Simple Training in a Complex Context

By Nick Jago

The phrase ‘If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter’ might first be traced back to French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal in 1657. Since then, plenty of other high profile individuals have been attributed with a variation on this quote, including Benjamin Franklin and Woodrow Wilson.

This then opens up the question as to why simplicity is such a time consuming concept, and how we can create training solutions that focus only on the necessary details.

In our current geopolitical environment and context, the world is very much a complex place. Decisions made on the other side of the globe have instant and significant impact on our lives. The overlap between the virtual and the physically tangible is so blurred that we are confronted with versions of ourselves that are so distorted and separated from reality that we might start to question our own identity. You could argue that we are only going to increase this complexity over time, going hand in hand with the exponential development of technology and our insatiable appetite to push the boundaries of what is possible.

Sometimes it’s all just a bit overwhelming, isn’t it? Which is exactly why it is most definitely worth taking the time to try and filter out the noise, and focus on what is actually important to us. I say this from both a personal and professional perspective, and will share with you two stories side by side, one from each of these viewpoints.

All the Possibilities

In the personal corner, I’m a qualified football (soccer) coach, and I am involved with a representative team at the under 11 age group. These are some talented children who love the sport and show a real affinity for it. They are also fortunate to have dedicated parents who invest significant amounts of time and money into their development as players.

Before the start of the season, I was throwing around ideas with the other coach about formations, tactics, fitness regimes, psychological advantages, positional awareness and several other concepts. We are both invested in the growth of these kids as well, so it was all coming from a place of caring and positivity (and a smidgeon of competitive drive).

When we shared our ideas with the club, they congratulated us on our hard work, and asked us to throw it out of the window! This was something of a blow to the ego, and it took several weeks to let it settle and fully appreciate why they had that reaction. I subsequently spent time considering what it was that the kids actually needed, and ultimately reached the conclusion that they only need three things from us:

• input to improve their technical ability (achieved through training sessions) 

• support in their general growth (mentally and physically, as people, not just players)

• positivity so that they maintain their love for the game and continue playing it for many years to come

It was so easy to get so wrapped up in all of the possibilities that the game provides us with that I’d lost sight of what was truly important – and ultimately, what was simple. It took time to work through the ideas that we had, and a challenge had to be posed before we could reflect on everything and realise that the best way forward was not to overload these ten year olds with tactical insight and complex game theories, but to keep it as straight forward as possible.

Hopefully, come the end of the season, every single player will have enjoyed being part of the squad, shown some improvement in their skills and want to register for next year. That’s all there is to it, but to reach that understanding, a lot of information had to be worked through.

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity

From the professional viewpoint, I’ve been delivering training in Project Management with Elemental Projects for two years now. Prior to that, I spent 20 years in industry, primarily working on large scale infrastructure projects, which are anything but simple! That said, our training design is based on simple principles, as we try to help our students navigate through their own intricacies without burdening them with our own.

Interestingly, the project world is regularly affected by outside influences which create tricky situations. We refer to it as VUCA – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. You would be hard pressed to find a project of any significance that was not impacted by at least one of these factors. So how do you translate the constantly shifting project world into a set of straight forward ideas? Well, ultimately you have to invest a lot of time into identifying what the underpinning principles are, then work out how to share that information.

This is the point at which trainers have to write their shorter letter, where we need to question how to achieve the required outcomes. Unfortunately, the simplicity comes from continuous reduction of the complex. You can’t boil down a training soup over low heat until just the tastiest instructional, reductional jus remains. There isn’t really an easy way to do this, or at least one that doesn’t require the investment of your highly valuable time, but here is how we have approached it.

Firstly, and this might be somewhat bespoke to project management, but there isn’t one ‘correct’ approach to delivering projects. There are multiple methodologies, each of which performs somewhat better under specific circumstances. So rather than championing one of them, we outline how each of them hold their own place in the world. No favourites, no agendas based on which organisational shares we own, just a straight forward highlight of where each of them shines.

Secondly, and more applicable across any training, we try to make it fun and engaging. If I’ve learned one thing over the course of my career, it’s that there is plenty of dry material in PM, so you have to look for ways in which to add some energy. We often try to connect the material to pop culture, history, tales of the unexpected and anything that provides a fitting analogy and provides an access point for people to consider it in more than one way. Opening up these stories places higher demand on the preparation time, but in order to simplify how people connect with the issues at hand, we must work through this process.

At the point of joining Elemental Projects, I was told that we were delivering project management training via the medium of stand-up comedy. Now, whilst this isn’t strictly true (we can be serious when necessary), it’s a fabulous way of describing the care that needs to be put into the training preparation, because I have actually done some stand up comedy (at an amateur, not very good level). I spent three months honing a five minute set, and even then it could have been refined even further, if I’d had time to shorten it...

All of which brings us full circle back to the notion of writing shorter letters, and how in training, as with the prose of various 19th Century figures, the more effort we can put into it in the preparation stage, the more concise, approachable and simpler we can make it.

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About the Author: Nick Jago