Managing Complex Projects and Programs: How to Improve Leadership of Complex Initiatives Using a Third-Generation Approach

Preface

I have learned over the years that exasperation can be a very valuable thing. Not every exasperation, mind you—not the exasperation of discovering that your wallet is at home when you are halfway through a supermarket checkout line—but chronic exasperation, certainly. Chronically exasperating things fester and foment in unusual and sometimes priceless ways. They roil about in the semiconscious and unfettered part of the brain, coalescing into ideas that can burst forth in response to an unexpected trigger. I pay attention to that kind of exasperation because once in a while when it congeals and erupts, it reveals insights that are unexpectedly sensible, enlightening, and clear. Exasperation can beget inspiration, and if we are lucky it can stimulate innovation.

This book, in many ways, is about exasperation. It is about a journey that I started while trying to understand the exasperation experienced by my colleagues and I as we tried to fix a broken pharmaceutical industry. It is about how that journey led to a broader examination of exasperation shared by leaders across many other of today’s knowledge-based industries. And it is about how the collective exasperation of many leaders, boiled to its essence, can lead to new and seemingly sensible perspectives about the unique leadership needs of modern knowledge-based industries.

I started my career in a place that was very different from where I am now. I was a biochemical pharmacologist with every intention of spending ...