in ten projects fail to deliver promised benefits, often exceeding budgets. After two decades witnessing this firsthand in reengineering and transformation projects, I sought insights from three books to understand why well-intentioned projects fail and how to address a common culprit: poor communication.
The books reviewed are:
- Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution
- How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project
- The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets that Power Amazon’s Success
While none earned more than a lukewarm 6/10, each offered valuable guidance on managing complex projects and improving communication.
1. Reengineering the Corporation
This 1993 book ignited the reengineering craze of the 90s and 2000s, a concept still relevant today under the banner of “Digital Transformation.” The book identifies three types of processes: broken, important, and ripe for reengineering. It focuses on the latter. Three key chapters stand out:
- Chapter 3: ‘9 Themes/Rules of Reengineering’
- Chapter 6: ‘5 Key Roles in Reengineering’
- Chapter 14: ’19 Reasons Why Reengineering Fails’
These lists provide a concise overview of critical considerations for any reengineering effort:
9 Themes/Rules:
- Combine multiple jobs into one.
- Empower workers to make decisions.
- Perform process steps in a natural order.
- Implement multiple process versions.
- Perform work where it makes the most sense.
- Reduce checks and controls.
- Minimize reconciliation.
- Use a case manager as a single point of contact.
- Employ hybrid centralized/decentralized operations.
5 Key Roles:
- Reengineering Leader
- Process Owner
- Reengineering Team
- Steering Committee
- Reengineering Czar
19 Reasons for Failure:
- Fixing instead of changing the process.
- Lack of focus on business processes.
- Ignoring everything but process redesign.
- Neglecting people’s values and beliefs.
- Settling for minor results.
- Quitting too early.
- Leaders imposing prior constraints.
- Leaders allowing existing culture to hinder progress.
- Bottom-up implementation attempts.
- Assigning unqualified leaders.
- Insufficient resources.
- Marginalizing reengineering on the agenda.
- Dispersing energy across too many projects.
- CEO involvement near retirement.
- Confusing reengineering with other improvement programs.
- Focusing solely on design, not execution.
- Trying to avoid upsetting anyone.
- Withdrawing when resistance arises.
- Prolonging the effort unnecessarily.
Key takeaways from the book include the need to break boundaries, the iterative nature of reengineering, and the importance of focusing on processes, not functions. Bill Gates highlighted, in his review, the need to regularly review processes, avoid excessive fragmentation of work, and minimize hand-offs. Worked for MSFT.
My key takeaway: Before launching a reengineering project, gather the five key roles, review the nine themes, and conduct a pre-mortem by ranking the 19 failure reasons by likelihood. This simple step could prevent many project disasters. The book emphasizes the high-risk nature of reengineering; many factors must align for success.
2. How Big Things Get Done
This book addresses the “Iron Law of Megaprojects”: they consistently run over budget, over time, and under deliver on benefits. While not particularly “surprising,” it offers valuable wisdom for executives and project managers. Key takeaways:
- Plan thoroughly beforehand: Resist the urge to “think fast, act slow.” Planning is not wasted effort; it’s the most cost-effective progress. Ask the 5Ws and 1H.
- Iterate and test on a smaller scale: Beta testing is crucial.
- Rely on proven solutions: Use existing designs, technologies, and experienced personnel. Avoid custom or bespoke solutions.
- Recognize your project’s commonality: Use data from similar projects for planning and projections. Avoid the “this one is different” fallacy.
- Be publicly optimistic, privately pessimistic: This prepares you for unexpected challenges.
- Build a strong, aligned, and motivated team: Incentivize on-time and on-budget delivery.
- Consider modular design: This reduces complexity.
The book concludes with 11 heuristics for project managers, all aligned with the above takeaways.
- hire a masterbuilder
- get your team right
- ask “WHY?”
- build with lego
- think slow, act fast
- take the outside view
- watch your downside
- say NO and walk away
- make friends and keep them friendly
- build climate mitigation into your progect
- know that your biggest risk is you
My key takeaway: Before any project, question all assumptions and stress-test them. Thorough planning prevents being “doomed before you begin.”
3. The Bezos Blueprint
This book focuses on improving written and presentation communication. It’s divided into three sections:
- Improve Your Writing: Emphasize simplicity. Write for an 8th-grade level. Use short sentences and avoid jargon. Start with what the audience knows. The book offers seven writing tips: begin with subjects and verbs, order words for emphasis, use active voice, use strong verbs, avoid qualifiers, vary sentence length, and use parallel structures. It also introduces the “logline,” a concise summary of your story (like a movie tagline). This is similar to the military’s “BLUF” (Bottom Line Up Front). Use metaphors and analogies effectively.
- Tell Better Stories: Use the three-act structure (setup, challenge, resolution) with added “beats”: catalyst, debate, fun and games, and “all is lost” moment. The book discusses using this structure for origin story presentations. It also explores Amazon’s “narrative memo” (no PowerPoint) and the “PR/FAQ,” a document written before a launch, as if it were the launch day announcement. This forces clarity and internal alignment. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of reading.
- Get Better at Convincing People: Introduces “AMP”: Ability, Message, and Practice. It analyzes Bezos’s and Steve Jobs’s communication styles. It advises communicating your mission relentlessly and using symbolic reminders (like Bezos’s empty chair for the customer). It also covers humanizing data and introduces the “Gallo Method Map Template,” a simplified version of the MECE model: start with a logline, make 3+ key points supported by stories/data/analogies, and end by repeating the logline.
My takeaways: Keep messages simple and memorable, craft clear narratives using the three-act structure, and practice.
Final thoughts :
Nothing in these 3 books are going to come as “earth shattering insight” to the average reader of such literature. But then my goal was to better understand –
(a) the reasons expensive well intended and mission critical projects fail
(b) how to plug one recurring theme is most failed projects – Poor Communication
And on these modest goals these 3 books do deliver.
Third Eye Observations 