The Complex Project Toolkit: Using design thinking to transform the delivery of your hardest projects

This is the essential new guide for project managers and leaders.

Project managers are often responsible for big teams and millions (or even billions) of dollars to deliver successful outcomes on time and within budget. But the reality is that most complex projects don't live up to their promise - they often fail or under-deliver on the expected return, and probably burn out the project team in the process.

This is because the normal approach to project management doesn't work when projects are complex.

The traditional emphasis on certainty and predictability comes from an industrial era when the focus was on controlling resources and effort. These days, projects are unpredictable and emergent, and performance relies on the opinions of stakeholders and the energy of team members.

The Complex Project Toolkit provides a way through this. Based on the concepts of design thinking, this comprehensive toolkit adds to existing project management approaches with new mindsets, practices and skills that will lift the performance of your most ambitious projects and improve the experience for everyone involved.

KIERAN DUCK is an adviser and coach to senior leaders running complex projects and transforming organisations. He has redesigned and rescued multi-billion-dollar projects, and led business transformations. He is also a global presenter on using design thinking to drive step changes in project and business performance.