When I hear arguments that the abundant resources available
is a guarantee for the success of a project, “they are just going to throw
money at it”, it makes me smile inside. Often, access to bountiful resources is
an arbitrary indicator for predicting success. Throughout the twentieth
century, the typical recipe for success of both companies and nations
has included a situation where limited resources
precipitated resourcefulness and increased efficiency – simply doing things
smarter. Yet, if managed correctly, access to money and resources is a
tremendous enabler for any endeavour. Knowing how this is done is the key to
success.
On this question there is no lack of experts. The study of
success has become a cult. Books and seminars by management and self-help
gurus, along with biographies about, or by, corporate leaders, are referred to
as if they were religious truths. The romanticised view is of an individual
recognising a need in the marketplace and assembling the right team to carry
out the idea. The books portray these steps as seemingly unremarkable when
broken down, and completely possible for any entrepreneurial person on the face
of the earth to replicate, granted they have enough can-do spirit. While many
of these books have plenty of wisdom to divulge, for the
most part, there are limits to the lessons we can learn and
apply from how the world’s biggest multinationals are run.
It is much more meaningful to study the cause of their
failure. Not to mention that it is cause for more amusement. In contrast to
success, failure is more often said to be the result of the person’s own
making, rather than having been outmaneuvered by any competitors or tripped up
by other surrounding factors.
We all carry with us the seeds of our own ultimate demise.
The trick is not letting them take root. I reflected on this after interviewing
the renowned architect Professor Albert Speer last week as he stressed the
importance of having an awareness that the costliest errors often made are at
the beginning of a project - discovered too
late to remedy easily. It is easy to forget how the primary
assumptions we make in terms of a situation and use as a basis to plan can turn
out completely void and fundamentally unfounded.
For instance, market dynamics can suddenly change, as can
prerequisites we took for granted and saw as fundamental to the viability of
projects and products. Remember Microsoft’s megaproject Encarta, which was
going to become the be all and end all of encyclopedias, to be written by an
army by the best and the brightest scholars. Who would have guessed the
volunteer model of Wikipedia, with random members of the public
contributing their knowledge practically unchecked, would
make Microsoft’s endeavour obsolete? The same went for the business model of
web browsers like Netscape or the music download site Napster. Both were valued
at billions, to only moments later be worth close to nothing and barely
remembered.
The continuously escalating expectations on developers and
contractors in the region to deliver on
ever-more ambitious mega-projects in record time increases
the risks that many assumptions being made today will turn out to have been
wrong. Some will be of a technical nature, but many will be as much about
natural instinct. Which markets and projects to pursue, how and who to partner
with?
There is no silver bullet. While sticking to the old and
tried may minimise risks avoid short-term failure, it may eventually leave you
overtaken by competitors. The only road to achievement will inevitably lead
past many failures, and will require substantial risk to
attain.
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