With Trump in play, everyone's projects just got more complex.

The Artful Argument is a unique professional learning and networking event for senior project leaders to engage in collaborative conversations about today's increasingly complex, shared challenges in project delivery.

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Trump's presidency is not just making our projects more complex - it's making them more chaotic - and this requires a fundamental shift in how we lead them.

Ian Biggs, FAIPM, ChPP, CPPE, GAICD opened this argument by using Dave Snowden's Cynefin Framework to explore how Trump directly impacts Australian projects by increasing the volatility and uncertainty of our delivery environment and (even worse) by encouraging or tacitly sanctioning a 'Trumpy' style of leadership - top-down, transactional, parochial - the 'alpha' archetype that we have spent the past decade or more intentionally moving away from.

Ian started with the very fair premise that people cause complexity in projects. Then, using the Cynefin framework, he explained why traditional project management approaches - while great for 'complicated' environments - often fail in 'complex' and 'chaotic' environments.

Leaders must adapt their sensemaking, decision-making, and project leadership style to suit the environment they're operating in.

In a nutshell, the Cynefin framework suggests that:

1. Obvious environments (such as simple projects and BAU) should follow best practices and standard operating procedures.

2. Complicated environments (such as typical construction/engineering/IT projects) should rely on expert analysis and good practices.

3. Complex environments (such as restructures/transformations/social projects) require emergent practices and adaptive leadership.

4. Chaotic environments (such as warzones/pandemics/disaster responses) demand immediate action and crisis management techniques.

Through this framework, we can see Trump’s presidency is increasing the level of complexity and chaos on projects across the world.

In such environments, project managers need to lead rather than manage, using data, feedback loops, meaningful stakeholder engagement, and flexibility instead of rigid plans and transactional, adversarial relationships.

In other words, we need our project leaders to demonstrate the opposite of Trumpy leadership, if they're to succeed in the complex and chaotic environment that Trump himself is fueling.

Watch Ian's presentation and see what you think. What do you agree/disagree with about the Argument that "With Trump in play, everyone's projects just got more complex."

Thank you, Biggsy, and our 2025 Artful Sponsors:

UniPhi

NEC Contracts®

Australian Cost Engineering Society (ACES)

Elysium EPL

Institute for Collaborative Working Australia

IPMA-Australia

And thank you to the 20 project leaders who attended this Artful Argument.

Click here to register for a brewing Argument.