Welcome to the APM podcast. APM is the chartered body for
the project profession. My name is Emma DaVita and I'm
the editor of Project APM's quarterly journal and your host
today. This podcast, we're talking
about simplicity. It's a topic that crops up
relatively often when I interview senior project
professionals about how they make the delivery of their
projects a success, and one therefore worth exploring for
you. To get to the bottom of this
deceptively complex subject, I'm joined by Nathan Hellebrand,
global delivery director of Babcock International Group,
who's bread and butter is highly complex projects, and Mike
Hudson, Interim strategy Management Director at the
National Trust. Both are chartered project
professionals, so listen on to find out their advice and their
thoughts on keeping things simple.
I'd like to welcome both of you to the APM Podcast.
Thanks for joining me today. I think let's begin by each of
you giving a brief overview of your role and what that
encompasses, and perhaps an idea of the kinds of projects you'd
lead. So Mike, would you like to go
first? So I'm the interim strategy
management director at the National Trust and the, the kind
of units I suppose is the best way to describe it that I, I,
when we, we kind of encompass strategy planning, research,
PMO, performance and insight. And so we kind of operate at
that kind of enterprise level supporting the exec team.
So that I suppose the role of the team is really around
providing high quality impartial advice, kind of critical friend
type, well, lots of actionable insight and we kind of own a
number of organisational processes.
So it's keeping those as streamlined and as integrated as
possible. So we kind of managing kind of
risk, but not getting in the way of people getting things done
because ultimately it's about us delivering our strategy.
Sounds great. How many project professionals
do you have within the National Trust and can you give an idea
of the types of projects or programmes people are working
on? Yes.
So we have I think at the last count over 450 project
professionals in the organisation, a range of of
different types of projects. So we have projects around
restoring nature. We've got projects around
conservation, which is probably the thing that you would most
associated associate us with commercial type projects.
So food and beverage, retail, that sort of thing.
And then we've got a whole gamut of marketing IT, probably most
things you can think of. We do quite a lot of civil
engineering. We have lots of reservoirs and
regulated structures and things like that to look after.
So yeah, a whole kind of range I would say.
OK. Thank you.
And Nathan, can you tell us a bit about your role and the
kinds of projects you work on? Absolutely.
So I'm the global delivery Director for Babcock.
I sit within our Chief delivery office for the group and that's
made-up of a number of functions which includes project
management, procurement, quality, IT and cyber
engineering, transformation and facilities.
And my role encompasses developing and delivering our
strategy and key cross functional programmes that we're
we're doing across those functions within CDO.
And then also the other half of it is providing a level of
governance and assurance across the group to a number of our
customer facing programmes too. And Kyle, what programmes the
are you working on right now without going to specifics
obviously so. Within within my team, we are
leading some large digital transformation programmes.
So looking at some of our kind of key enabling capabilities
across the group for delivery, we what my, my previous role
before this within the organisation was
professionalising the project management function with, with
Donna Cynic as well. I think you did that one the
last conversation or we've had with her.
And so that was another kind of big operating model challenge
that involved process, procedure and people.
So a quite diverse set at the moment and more to come in 2026
as well. OK, sounds exciting.
I it's a bit of an unusual topic, simplicity in projects.
I don't think that's probably on any exam paper or framework I'm,
I imagine, but something that I've heard the more senior
people I talk to in projects, the more this idea of simplicity
comes up. And there's a quote from Steve
Jobs of Apple that that was in Business Week when he says
simple can be harder than complex.
You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it
simple. But it's worth it in the end
because once you get there, you can move mountains.
Would you agree with that place of you?
Yeah. I mean, I would, I would totally
agree actually. I think the more complex
projects I've been involved in over time, the more complex they
get, the greater the need for simplicity for lots of reasons,
but not least for the people who are involved in delivering them.
So I think it's it's vital and the, I suppose the more senior
you get, the more that becomes part of what you can bring to
that kind of project and the kind of context environment that
people are operating in. When we talk about simplicity,
is it simplicity in understanding what what what the
outcomes are? What the purpose is?
What do you think of when you consider simplicity in complex
projects? The starting point for me would
always be the vision of the project and the kind of related
set of objectives. So I suppose in my career I've
I've been involved in projects at different stages.
I've started off early stages and had to work to to get that
in place. But I've also picked up projects
part of way through. And if you're in a kind of turn
around situation, I would say that quite often that's the
place to start. You can ask some quite simple
and straightforward questions about what what people think
they're doing and why. And if you get a whole variety
of answers, then it starts to tell you that you're not, you're
not kind of getting that kind of level of cut through that you
would, you would want to. So really kind of honing in on
those objectives. And as Steve Jobs says it, that
may take a little bit of time, but that's, that's it.
It pays back I think in in spades if you do that.
Nathan, what are your thoughts around that?
I completely agree. And I think simplicity is is an
underestimated value and it's something that you learn to
appreciate more as you become more involved with bigger, more
complex programmes and something that you learn.
I think sometimes we think that complexity is a way of
justifying contribution or, or making it seem like we know what
we're we're talking about. And I can't remember who said
it, but to kind of build on, on what we talked about, I think
complexity is the enemy of execution.
I think that's very true. OK.
And Mike, what have you learnt about simplicity in projects?
It's a bit of a big question, but and when did you start
thinking about this idea of simplicity?
A few years ago I did a online course around leading complex
projects and as part of it you have to have a a complex project
or programme to to use as a case study.
And it made me reflect that. I don't actually often reflect.
I'm quite a doer, quite a pragmatist.
So forcing myself to kind of reflect on what I'd learnt from
running a complex programme over the course of kind of six weeks.
It the, the kind of breakthrough moments we had was where where
we made things simpler and we we made things clearer for people.
I think when you start your career in kind of project
management, you're so keen to to get the thing done and
understand that you'll be starting on relatively
straightforward things. But it's only as you get into
more and more kind of complex situations, especially with
stakeholders, both internal and external, we can over complicate
things. And what a lot of the time what
people crying out for is just cut through simplicity.
So it's, I would say it's around the kind of vision objectives.
It's also around team roles and around making sure that they're
simple and understandable for people.
And then most importantly around decision making.
So what's the sort of minimum information we need to make a
decision? Who has those decision rights
and then keep the momentum going?
Because complexity can kind of stifle momentum, I would say.
So when you're working on through a project, wherever you
are in the life cycle, do you consciously look through a lens
of trying to keep things simple as you work through the project
cycle? If you join a project part way
through or whatever, is that top of mind or do you just, is it
just a kind of like regular check you think to yourself or
when there's a problem, you think, how can we make this
simple? It's just how you actually make
it work in practise. Yes, a good question that I
think it's a, it's probably a slightly unconscious thing.
It was probably not top of mind. But I think the more complex
projects that you work on, it's so difficult to keep everything
to keep everything in in one's head.
So you're relying on lots of other people.
You rely on everyone else doing their roles well.
So for me, it's about keeping the environment that people work
within kind of as straightforward as, as possible.
So I probably do consciously do that.
I'm not always thinking every single situation.
We've got to make, you know, simplicity is the thing.
But I do think there's something about, yeah, you just asking me
these questions, but yeah, really makes me reflect, I think
how how do you do this? But I think it is about making
that operating environment straightforward for people.
So does that mean? Is that translation to kind of
clear and direct communication and decision making?
I think that's a huge part of it.
I think as we were saying before, some people can try and
hide behind complexity, but also you get a huge range of
stakeholder opinions around complex projects.
And I suppose not everyone's going to get their way.
But if you if you operate in an environment where everybody
thinks they are getting their way, it's, it's ultimately
counterproductive. So I think there's something
about in a polite and helpful way cutting through a lot of
that when you can and getting that kind of and I think
clarity, decision making is hugely important.
Nathan is, I mean, what have you learned about simplicity in
projects and is it a conceptual and approach to projects that
you've deliberately thought about over your career?
Is it something that's just surfaced as you've gained more
experience with complex projects?
But I think it's a bit of both. So you know, my career has been
within engineering based projects and programmes and I
started, I didn't have an engineering degree.
So when I first started in the industry, I found it a huge
challenge to understand the complexity of some of the
projects that I was in. And so that gave me a real
appreciation for one, understanding what's happening,
but also the needs to be able to simplify in a way that you can
get many stakeholders linked to a project or a programme to a
point that they understand what you're trying to do and how
you're trying to do it. And, and that is really for me a
key in being able to, to deliver successful outcomes.
So part of it, I think was born from a place from where I
started. But the more you get involved in
more complex programmes, the more you realise that you you
won't have all the answers. And so recognising that actually
being able to use everything you're disposable and the
breadth of experience and stay across who you're working with
to help drive different thinking so you can simplify complex
problems is is really important. So, so I think it's a bit of
both. I think it's something that that
I encountered quite early on, but it's something that the, the
more you, you, you kind of developed your career in project
management that you, you really need to bring to the forefront
of how you're managing. It's making me think that the
idea of having diversity within project teams where people have
come from different backgrounds, have different ways of thinking,
actually prompts the people who are leading that or managing it.
Explain it in simpler terms. So it's kind of checking in that
you understand at the core what the project's about or what
you're setting out to deliver. Is it?
Would you agree with that, Nathan?
Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think that's
completely true. You know, your, your strength is
in diversity. Having, having, having one
answer from one person all the time is, is not conducive to
delivering complex programmes. And so I think that's a huge
part of it. Mike, I'm going to ask you, how
do you go about setting up a project or kick starting a
project when you first begin working on one of establishing
this? I guess it's a culture of
simplicity or keeping things as simple as possible.
Would you have any advice to people who are thinking, yeah,
this, this makes sense? I'd like to give it a go, but
translating it as a kind of ideal into everyday life, is
there any advice you would give? I know I've mentioned this
before, but I think just going back to that kind of vision and
objectives side of things, I just think it's so important.
And I think Nathan was saying before you've got, you've got a
wider project team. So not just your own
organisation, but the other organisations, organisations
that you're working with. Everybody's kind of
understanding that elevator pitch for the project.
Then you're giving yourself a much greater chance of
succeeding you, you're giving yourself a much greater chance
of working well together because you're all pointing at the same
same thing. So investing time in really
understanding everybody, understanding and playing a part
in the vision, developing it so they own it as well.
And also the objectives that kind of flow from that.
One of the techniques that I learnt some years ago is this,
it was called House of Success, snappily titled, but it's
essentially you spend time working out your objectives and
you, you get into quite interesting conversations about
you, you start to categorise them into what's are absolute
Givens that you, you don't want to trade off what, which
objectives are, are you prepared to trade off and, and which kind
of objectives might you want to kind of optimise?
And that as as with all these sorts of things, the strength of
that is it's actually in the conversation that you have with
the with the group, not necessarily in the kind of sort
of neat output. Nathan, I wanted to ask you then
if you have any practical advice around setting up a project's
culture to be as simple as possible, to value simplicity
and and as part of that, as a project manager, as a project
leader, how do you role model it?
I'm just trying to give advice, pass on advice to those who
think simplicity is a great idea, but actually putting it
into practise is a bit of an unknown.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think when you're starting
a project or you're mobilising on a project or programme, one
of the things which getting to you can get a team to focus on
is the rule which is it whatever we're doing, if it's, if it's
not adding clarity or value, then it's it's likely making
things more complicated. And so when we're approaching
how we write our artefacts, whether it's governance
documents, our project plans, our terms of reference, whatever
it might be, I think sometimes there's a tendency to think that
we need to write more or we need to we need to create more to
justify the work. And that's sometimes not true.
Actually, less is more and you so, so getting people to think
about that and making sure that that's something they live and
breathe by when they're creating material throughout the life of
the programme. But but as early as possible
goes along later, making people feel comfortable that that less
is more. And we can simplify success by
kind of following that, that guidance.
I think that's a practical thing people can do.
I think that the other piece from a behavioural perspective
is, you know, I have no shame in asking people to explain things
like I am like, like, like I'm like, I'm a child.
Sometimes the, the more simple you can make things, the easier
it is. And there is no, there is no
silly question. Often if you're thinking it,
someone else is probably thinking that as well.
So the, the rule is there are no silly questions.
Ask if you don't understand, because if you don't, we're not
going to make progress and, and making that acceptable and
making people understand that there shouldn't be any social
fear in saying I don't understand.
It's it's a powerful thing to to breed simplicity.
Thank you. That sort of taps into this
psychological safety, which is a bit of a hot, hot topic within
project management and allowing people, giving people the
freedom to ask those questions. Because I was thinking what the
barriers are to simplicity. And one of them is the fear of
looking as though you don't know what you're talking about or
there's a lot of jargon in project management.
And there's a fear that if you keep things simple, that you'll
perhaps not as expert as you ought to be.
You don't sound as so how how you think you should sound is
that is that is that valid, Mike?
I, I think it's absolutely valid and I think is everyone's got a
part to play in that. So as if you're a, you know,
leader, senior responsible, only if you're a sponsor, you can
kind of set the tone for that sort of thing.
You know, so making sure, making sure people understand that the
idea of psychological safety, that there's no deaf questions
and, and actually in a way that's, that's encouraged and
you can be honest yourself. I mean, years, years ago, I, one
of the things I did was I was a programme director of a
renewable energy programme and I said to the the team at the
beginning, if you, if you're thinking you've, I'm an expert
on renewable energy technology, you've you'll be sadly
disappointed because I, because I'm not, I'm, you know, I've got
a running programmes, but I'm not a kind of technological
expert. So, you know, to Nathan's point
before, give me the really kind of Noddy explanation for all of
these things. So I understand, you know, how
they work. I think it's that sort of thing
is really important and that so people feel able to just ask
those questions because quite often it's the person who asks
the really kind of, you know, simple question that gets to the
heart of the matter. Thanks, Mike.
Actually, I'd like to ask both of you if you could give any
practical examples of simplicity and action through a project or
programme. Whereas it's a sore thing or
it's a bigger thing, perhaps it's part of the turn around of
a project. But Mike, is there anything that
you could share with us? So I can share a relatively
recent example. So I'm the sponsor of a large
complex project and, you know, we regularly kind of reviewing
the finances of that project and you can end up being sent these
voluminous spreadsheets with all this data in and all these
different variables. And I suppose I said to the team
I what I'd like to see is a financial summary for this
project on a single slide that covers its entire life with the
main, you know, items of expenditure and.
That's the level I wanted to tap because I just kept finding that
we were going into such levels of detail.
And I know, and people need to do that.
I get that that's part of people's jobs, but they were
going into such levels of detail that we were, you know, people
were getting lost. And yeah, we had a had a
situation where forecasts were changing quite substantially and
it felt like we hadn't seen it coming.
And I, my view of why we hadn't seen it coming was because we
were getting, we were just in far too much detail, too much
complexity. So if we just kept it simple,
that would have made a big difference.
So now on a monthly basis at the project board, we just have a, a
single slide which shows the, and this is a project that's
running for 10 plus years and costing 10s of millions of
pounds. And so, and it's just kept, it's
just made it so much simpler. So hopefully that useful
example. Yeah, that is and something that
touches on another massive topic, which is data and AI.
And there's going to, there's more data available to people
than ever before working on a project.
And also then the added complication of AI is it, is it
making it harder then to deliver simplicity or to think things
through simply, do you think? I don't think so because I think
it's, but then it's for us as project professionals to, to not
let that happen. So there's something about AI
can be hugely useful. We've used it recently to do a
kind of full drains up review of all our risks.
So obviously it can churn through a lot of data quite
quickly. But so I think he asks different
questions of the project professionals and the project
managers. So in the past you may have
spent a lot of time yourself going through all that data,
generating the kind of reports, etcetera.
But it's shifting us into a position now where our job is to
interpret and, and kind of analyse the, the kind of data.
And that's where I think having that mindset of simplicity can
really help, you know, what are the 3-4 big things that are
really going to get in the way of us delivering this thing?
Not the 300 items on the risk register.
Nathan, what are your thoughts on this and and can you give any
kind of practical examples of where you've managed to make
things simpler in a project and and that it delivered benefits
to you? Yeah, absolutely.
So we've had a recent or fairly recent programme which I I would
describe as a as a as a complex programme, but actually
operating in an even more complicated environment.
What I mean by that is lots of different stakeholders across
multiple functions compounding actually how difficult it is to
deliver. And within that, that brought a
lot of challenge with people either understanding or
misunderstanding who was accountable and empowered to
make decisions. And so something may be agreed
somewhere in a different meeting which would then be undone in a
different meeting etcetera, etcetera.
And we need to simplify that and, and one of the things or
the tools that we really focused on was focusing on what the
decision rights are at simplifying the decision rights
across the the programme so that people had clarity on specifics
on what was within their gift to make a decision on.
So actually bringing it back to life and saying you are
responsible for this decision, you are not responsible for this
decision, etcetera, etcetera. And that helped us do two
things. It helped simplify that chain
and removed some of that either confusion or differing of
opinions and it empowered people and allowed people to go faster
because we had a much simpler approach.
So that for me was that was a good example of how you need to
bring simplicity in that case to the environment that you're
operating in for that type of programme.
Thanks. So it seems that simplicity goes
in hand, hand in hand with clarity.
Then when it comes to working on projects, I'd like to ask both
of you what what your final pieces of advice or any kind of
food for thought that you'd like to pass on to get to get people
towards on the path towards greater simplicity in projects?
Mike. I suppose my one piece of advice
to people would be to to have the courage to, to kind of go
for it. So learning to say, you know, no
to scope creep, no to over engineering and kind of yes to
simplicity because especially in the early stages of projects, I
think there so much of what we've talked about you can get
on top of early in projects. And if you put the groundwork in
a bit, the example that Nathan was just giving before about the
kind of decision rights kind of matrix, I think is really
helpful. And so that takes a bit of time.
And so, so sometimes you may have stakeholders breathing down
your neck going, come on, just get on with the thing.
Whereas actually investing in a bit of simplicity and clarity
upfront just helps you go so much faster later.
So yeah, have courage and I would say.
Thank you. And Nathan, any final pieces of
advice you pass on? You know, I'd really reemphasize
that. Focus on the culture and the
behaviour for simplicity. As soon as possible or as early
as possible, Getting that right will flow through to everything
that you do, whether it's process, tools, and I think I
mentioned earlier around thinking about whether what
we're doing is, is adding clarity or value.
And if it's not, is it, is it really helping us simplify how
we're trying to deliver? But if you get the culture
right, you know your elite complexity for breakfasts.
So for me that that would be the thing to focus on.
I I just want to thank both of you for this really interesting
conversation on simplicity. Thank you.
Thanks very much for having me, great to talk.
Thanks to Nathan and Mike for joining us and to you for
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