Development pilot projects begin with high hopes and good intentions.
But too many of them proceed with the mistaken belief that a good idea plus a lot of hope can combine to create lasting, large-scale change, according to Larry Cooley, president and founder of Management Systems International, who has for decades studied the gap between what works at a small scale and what it takes to change a system. In many cases, that gap stems from too much complexity in project design.
“If you really design something as a project, and not as a chance to try and test and explore or stretch system change, then you’re going to overdesign,” Cooley told Devex in an exclusive video interview in our Washington, D.C., studio.