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September PM Mixer 2026: Cracking Project Complexity
Cracking Project Complexity brought together diverse voices from industry and academia to explore how successful leaders navigate uncertainty, balance competing demands, and transform complexity into opportunity. Featuring Enzo Guarino (Founder & CEO of Lyv Group), Dr Ali Ali-Ashwal (Program Lead & Associate Professor of Project Management), and Alex Lyaschenko (Project Data Modelling & Analyst).
Complexity is Not the Enemy
One of the prevalent themes from the event was that complexity itself is not the problem. Complexity emerges when multiple organisations, stakeholders, and systems contribute to a shared outcome, yet no single party is responsible for the whole. Even when individual organisations perform their roles effectively, the broader system can still underperform due to poor coordination and fragmented decision-making.
“Uncoordinated complexity is the problem, not complexity” - Alex Lyaschenko
This perspective challenges traditional project thinking. Rather than simplifying every challenge, project leaders should focus on understanding interdependencies, managing uncertainty, and creating mechanisms that allow different parts of a project ecosystem to work together effectively. Supply chains and mega projects highlight this reality, where resilience often depends less on eliminating complexity and more on developing the capability to manage it.
Systems thinking encourages project leaders to consider the whole rather than the parts. It focuses on understanding how decisions relating to time, cost, risk, scope, and benefits interact with one another and influence overall outcomes. Modern project delivery increasingly relies on modelling approaches that simulate potential decisions and their impacts before implementation.
Why Collaboration Matters More Than Ever
Many project challenges exist across organisational boundaries. Whether working with contractors, consultants, regulators, or delivery partners, success increasingly depends on collaboration rather than individual excellence. The discussion highlighted that organisations often operate in silos, making it difficult to solve industry-wide challenges or achieve meaningful innovation.
“The greatest loss is often occurring between those functions” - Enzo Guarino
A particularly compelling observation was the contrast between academia and industry. While researchers are often focused on creating novel solutions or solutions for never been solved before problems, practitioners are typically under pressure to solve problems quickly. Bridging these worlds, alongside government, finance, and policy stakeholders, is essential if industries are to move beyond traditional ways of working.
Importantly, effective collaboration does not require everyone to have identical priorities. What matters is alignment around a shared outcome and an understanding of how individual decisions impact others within the system.
Smaller Projects can be Surprisingly Complex
One insight that resonated strongly was the idea that smaller projects can sometimes be just as complex, if not more complex, than larger ones. Large projects often attract executive attention, dedicated resources, and significant budgets that help manage uncertainty and stakeholder coordination. Smaller projects frequently operate with limited resources and less experienced resources, creating their own unique delivery challenges.
For project professionals, this serves as an important reminder not to underestimate projects simply because they have a smaller budget or shorter schedule.
Tackling Change Fatigue
The conversation also explored the growing issue of change fatigue. Much of this fatigue stems from planning practices that fail to account for the realities of resource constraints. Too often, project plans assume resources are fully available when, in reality, people take leave, become unavailable, or are simultaneously committed across multiple initiatives.
Good planning requires more than creating schedules. It means building realistic contingencies, understanding resource limitations, and considering the downstream impacts that decisions may have across the broader project ecosystem. Systems thinking plays a critical role in identifying these interconnected effects before they become major issues.
Learning from Repeatable Components
“A project is a unique combination of non-unique components” - Alex Lyaschenko
An interesting challenge to conventional thinking was the idea that projects are not entirely unique. While every project differs in its objectives and context, they are often made up of repeatable components and processes. By identifying these reusable modules and building libraries of historical data, organisations can improve forecasting, planning accuracy, and delivery consistency.
This modular approach creates opportunities to leverage lessons learned, reduce uncertainty, and make better informed decisions throughout the project lifecycle.
Our Takeaways
Focus on managing interdependencies rather than oversimplifying challenges.
Invest in collaboration across organisational boundaries.
Build realistic plans that account for resource constraints and uncertainty.
Apply systems thinking to understand project-wide impacts of decisions.
Combine technology investments with leadership and organisational capability development.
Capture and reuse historical project data to improve forecasting and planning.
Foster knowledge sharing across projects to strengthen organisational maturity.
The future belongs to organisations that can connect people, processes, and systems into a coordinated whole. For project professionals, developing that capability may be the most important investment of all.
Continue the Conversation
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