Six teams, three budget-holders, two committees and one steering group that meets monthly. Every team's “nearly there” means something different, and the project is 90% done, and has been for four months. Complexity isn't the enemy. Unowned complexity is.
The offer, so you don't have to scroll: one owner, one plan, one definition of done.
The monthly steering group.
The deck is 34 slides and mostly green. Each team reports in good faith: their bit is nearly there, pending the thing that isn't theirs. Multiply by six teams and you have a project that is six “nearlys” away from finished.
The word “done” has quietly become negotiable. Legal is “comfortable, subject to.” Ops is “ready, depending.” The committee that can actually unblock things meets after the thing it needs to unblock is due.
Someone finally asks, in the meeting, what percentage finished the project actually is. The number offered, “around 90”, is a feeling, not a fact. Everyone knows it. The minutes record it anyway.
This is the work I did at enterprise scale for twenty years: £1.5m deals, programmes with more stakeholders than staff, held to real dates. Complexity yields to structure. It always has.
Complex projects don't need another committee. They need one owner and a written definition of done.
Whose decision is it, by when, and who says it's finished, written down, or it isn't true. Stakeholders don't resist delivery. They resist vagueness, and vague is where projects go to die.
Twenty years of projects, told honestly. The Receipt stories are mine and verifiable. The Pattern stories are composites: details changed, lessons intact.
Nine months, one deal, more stakeholders than a small company has staff. The largest single deal in the division's history at BT closed because one list existed: every decision, every owner, every date, updated when it was inconvenient, circulated when it was awkward. Complexity doesn't need genius. It needs one stubborn list.
The steering group that's been “around 90%” for four months is not unlucky. Six teams, six honest “nearly”s, no shared definition of done. The number is a feeling because nobody wrote what finished means. Write it, and the last 10% takes six weeks. Every time.
A full year at 100% of target, closing 1 in 3 daily meetings. That isn't talent, it's structure: prep the night before, notes within an hour, a pipeline that told the truth. Enterprise taught me that discipline scales when mood doesn't. Complex projects are where that lesson pays rent.
Twenty years running enterprise programmes at BT scale. £1.5m largest single deal; critical paths, steering groups and real dates, held for a full year at 100% of target.
I've run the whole launch myself (platform, emails, ads, checkout): 232 course sales in four months. I know what every week of that calendar feels like from the inside.
I've held the £2m programme budget on the other side of the table: writing the scopes, choosing the suppliers, cancelling the ones who drift. I know what "nearly there" means from both chairs.
Projects end in decisions: sign-off, buy-in, adoption. Twenty years of getting to yes without pressure means the decision actually gets made, in writing, and stays made.
"I run projects the way I wanted them run when I held the budget. That's not a slogan; it's a specification, learned from the most expensive seat in the room."
Everything that's left, in order, with an owner and a date on every line. One page: if it doesn't fit, the plan isn't finished. Everyone can see what "done" means, including you.
Every line has a name against it, mostly mine. Status is offered before it's asked for, so nobody spends their week chasing updates that never arrive.
Red, amber, green, without the politics. Bad news travels in 24 hours; good news waits for the weekly. A plan nobody trusts is worse than no plan at all.
Go-live is the midpoint, not the finish line. Handover pack, walkthrough, and a team that knows exactly what happens on day 31, because delivery that doesn't stick isn't delivery.
The numbers above, the launches behind them, and a public ledger of the whole journey: applications, rejections, results, lessons. The highlight reel is boring; the delivery is the evidence.
You bring the project and its stakeholders; I'll find the critical path, the decisions actually queueing, and what the last 10% really is. If I can't help, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.
A pitch. There's nothing to buy on the call except a decision, and you'll know inside ten minutes whether I'm the person to run this.
Start to finish: how the client was found, the need proved, the option proposed, the work delivered.
One plan, one owner, one definition of done that every team signs and every stakeholder can read. Ambiguity removed in writing; delivered in public.
Book the 20-minute callYou'll know inside ten minutes. · Every number on this page is verifiable.