Uffe Elbaek and the Project Paradox

On October 15th I had the pleasure of attending the latest Design with Dialogue session, hosted by Peter Jones of ReDesign Research and Greg Judelman of Bruce Mau Design. The special guest of the night was Uffe Elbaek, founder of KaosPilots and the CEO of the World Out Games in Copenhagen which took place this past July.

Uffe was amazingly candid and generous in sharing his experiences, good and bad, in getting a huge undertaking such as the World Out Games off the ground in just 2.5 years. Having worked on the Olympics technology planning, I can tell you that 2.5 years to get an entire event off the ground and successful is a Herculean feat.

Five things stood out for me:

1. As the organizer of a major event, Uffe dealt with many sponsors, vendors, partners, political organizations and sub-committees…and in many of those instances Uffe was asking for something, whether it was money, products, permission, support, time. There were lots of asks. However, to make the entire experience beneficial for everyone, he authentically posed the question, “What can we do for you?” He really viewed the relationships with all of the stakeholders as a true two way street. But he didn’t stop there. He also viewed his role as the “hub” in all of this activity as a connector of stakeholders. He made sure that relationships were forged between sponsors, between political organizations and really acted as a catalyst for new connections. The committee could have been in a  ”take, take, take” situation but saw the opportunity to create a new eco-system around the goal of putting on a spectacular event.
2. This is Uffe’s design process, in a sense. It starts with an idea such as “let’s host the World Out Games”. Uffe’s assertion is that all too often people skip straight to the concept, put together a team, organize the team and then execute. He calls this the “Bermuda Triangle” because the important steps of figuring out what needs the idea fulfills, what the purpose is what values are held don’t inform the concept. This can result in conflict well into the project because there isn’t a cohesive understanding of what the team is trying to accomplish. In deciding things such as which sponsors to approach, a lack of unity on needs and purpose can result in interpersonal conflict and the project can suffer. Spending time up front to work on the first few steps can save time and conflict later in the project. Uffe’s took the time to write a manifesto of this work so that anyone could go back and visit the manifesto when tough, contentious decisions had to be made. Revisiting the question of why they were doing this in the first place helped make those decisions easier.
3. Your purpose should be succinct enough so that you are able to pee it in the snow. Apparently this is a common saying in Denmark. I guess it applies more to men than women. No visuals for this point.
4. Uffe’s team wrote a run book on how to deliver an event of this magnitude just BEFORE the event took place. The rationale is that the run book shouldn’t be tainted by the perceived success or failure of the event. While things will go wrong at an event of that magnitude, you wouldn’t want those mistakes to be overly represented in the run book. With a month before an event of that size, everything is pretty much locked down. Not much will change but a run book won’t be overly influenced with the emotion that comes with delivering the event if it’s done just before launch.
5. The Project Paradox. Uffe explained that in a big project with an end date you start with tons of decisions to make and very little knowledge . You end the project with all of the knowledge but no decisions to make. The challenge is to shrink the gap in those two curves so that the project kicks off more effectively. One way of doing that is to quickly ramp up on the knowledge curve or hire people who have that knowledge before making key decisions. Curious if there are any comments on the paradox and ways in which to overcome it.