Many of you are engineers – and the multi-game issues strategy can often seem counter-intuitive to engineers. Why? What is an engineer’s intuitive response when confronted with complexity? Think of an engineer who has to build a complicated chemical plant. Often, the intuitive response is a desire to reduce that complexity. There is no engineer capable of dealing with all of the complexity of a plant of that kind, so what do you do? You break the chemical plant down into a series of subsidiary projects – and then ensure that each of these subsidiary projects is manageable. You reduce the complexity. With multi-issue games, exactly the opposite happens – you are confronted by a complicated issue and you actually increase the complexity. You add other issues.

Many engineers also feel particularly at home with a project-based management and leadership style, they have a project-based DNA, a project-based mindset . What is that exactly? It is a strongly analytical management style that appeals to many engineers. Its key elements are:
– there is a more or less ‘logical’ sequence – for example, you first need to know what your goal is, then you can collect information, so you start collecting information and then make a decision;
– for many of these stages, values such as ‘precision’, ‘clarity’ and ’focus’ are important. Someone with a project-based DNA prefers to have a precise problem analysis, a clear goal and focus when collecting information;

In this series of short video clips, Hans and Gerdien explain the difference between the project-based mindset and the process-based mindset. To do this, they simply go through the key steps of a project, each time indicating the difference between the project-based and process-based mindset.

Download video  |Download transcript