The Quest To Find The Metis Of Projects

The Metis of Projects

“The Metis of Projects” addresses veteran project manager Ben Berndt’s unease with the use of established (project) management frameworks given their general inefficacy. Despite the use of these frameworks, it is estimated that some 30% of projects still fail because they deliver too late, cost more than expected and/or lack quality. Often, projects and their environments are too complex to be controlled by rather linear frameworks. Where most practitioners define complexity as "complicated," most academics define complexity (more correctly) as interrelatedness. In recent years, the academic community has developed several "level-of-complexity frameworks;" however, these frameworks are not commonly known to practitioners and are therefore not regularly used. And, when examined further, these frameworks appear to be merely environmental scans, used to assess the level of complexity in the project management environment. But projects also carry inherent complexity; they are socially complex, and it is this social complexity that—paradoxically—needs management. Combined with personality assessments, social network theory is used here to glean a better understanding of the social complexity in a project. Berndt believes that, following Hugo Letiche and Michael Lissack's emergent coherence concept, managers should steer clear of frameworks in order to come to grips with the complex, and so he introduces whole systems methodologies, in which group understanding is used to continually set a next step. Berndt concludes his study by describing his multi-view, multi-tool participative project management style, which he thinks best aligns with (managing) the complex.

The Quest to Find the Metis of Projects

Turn to Film

Turn to Film: Film in the Business School offers creative and powerful uses of film in the business school classroom and surveys the pedagogical and performative value of watching films with students. This volume examines not only how film offers opportunities for learning and investigation, but also how they can be sources of ideological poison, self-delusion and mis-representation. Throughout the text, renowned contributors embrace film’s power to embark on new adventures of thought by inventing images and signs, and by bringing novel concepts and fresh perspectives to the classroom. If film often reveals organizational dysfunctionality and absurdity, it also teaches us to understand the other, to see difference, and to accept experimentation. A wide spectra of films are examined for their pedagogical value in terms of what can be learned, explored and discussed by teaching with film and how film can be used as a tool of research and investigation. The book sees film in the classroom as an educational challenge wherein rich learning and personal development are encouraged.