Resources

With this book, Carole brings the magic of brain science into the reality of teamwork and projects using examples from real project professionals and explanations from some of the foremost brain, behavioural and social scientists.

This book creates a framework of practices and behaviours that will help any project team perform to a higher level and experience greater wellbeing.

What makes the difference between success and failure is always ‘the people stuff’. Most of us don’t understand why people behave as they do as individuals and, crucially, as teams. We know that stressful environments and experiences lead to poor delivery and poor mental health… Carole provides actionable advice, skills, tools and case studies for practical, mindful results.

Fact:

1) Managing change is complex.

2) The human brain is the most complex entity in the known universe.

Unfortunately, few project and programme managers seem to connect the two facts – and then wonder why their change projects fail.

This book explains how to practically manage the complexities of human behaviour in a project environment. Read it and deliver!

You must agree that projects, which by definition produce a unique outcome, are bound to deal with risk and uncertainty. Also, my definition of project leadership, getting work done through others, means that as a project leader, you must understand and influence people.

Put those two together and you have a very good reason why this book is so fundamentally important if you want to be a project leader, especially in today’s world, in which the planning and scheduling aspects of project management can be so easily automated. What cannot be automated is the ability to deal with those “others” who are accomplishing your project’s success.

Carole Osterweil has made the neuroscience of projects accessible to you. This is exceedingly and increasingly valuable. Think of the times when these aspects of your project arise:

• a decision must be taken under stress and time constraints
• an intense negotiation within or outside the team must go well
• you must engage with stakeholders
• it’s important to build cohesion in your team despite conflict
• a safe environment must be established in which it’s fair to raise issues

From my decades of experience in hundreds of real projects, these things happen – a lot.  In fact, in my role at Boston University’s graduate Project Management program, I am often asked to help students find jobs or to advance their careers. This means I am in tune with what employers are seeking.

Most, if not all of the elements from list above, well-covered by Osterweil’s book, show up frequently in job advertisements for the best project jobs. Not coincidentally, these attributes are increasingly part of the new definition of projects as a ‘system for value delivery’.

They are also descriptive of the servant leadership behavior that is now a major thread in the 7th Edition PMBOK® Guide, APM Body of Knowledge, 7th edition and in APM standards.

Employers and standards-setters know how important this is. This book will aid you in your job, your career, and your career advancement, while also helping to attain project success.

Construction businesses have lost many experienced people since 2008 so youngsters no longer benefit from the natural mentorship that comes from working with others. Add to that complexity – a single program may have 40 to 50 novel and technically challenging projects, and there are gaps. Gaps in terms of knowledge, and just as important, the calming voice of experience.

People often focus on technical challenges, forgetting that delivering a construction project depends on the people. In the post Covid world, with its political and economic uncertainty, the environment is more demanding than ever, and like it or not people are fragile.

This book is one of kind, providing a practical toolkit that ensures a sense of clarity informs your actions and decision making in this stressful project management context.

8 Reasons to read this book

1. It provides a toolkit for delivering construction projects in this VUCA, (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous), world.
2. It’s easy to read and there’s no psychobabble!
3. It gives a sense of clarity to your actions and decision-making.
4. It provides enough knowledge about neuroscience to make it very easy to understand ‘why people behave as they do’, and practical methods for deploying this knowledge in a project management context.
5. There’s a pragmatic focus on building your emotional intelligence and improving the quality of your decision-making.
6. Its novel tools, such as the Project Stress Cycle, help illustrate and address the people challenges of program delivery.
7. It offers a route for building psychological safety, increasing collaboration, and moving away from the toxic culture that characterized construction in the past.
8. It includes mini and extended case studies that show how the tools have been used by individuals and organizations in real life

I shan’t waste words. Just buy it.

If you are a serious Project Manager, this is an important topic for you to learn about. And it’s a very good book. So, you won’t regret buying it nor the time you spend reading it.

What you get is a clear, concise, simple-to-understand but reliable introduction to the underlying ideas of neuroscience, which are relevant to project managers: the Thinking Brain vs the emotional brain – and how to activate your thinking brain and those of the people around you.

And, Osterweil doesn’t just pick ideas and present them in the abstract. Her book has an excellent level of contextualization to our profession, along with an impressive set of practical tools and methods.

Together, this makes Neuroscience for Project Success both a great introduction to the topic and a handy sourcebook, for when you need resources. You’ll learn about:

– how we respond to pressure
– what drives social behaviours at work
– the avoid and approach responses and how to manage them
– the relationship to Emotional Intelligence
…and much more.

This is a book that covers an important topic for Project managers and, as far as I am aware, no other author has (yet) covered it. Carole sets the bar high.

I liked the short punchy length of the book. In no time at all I was reading powerfully useful ideas. In a world of stress, human resistance to change, and a need for resilience, agility and innovation this book gives many pointers.

This short but powerful book makes the connection – long overdue – between project leadership and cognitive (brain) science. I found it fascinating and inspirational. Project management academics should be taking note, and project practitioners, especially those in changeable fields (and who isn’t these days?) must pay attention to the way that individual and group thinking – and in particular, decision-making – is affected by uncertainty. Bottom line: if you pay attention to what is said in this book, you come away with two things: (1) a better understanding of how your own brain works, and (2) a capability to provide better leadership for your project teams.

We talk about a VUCA world, and how major government and organisational projects are started with the best of intents but get bogged down. Project Delivery, Uncertainty and Neuroscience highlights recent neurological research and gives insight into how to use it in project delivery. Read it and learn how to balance attention to the technical with attention to the behavioural and social.

An excellent, clear vision of how to face uncertainty (fog) in projects, call it what it is, and help the team work through it. The book starts with a look at the brain, and how we are wired to protect ourselves when threatened by physical or social threats. Interesting connection of the amygdala and emotional intelligence to group dynamics and project team performance. As Carole points out, if we want our teams to be performing at their best, everyone needs to have their thinking brains turned on. Project fog or uncertainty can shut down team members, and creativity suffers. Carole offers advice for leaders to diagnose times of uncertainty or complexity on projects, note the impact on the team, and offers possible steps to take to guide the team The book is short – only 42 pages – and it gets right to it. No waste. Truly valuable!

The fields of neuroscience, human behavior and psychology are vast and the human side of project management is daunting for many. Short, yet packed with good information that is clearly presented, this book focuses on fundamentals you can grasp quickly and apply. It provides an understanding of the basics of human thinking, feeling and acting in a way that you can actually remember. It gives you a new perspective on why people react the way they do in projects, why some people run from change and others run towards it, why some people seem resistant and others seem curious. I highly recommend you use it to navigate your way through the complexity of projects and the people on them.

The neuroscience view is a fascinating way of thinking about projects, and this book offers great insight into key aspects of performance. The ‘softer’ side of project management is vital, yet clear thinking and advice on the subject is rare. Uncertainty is a fact of life in projects, and embracing this truth (and its consequences) is essential. There are many great nuggets to take away here, along with very practical tools for leaders to improve their project outcomes.

Carole Osterweil’s highly original book helps you get inside the mind of the project. If you understand your own and everyone else’s hang ups (biases, attitudes to risk, perceptions of value) then you can start to influence how people behave within the project.