The secrets to successfully planning, executing, and completing any complex, ambitious project on any scale, from the world's leading expert on megaprojects.
Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from sketch to the jewel of the New York skyline in twenty-one months, how Amazon started in a garage and became a global retail giant in five years, how, when coronavirus broke out in the city of Wuhan, the Chinese goverment built a 1,500-room hospital in under a week. These grand visions make for inspiring stories. But even for endeavors of far smaller and more modest scales, turning a vision into a plan and a plan into reality isn't easy. Whether it's delivering a key report to a client, organizing a big event, implementing a department-wide process, launching a small business, inventing a product, or renovating a home, many of our everyday projects are in fact complex feats of planning and coordination. Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life's work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed "the world's leading megaproject expert" by KPMG. In Big Plans, he identifies the errors in judgement and decision-making that lead projects to fail and offers research-based strategies for avoiding common pitfalls. For example:
Think slow, act fast: It may seem obvious that we should spend less time planning and more time executing, but in practice this is exceedingly difficult.
Plan backwards: Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there.
Eliminate the unpredictable: when a project gets derailed, we often cite "unforeseen problems." However, most problems can be foreseen, through a method called reference-class forecasting.
Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House to the making of Pixar's first film, “Big Plans” reveals how to get any ambitious project done: on time and on budget.
