Author Archives: Warren Beardall

PhD researcher. Psychology, project and risk management, critical controls, conflict and reframing governance. Life learner, career and academic returner, mental health survival story.

The plastic brain

Life learning

This is a short video by Dr. Lara Boyd. It offers hope to learners of all ages. The science that confirms how our brain continually develops, and throughout our lives.

In summary, our brain is changing all the time. Three key ways and time frames:

  • Chemically (short-term)
  • Structurally (long-term)
  • Inter connectively by experience.

Old brains can do this just like young. Crucially however, learning is impacted by our behaviour. Plus we each learn differently. You just need to find your best way. It then just requires practice, focus, and time.

https://youtu.be/LNHBMFCzznE

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

Original art
, ,

Earth as both project actor and frame

Project Actors

All projects include at least one actor, being the project initiator.  This as a human intervention, or a failure to do so.

A second actor is also always present. Passive or at least not consulted. This second actor is our environment. It is both a project actor, and the framework in which all of our projects reside. At least until we find the means to be independent of physical constraints, or the environment responds in ways in which we cannot manage or survive.

This is an extract from my page offering a definition of a project, as “time bound intended change“. This definition is presented as a way to compare projects from a wider sphere of thinking. This includes a necessary demand on any project initiator to have all project actors included within their core framework of control. Each actor’s wellbeing (meaning to have expectation to be better, not worse off at project end) each equally held in importance to any other. An extension of this concept is the well-being of the environment.

Given the urgency of the hour, this seems a timely moment to be trying to find project models that have our environment necessarily central to all decisions and control frameworks we demand.

If the whole human project is to be defined by these same parameters, it is the planet that becomes our framework housing our project – at least for now…

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

Original art
, , , ,

Self understanding

The illusion of coordination

I want to introduce you to Michael Gazzaniga. The man who showed us how the left and right sides of the brain can become separated, and have conflicting demands of one person. My own interest here is more a demonstration of how brain function can reflect our projects.

Contemporary brain sciences are closing in on a mystery. Edging toward the possibility of the illusion of singular control, and singular truth. Even the most nihilistic among us will struggle to accept our limited ability to choose. So says Michael Gazzaniga in his 2012 book, “who’s in charge : free will and the science of the brain”, (cf Chapter 4 ff). In the proceeding chapter he introduces the interpreter part of our left brain. A function that retrospectively takes credit for automatous actions. Gives them justification. Backfilling explanation that we offer to external enquiry when no such conscious intervention really occurred. We even have a part of the brain that is active in recalibrating time lines in recall to help us in this justification. At a very fundamental level, we lie to ourselves to give meaning to actions, of which we had little control.

In his 2019 book “the consciousness instinct” Gazzaniga presents a compelling case for just how uncentralised this brain interaction is. Most interestingly is the suggestion that as our life experience grows, we add more modules to neurological stacks (each with its own operating procedure or rules) and so the complexity grows. No module is interacting with another, other than in the output of the last, and offering an output to the next. These countless numbers of stacks then competing against each other. Each demanding attention with signals to the conscious part of us. The most successful contributing stacks become more relied upon, as more positive experience, and increase in regularity of use, thereby rewarded and invested in further. Redundancies are just a by-part of the whole. “What wires together, fires together” he cites from mantras born from Donald Hebb (ibid pp62). Offered by Gazzaniga as one more death nail amongst many to psychological behaviourism which others, like Noam Chomsky’s preprogrammed brain theory of symbolism and language, have further hammered home.

The latter part of this 2019 book is perhaps the most mind bending (pun intended). He reflects on pp193, of Pattee’s quantum and classical layers and size factor of enzymes that enable 1D and 3D connections – suggesting the mind-body problem sits at this same interface of the physics of relativity vs quantum theory. On pp196 he has notion of complimentarity still being resisted but that from herein is life. As order and chaos. Physical and arbitrary. Probabilistic symbolic measurement and material physical laws. Increasingly ordered and increasingly complexed over time. That this tension also has external account, pp209 Rebecca Sax, MIT – there is a part of the right brain that is specialised at anticipating the intentions of another person.

In my opinion, what this is explaining is our understanding of change. The intentional actions of change. Which we as human beings have become more able and sophisticated at managing. Although to what extent we are truly free to choose is debated at length in both books.

The data complexity management at a fundamental life perspective pp219, also suggests challenge between perspectives. To show how long life has been doing this he offers time perspectives in terms of evolutionary timelines of millions of years ago (mya). As bottom-up thinking ~550 mya, competing with top-down ~350 mya. This is presented as data control advantages which offer complexification needing new modules to find new ways. By pp222, he presents bubbles emerging that are selected by a control level that is built into the complexification of modular structure. The chosen output from one modular structure, picked because it represents new rules that offered the best result based upon prior experience. Replaced or upgraded when better protocols or rules offer better results still.

Who reads even the broad sentiment of this build up, and cannot see a comparison to the organisational challenges in projects we externalise every day?

My next psychology focused blog will introduce communication decisions, as cost-benefit decisions of the brain.

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

Original art
, , ,

No project is an island

A project as “Time-bound intended change“

I am attempting to find a way to link projects across a wider (the widest possible) spectrum of application. To include projects from more than just the organisational and commercial parameters we generally have in mind. How often have project discussion found their respective experts at cross-purposes when in open dialogue? It cannot just be me that falls into that trap regularly on LinkedIn.

But then, why stop there? What can we share from wider project thinking? My wife would tell you I was a “project” when we first met – she would also argue I have become others since. My garden overhaul was a project. Fad diets. Training for an event. My career steps. Each piece of coursework at university, they are called projects. We have projects of exploration, research, development, preservation, consolidation, reputation, persuasion. Projects intent on destruction, protection, isolation, and intervention. Malevolent and benevolent, inclusive or divisive, legal or illegal, reclaiming or defending. They can represent an ideology and span generations, be about control of resources, or boundaries, or races for glory or survival. Or they may be much briefer time spans of intended change – even if the change intended is simply halting what others will to be.

I am going to argue that everything we enact can fit within the framework of a project. That all we do as human beings is a project when it is “time-bounded intended change“. My motive is simple. I want to find that common link to all our interventions. And use that to add wider challenge to what it is we fail to see. “No project is an island”, (Mats Engwall 2003), and I believe even the projects we identify with are themselves containing, influencing, competing, and part of, many more.

If you can think of anything that sits beyond these parameters of a project as “time-bound intended change“, I really want to know.

A project. Definitions from wiser folk than me

I offer some of the best definitions that offer a more acknowledged view:

A unique, once-in-a-lifetime task; with a predetermined date of delivery; being subject to one or several performance goals (such as resource usage and quality); consisting of some complex and/or interdependent activities Packendorff (1995 pp320).

APMBoK pp44 provides further project specific definition as “Temporary Structures” or “Temporary Organisations”.

Matthew B Miles (1964) “On Temporary Systems”. In a letter of 1977, Miles reminds us of some key concepts and constructs from his 1964 work. This rejoinder is aimed at Goodman and Goodman who he felt had inadequately represented origins or context of the term. “I content myself with inviting the authors, and other readers, to examine the original discussion” (Miles, 1964), of such “temporary-system features as goal and role redefinition, the consequence of heightened communication for power equalization, and the development of norms … supporting authenticity, inquiry, change, and effortless as a predictable aspect of any time-limited system” (ibid)”.

Engwall (1992) offers a challenge to the isolated and unique considerations presumed in both characteristics and factors of success of temporary structures “this calls for an ontological change; instead of lonely and closed systems, projects have to be conceptualized as contextually-embedded open systems, open in time as well as in ‘space’” (Engwall 1992 pp790).

This is a direct lift from my dissertation of 2020, pp22. The references are well known, and choices were intentionally reflective of acknowledged subject matter experts. The title of this post must also be credited to Engwall 2003.

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

Original art
, ,

Trust before truth

Toddler by the lake metaphor (trust, visibility, and behaviours)

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

Original art

Case Study 1 – PPP and me

Truth:

via visibility, behaviour, and trust.

Late August 2021

A year ago, almost to the day, I stumbled across something rather interesting. At the height of the data analytics stage of my MSc dissertation, a final piece of a jigsaw revealed itself. Truth.

https://projectswithinprojects.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/dissertation.pdf

Having spent two solid weeks reviewing, categorising, and connecting interview text, this single axial category seemed to connect it all. A suggestion of the one factor that summed up all other categories I had found. Was it the “truth” of a project that alludes us all, and thereby causes us to fail? In reverse, it seems so obvious as to be self-evident. As such I was, and remain, suspicious of a self-fulling prophecy. Finding nothing more than an answer I had steered my enquiry towards, and thereby subconsciously hidden with an intention to find.

By some quirk of research serendipity, two ongoing enquiries in my headspace collided. First was my dissertation. It very nearly de-railed at this point. The analytics of Grounded Theory is a powerful weapon of qualitative analytics. I had self taught it, and I had not accounted for the mental summersaults it can demand. My fragile brain, and compulsive tendencies, had taken me close to my abyss. This reflects my second enquiry. My diagnosed exogenous depression and suicidal moments were only 13 months in memory (July 2019). Yet my mood at this moment was different. On London Bridge, I was emotionally flat-lining. Whereas now, I was emotionally high. This was over-stimulation, the less obvious opposite to life’s depressive pointlessness in my thoughts. Stimulation is a positive, but this was prolonged flow, and it was close to spiralling out of control.

My wife, and my therapist, were necessarily availed. By coincidence, they are both called Angela. And I needed both my angels to intervene. My project was consuming me, and outside assistance presented perspectives on my behaviour that I was too close to see. With less trust in myself, I instigated some changes:

  • My wife, Angela (one) was to watch me more closely.
  • More candid in communication from me i.e., critical attention towards my overzealous moods.
  • I was to report in more regularly with my therapist, Angela (two).
  • I was to report my dissertation findings to my supervisor, just to sense check all was well.
  • I was to report into my business associate and friend, to get an independent sense of my sense.

Being truthful to myself required a temporary change. The framework of my working environment, within which my dissertation project was housed, proved to be inadequate. Proof based upon the new information received, of external factors not accounted for or even known to exist. These resultant actions are intentionally categorise here as follows:

  • Visibility. Necessarily increased visibility of my emotional state by me; and additional assurance i.e., other assessments (in this case, of my behaviour).
  • Behaviours. A new governance framework to contain my behaviours better, which included the relinquish of a modicum of self-authorisation.
  • Trust. Deteriorating trust based upon past events. Regained by the proactive and open dialogue, and reinforced via adjustments to controls of visibility and behaviour.

I can describe this episode in such terms now. They are my three variables. My truth bearers. I now use them in determining the protection of the most fragile commodity in any project. Singular truth.

These actions enabled me to complete my MSc dissertation. Subconsciously, it seems self-evidence this experience offered insight in these terms described. But more than that, my dissertation was about this very subject, and these same categories had emerged from the Grounded Theory (GT) that had knocked me over. [GT is used to seek axial categories (code) to explain the variables of a phenomena. You are required to keep pushing until one category explains all others found]. Since my graduation with distinction (81% in my dissertation) in October 2020, I have been academically reading and professional consulting with this framework of project thinking to hand.

I continue to extensively sense-check the validity of the phenomenon I now hypothesise. That this same dynamic of visibility, behaviour, and trust, can be equated to any project truth. That everything we do as human beings can be described as a project, and critical project controls evaluated by these terms. With caution I also pose one more question. Could it be possible to assess a project’s likelihood of success, based upon the appropriateness of the control framework within which each project sits?

This is how “Projects | Within Projects” began. And an insight into how my life meaning now sits more at ease.

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

Original art
, , , , ,