Mind Matters: The Neuroscience of Project Management [Podcast]

Written by Dave Seddon on 12 Sep, 2024

Listen to the full series on Spotify.

Transcript

Dave: Hi, and a very warm welcome to the changemaker podcast, a series where we've been talking with leaders and key influencers on the subject of change and transformation. 

It's widely reported that a staggering 70% of projects fail due to poor project management. Now, I know this breaks down to further areas such as lack of clear goals or poor communication and lack of resources, poor planning etc, but when project management practices are weak, failure increases significantly. Added to this, the organisational structures and environments we work in become even more complex, and the role of project managers has changed also. 

So, how do we start changing this for the better?

In this episode, we delve into what makes projects and teams successful. I'm your host, Dave Seddon, and today we have a very special guest who brings a unique perspective to the world of project management. Joining us is Carole Osterweil, a trailblazer in integrating neuroscience with project management practices, Carole is the author of the insightful book Neuroscience for Project Success: Why People Behave As They Do. With a background in both project management and psychotherapy, Carole brings a deep understanding of human behaviour and its critical role in project success.

In today's episode, we'll uncover how neuroscience can transform the way we manage projects, enhance team dynamics, and improve outcomes. Whether you're a seasoned project manager or just starting out, you'll find valuable insights and practical strategies that I'm sure will make a real difference in your work. So without further ado, let's dive into the fascinating world of neuroscience and project management. 

A huge welcome to the podcast, Carole.

Carole: Thank you, Dave. It's lovely to be here.

Dave: Just to give a little bit of background and context, Carole, can you share a little bit about your career journey and how you transition from project management to focusing on neuroscience?

Carole: Yeah, it's an unusual one. If I wind back the clock far enough, I started out as an international project leader in the pharmaceutical, the motor and the IT industries. And I was always the person that everybody else came to to help them sort out their team and stakeholder problems. And after about seven years, I got really fed up with it and thought there had to be a better way. So I decided to go off and teach the stuff. 

So I went to the business school at Ashridge where I was really lucky I arrived at the same time as Eddie Obeng. Eddie was running the project and programme management courses there, and together we put a really novel spin on project management and programme management. We were of the view that you couldn't separate it from the leadership. And bear in mind, this was a time when project management was all about processes. So we were somewhat trailblazers in that sense.

And I stayed there for over 15 years, working at times running their project and programme management courses, but also working as one of their consultants. It was a really wonderful place to be because it put me in contact with clients from right across the globe in all kinds of organisations, from the very big corporates and international governments right down to small charities as well. And my interest was around transformation and leadership within the transformation, and bringing the project management spin onto that. I became particularly interested in how we live and work through ambiguity and uncertainty, So I gained accreditation as an organisational coach and an executive coach pretty early on. 

Eventually, I decided that it was time to stop teaching and consulting the stuff and to put the theory into practice. So I went to work as a transformation director on the margins of the Department of Health, the DHSE as it is now, and the NHS running a very political transformation program. From there, I came back to work as an independent consultant and coach and writing quite a lot as well, and along the way, this kind of interesting why people behave as they do was really important to me, which led me to train as a psychotherapist 

Dave: So a nice little segue, really to my next question, then. So did you just wake up one morning and think, do you know what, I'm going to write Neuroscience For Project Success? What prompted you to write the book?

Carole: Oh, that's a lovely question. I didn't just wake up and think I was going to write it. What had happened was, I was toying with the ideas in it for quite a long time. And I began by actually blogging about it, or blogging aspects of what appeared in the book in the end. And as I said to you, I was also testing my ideas out with different people that I was coaching and working with. And I ended up putting my blogs together into quite a short book.

Anyway, this little book was quite influential and very helpful, and it ended up on the radar of the APM, the Association for Project Management, who at the time, were really keen to be publishing more titles related to the people side of projects. And someone suggested to them that if they didn't utilise the idea of neuroscience, and Carole's ideas, they'd be missing a trick. So they came to me and asked me if I'd write the book that you refer to, Neuroscience for Project Success.

Dave: So can you explain how understanding neuroscience can improve project management?

Carole: Oh, a big question. The first thing I want to say to your listeners is that neuroscience as a word may be really scary. It's like, oh, blimey, there's 10s of 1000s of people researching this. Do I have to know it all? And I want to say forget knowing it all. My view is there's neuroscience 101, which is what you need to know. And that's what I aspire to introduce people to in the book. So that's the first thing. 

The second thing I want to say is, projects, I think you'll agree, are really human endeavours. And if you've read the book, you'll recognise what I'm about to say. And it only occurred to me after having written it, and having feedback from other people. Essentially, you wouldn't ask a doctor to make a diagnosis without understanding physiology, or a translator to translate something without having a basic grasp of grammar, but here we are asking project professionals to deliver these huge enterprises, massive human impact, without a real understanding of why people behave as they do. And part of that I think is justified, if you wind the clock back, there hasn't been a really succinct model or easy way of explaining human behaviour. But with the research in neuroscience having reached the stage it's at now, there really is quite a simple way of understanding it.

Dave: I mean, you touching on the human aspect, I think was massively important, because a lot of people concentrate on the process to concentrate on the technology bit. And I think they often underestimate the importance of the human element in it, and not just the people that you're delivering the project to, but even within the project teams themselves, that human behaviour aspect is massively important.

Carole: Yeah, I agree, massively important. And some people get it anyway, without reading lots about it, without the psychotherapy training that I've had. So as I said at the start of our conversation, I was one of those lucky people. People used to come to me to ask how to sort out teams and stakeholders, and I would have a hunch about it, but for other people, the idea of trying to make sense of what seems really irrational behaviour at times, and trying to influence that, is kind of miles out of reach. What I've discovered through bringing these key ideas from neuroscience into the picture is you can suddenly start to make sense of it. And so the very things which cause most projects to go off track, and the research tells us, I think it's about six to one is the ratio from which cultural and people issues really outnumber, or require six to one times the amount of effort to resolve, from the more technical issues. So if that's the ratio, six to one, a model which really helps you do that in a way that makes sense to you is very powerful.

Dave: Yeah, fully agree.

One of the concepts you talk about in your book is the emotional brain and the thinking brain. In simple terms, can you explain a little bit more about this concept, as I think it will be really useful for the listeners later on when we cover some of the other subjects?

Carole: Okay, so the emotional brain and the thinking brain, I want to say to you, first of all, big health warning, it's convenient to talk about things in those terms, but if you were to cut a human brain in half, you couldn't find the bits. And I say that, because if you were to wind the clock back, people used to seek out the bits of the brain that do the emotions, and the bits that do the thinking. It's far more complex than that. But if a car was to come rushing towards you now, you would do whatever it takes to get out of the way. 

Dave: Yeah, it's the flight or fight type scenario. 

Carole: Exactly. So you flip onto autopilot, your autopilot takes over and you do whatever it takes to survive, your fight, flight freeze response clips into action. At other times, when we are not under threat, we're not relying on autopilot to make our decisions. So we can weigh things up and make “informed”, rational decisions. And the language that I use in the book talks about your thinking brain, so if you like, your ability to take rational, cool, calm decisions, when your thinking brain is online. Or if your fight, flight, freeze response has been evoked by what's going on around you, so you're in more of a survival mode, your thinking brain is offline, and it can be anywhere, in varying degrees, completely online, completely offline, or anywhere in between.

Dave: And that emotional brain, I guess, it's trying to keep you safe, isn't it? That's the concept of the brain all the way through, it's trying to take you out of what it considers a dangerous or uncomfortable scenario. But, you know, when you gave the example of the car careering down the road, your body goes into automatic and it does things. And I guess when you're in that uncomfortable place, your brain is trying to take you away from that uncomfortable place.

Carole: So below our level of consciousness all of the time, we are taking in information from two sources. And it might come as a surprise to you when I heard it, it really surprised me the first time, that about 80 to 90% of the information which goes up to our brain to inform our decision making actually comes from our internal physiological responses.

Dave: I was really surprised when you covered that in the book. Yeah, really surprised.

Carole: It's shocking, isn't it? So we are taking in this information and we don't know we're taking it in, and our body is all the time doing what it needs to do, to kind of anticipate what's required from us to prime us to make an appropriate response to it. So that first source is through our bodies, and you might experience that as a knot in your stomach, a quickening of your heart rate, breath getting perhaps shallow, getting on the alert a bit, a bit tense or ready to run away should you need to. 

And then the second source of information comes in through the external world. So, through your five senses - what you see, smell, taste, touch and hear. And you're running this comparison all the time, based on your own personal previous experience and understanding of the world. Is it safe? Or is it hostile? And that dictates how you're going to respond. So you'll make sense of those physical sensations by labelling them as emotions, and following on from that, your behaviours, your actions and your decisions will just flow out. And you won't even necessarily be aware of your physiological responses or your emotional responses. Someone watching you might see that, oh, he's just rolled his eyes at me or given me a nasty look, or whatever it is.

Dave: That leads nicely on to the next bit then, which is how does that whole emotional intelligence relate to neuroscience in the context of project management, then?

Carole: Emotional Intelligence, if you go back to Dan Goleman. So Daniel Goleman was a person who brought the notion of emotional intelligence to the business world, and he talks about self-awareness, self-management, management of relationships, and social awareness. And what I've been describing to you, that sense of being aware of your own responses, how you're feeling, is the very base level of emotional intelligence. It’s self-awareness.

So if I know my thinking brain is going offline, what can I do to bring it more online? So that's the kind of self-management piece of it. By managing my own emotional responses, and having my thinking brain more online, it allows me to then make better judgements about how other people are experiencing this thing. So is this project scary? What's this meeting going to be like? Are these people in a real panic about this? If they are, what do I have to do to make them feel safer? How do I manage those relationships to enable us to deliver what we've got to deliver?

Now, perhaps I need to put a big caveat over the top of this - when I introduced the notion of the thinking brain being online or offline, I spoke about a car coming rushing towards you. The other bit of really important information from the neuroscience research is that it's not just physical threats that we are alert to; humans are social beings, and therefore we are looking out for social threats all the time. Will I be considered favourably as a member of this group? What does that mean for my sense of autonomy? Would I have control over things or not? Where do I stand in the status pecking order? All of those kinds of things will have an impact on how emotionally regulated we are, and how online our thinking brains are.

Dave: And does your brain distinguish between those physical threats or those newer social threats then, or does it act in the same way?

Carole: Nope,there's no distinction at all. A threat is a threat as far as the wiring of our brain and nervous system goes. So this thing about safety, and being in a relationship with others is really important for us, and anything which might compromise what we experience is a threat to some degree. 

So coming back to the project, if I were to call this out in this meeting and say, “I don't believe we're going to deliver”, if everybody else in that meeting is saying, no, no, no, it's fine. Well, is it safe for me to say that? There's a question, one that many of us, I think, would recognise at any time.

Dave: And are you always trying to get that thinking brain back online, because when you've got it back online, you're more rational in the way that you're dealing with things?

Carole: That would be my aspiration. I suspect, because I haven't got the research to hand, it's totally unrealistic for us to expect to have our thinking brains online 100% all of the time. I think we’d be automatons then, and we wouldn't be human.

So there's something about learning to, as I said, to regulate ourselves to make that judgement. How online is my thinking brain at any one time? What do I need to do to get it more online? And once I've done that, what does that then mean I can do by way of informed actions and informed decisions?

Dave: What advice would you have for project managers then to develop this emotional intelligence? 

Carole: The first thing I'd say is allow yourself to suspend judgement for a minute. The next thing I'll say is just think for a moment about the last time things on your project did not go the way you wanted them to.

Dave: Quite regularly.

Carole: Can I ask you, Dave, be brave, tell us about one time something didn't go as well as you wanted it to.

Dave: Actually, a previous podcast. I felt as if it was all prepped, I'd done all the stuff that I needed to do, and what I didn't realise is the client at the other end, their security firewall wouldn't allow the software to work. And I went into a bit of panic, because I was expecting all to work, I’d prepared the questions, done some research, had the client lined up and got the technology working - I thought it was working from my side - I mean, this is just a simple example, but I was literally on the spot. It was like all of that had just gone out the window. I certainly wasn't engaging with my thinking brain at that stage. I went straight to emotions. I felt a bit embarrassed. It was just awkward. 

Carole: And as you're talking about it now, do you get a tiny echo of that moment? 

Dave: Yeah, you kind of relive it.

Carole: Just for the benefit of your listeners, just hear what happens as we recall a situation which didn't go so well. Listeners, notice what happens to you when you recall when things don't go so well. And I don't know, if you rewind the podcast and listen to Dave talking again, you might notice that as he was talking, his throat kind of got a bit tighter, your voice changed in pitch. So those are all the physical symptoms, you know, little tiny inklings of the physical stuff that goes on when we relive, or when we're actually in difficult situations.

You asked me what would I advise project managers, I'm saying to you, just notice there may be a grain of truth and listen for yourself, and then start to get curious about oh, those are some of the physical symptoms that I experience, what can I do to relieve some of that which might help bring my thinking brain more online. 

Dave: Now, I want to touch a little bit on managing stress. Projects by their very nature, and certainly those that are going adrift, can be very stressful environments, you know, people become defensive, we get a bit emotional, as we've discussed, all sorts of things. 

There is a tendency for people when they get into those environments to rely on processes and tasks and seek more control. So how in your view do we combat this?

Carole: The very first thing is to acknowledge the stress levels, rather than pretending that they're not there, or they're not important. And the reason I say that is acknowledging emotions, or what's really going on, is one of the ways to help bring one's thinking brain and other people's thinking brains back online. So acknowledging the stress is really important. 

And another thing that's really important then, well, you might be alluding to the idea of a project stress cycle, which I speak about in the book, am I right there?

Dave: Yeah, tell us a little bit about that, because that does relate to that quite significantly.

Carole: So we've already spoken about what happens when people get stressed. And you've mentioned the behaviours again, so sometimes we get really defensive, and if you think about the fight or flight thing, some people will begin to go on the attack, they’ll start speaking louder and louder and louder. Some will get quite physically threatening, or verbally threatening. Other people will want to withdraw from the situation completely, or maybe those moments of analysis paralysis, not knowing what to do and freezing. So those are all behaviours, which are indicative of stress. And it causes a stress cycle. 

If you imagine you've got a senior stakeholder who's very stressed and is acting in ways which really are not conducive to making everyone want to approach them and explain what's going on, what we actually find is, you get less trust in an environment.I mean, if someone is angry or impatient, or puts you on the spot and is blaming you, why would you want to go and give them bad news? So we kind of give these people a wide berth and we tiptoe around them and try not to upset them. And relationships begin to suffer a bit. Project delivery nowadays relies on good collaboration, good communication, and creativity, so if we are not working well together, the chances of the project succeeding goes down and word gets out. And one thing I've observed again, and again and again, in an organisation is when the word gets out that this is not going quite as well as we want it to, everybody jumps in on it.

Dave: They sense blood.

Carole: They either sense blood or they're really worried. It's like, why isn't it going? And what happens is there's a generalised sense of anxiety. Now, when we humans get anxious, we tend to generalise something. And so then you get asked for more KPIs, more performance indicators, there's this kind of excess scrutiny that's going on. And of course, as the project leader and the project team, if you're being asked to deliver more and more information into different measures, it's distracting you from what you really need to be doing. And if people's thinking brains are not online, it's unlikely to be the right measures, and so the general level of stress goes up, and the chances of delivery go down. 

Often projects can get caught in a really difficult cycle of declining performance. And my own view is, this quest for detailed data is a way of people trying to contain their anxiety that things are not going well. And they want to wrest a sense of control from it. And as a project leader, one of the key things to be able to do is to say, “I absolutely get you're worried about this, but out of all of this stuff that's not going well, what in particular is causing you the most worry?” and try to get away from the generalised into the specifics.

Dave: I mean, I can understand the reliance on information and control because if something you feel as if he's going out of control, you want to bring it back into control. But I guess what you’re warning is it's not just about the control, there's a lot of emotion going on in that as well.

Carole: Yeah, absolutely. So my own view is, people are asking for information without having taken the time to get their thinking brains really online. And the world of projects moves really fast, and people don't like to press the pause button, and what happens is, we end up like a stampeding herd of elephants, creating more mess and more noise. And that does not help delivery. 

So that’s one of the things, coming back to your question of how to relieve stress, I think it is counterintuitive. The less time you think you have, the more important it is to press the pause button and create the space to get your thinking brain online to help other people do the same, and then to come to revisit the decisions you need to make.

Dave: Yeah, and I guess post-pandemic, managing projects has become even more tricky. I was talking to one of our key clients literally a couple of weeks ago, and he said, “Look, managing projects has just become exponentially harder, where historically we had teams together, they’re now managed remotely. Teams very rarely get together and performance has really dropped off.” And I think you also touch a little bit about this in your book as well, and I guess some of that's related to the project stress cycle, but equally about how projects are actually managed these days is different. 

Carole: Yeah, how projects are managed is different. And I think, since the pandemic, there's been even more working from home, and in many areas, it’s stuck. And I think what happened was we adopted a lot of technology without actually considering what was required, and so there's something for me about really thinking carefully about what do we need to design into this to make sure we're dealing with the social processes properly rather than thinking, just because we can run a meeting on Teams, that's the way to do it. 

So there's something about being really clear about what's needed. And there will be times when ideally, you will need to get people together in the same room. And if that's not possible, you need to arrange social interactions, and to be really careful about how you do that, and intentionally doing that as part of your project management. And I think people don't really understand that.

Dave: There's a lot been said over the last few years about mental wellbeing and the impact of stress on our lives and that of others, but from a business perspective, there’s a push for higher performance. So how do you get that balance right? 

Carole: It's interesting, isn't it? The way you've put that proposition is, it's a matter of higher performance or mental health and wellbeing. And I would argue, no, if you attend to both, you will get both. But if people are not healthy - mentally, physically, or whatever - you will not get sustained performance.

Dave: So how can good leaders promote this? Because a lot of these things start from the top, don’t they?

Carole: So I think there is something about being able to model that in a way that you are as these more senior people. I think there is something about the language of an organisation. And in the book, there's a section where we speak about toxic cultures, and how it can be so alien, but my hope is thatthe idea that you can just batten down the hatches and push through yet another dreadful barrier and keep on going on with this relentlessly, I think is beginning to lose its credibility.

Dave: Yeah, and you hinted it a little bit at the beginning of the question, but I guess promoting wellbeing on projects is not about sunk costs or anything, but it's about there's a real return on investment for it. You invest in that, and actually, you get improved performance, they go hand-in-hand. 

Carole: Yeah, I can recall a Deloitte Report, which probably came out in 2020, something like that, which said something about a five pound return for every pound invested in health and wellbeing. So that's quite significant, isn't it?

Dave: It was certainly a big number. 

One of the other things I'm intrigued about as well is risk management, you know, that unknown. So, when a project is more leading edge, or it hasn't been done before, there's a lot of uncertainty, and, one of the things we've talked about before is uncertainty can cause its own stresses. So, I just wanted to get your view on, is it okay not to know all the answers?

Carole: I think pretending we do know all of the answers is far less okay. So I think most of the time, most people don't know all the answers, and with the leading end projects, I would be really worried if people said they did. 

Being uncertain is stressful, it can take our thinking brains offline. And that is not a reason to pretend that we do have the answers. But there's something about being able to accept that it's okay not to know and to be confident that we are doing everything we can do, and to be inquiring with others what that everything we can do might be in order to give ourselves the best chance of finding out. 

So, coming back to this notion of walking in fog, it’s that this is where I think these five steps will take me, let me test the ground here and see whether they do take me there. If they don't, well, I haven't taken 47 steps and fallen over the edge of the precipice. I can reevaluate all of the time. And so we can be constantly reducing the uncertainty. 

And then the other thing that's really powerful about that is just because I don't know something, and it's causing me great anxiety, does not mean everyone else doesn't know it, and everyone else is feeling as anxious. So what's very foggy to me may be quite clear to someone else.

Dave: And do you think some of the older, traditional teaching methods on project management addressed this topic? Or was that kind of part of the reason you started doing some of the research in this because it wasn't addressing that particular need?

Carole: I think if you wind the clock far back enough, all projects would have been configured as painting by numbers, to use a different metaphor, this notion where we set our objectives, we know exactly where it is, we're going, these are the steps and it's just like filling in a picture. It all falls into place. I think the reality of projects now is that is often not the case, and I don't even know we need to aspire to it to be so clear. There's something about wanting enough clarity. And there's something about enabling people to recognise that each of us have our own thresholds about what we are comfortable knowing or not knowing. And I'm wanting to encourage people not to be afraid to ask questions about how certain you really are, and to recognise that someone standing up and saying, I don't know, at all, may be the most impactful, most powerful and most important intervention they can possibly make. The one thing that gets a project that is going off track back on track.

Dave: Yeah, really great point. 

So, looking to the future somewhat, how do you see the field of project management evolving with the integration of neuroscience? 

Carole: I think there's something about increasing the baseline of understanding about human behaviour. Andwe're already seeing far more recognition that we can begin to make sense of behaviour and what happens on projects by applying some, not necessarily a vast number, of the ideas from neuroscience. So I'm hoping we learn to contain and manage the complexity of projects better through doing this. 

Another trend that we are beginning to see a bit of is the idea about changing the range of performance indicators, KPIs. So there's something about introducing some behavioural performance indicators. There's also a lot of talk about, more broadly across projects, the use of data analytics, and then people are also beginning to talk about human-centric data analytics. So that stuff which relates to human behaviour. And I want to say that being able to gather data better is really helpful. Wouldn't it be good to know how many people, for example, working on this project really believe it's capable of delivering what it sets out to do?

Dave: Yeah, that last point about some of the KPIs measures, that was really interesting, because it just reminded me of, again, another conversation with a different client, where they're not just going to be measuring the metrics of the profitability of the project and delivery with quality and time, they want to measure the health of the team. 

Carole: Some interesting stuff there. But I also want to put a big health warning on it, as my view is that the data we can get through data analytics is really helpful, but actually, what matters is the conversations that result from it. And my suspicion is, we'd be better off focusing on a few carefully chosen indicators at any one time, and having really high in-depth conversations around it, because even though the conversations matter more than the data, even more important, is the one, two or three informed, impactful decisions and actions that follow through afterwards. And you need to have your thinking brain online to make good decisions. 

Dave: Carole, look, as we come to the end of this truly fascinating and insightful journey into neuroscience and project management, I'm reminded, having read your book, that we've literally just touched the surface with this podcast today. And hence, I would strongly encourage those listening to get a copy and read it for themselves. 

I'm sure like me, you will find it a really, really engaging and insightful read, and if you're involved with project management, an incredibly helpful tool to use its principles. 

Carole, I just really appreciate your time and look forward to carrying on and listening to the journey that you're going to be on. So thank you very much for today.

Carole: Thank you, Dave. And the book finishes by inviting people to finish this sentence of ‘I used to think X, and now I'm discovering X’ So that's the next conversation I want to have with you - and with any listeners, you can contact me on LinkedIn.