Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
You know how it usually goes
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PPP = Prolonged, Painful, and Pointless. But not this time. Somehow, against all odds, cultures, and acronyms… The New Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia didn’t just avoid disaster — it delivered. Let me break it down for you:
The predictions? “Too complex.” But guess what? They finished it. And not just finished — they pulled off a clinical-grade, digitally-integrated, energy-efficient mega-hospital that actually works. The secret sauce?
Crazy, right? How couldn’t I have thought about it? A PPP that respected scope, handled conflict like grown-ups, and even came out functional on the other side. How could it be possible… Anyway. Some still say it was luck. I say it was proof that PPPs can work… if you don’t staff them with saboteurs. Do you want some blood? Take a look to the lessons below?
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Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Close to Pointe-Claire. Montreal, Canada. Circa 2011. A pen flies across the meeting room. Not metaphorically. A real pen. From the other side of the table. The guy receiving the missile activates his very sophisticated kung fu reflexes and leans to one side. Impact avoided. Silence. Everyone in the room freezes. Then he says: “Don’t get angry. If we don’t solve this now, things are going to get pretty bad for all of us. And in the blame game, nobody wins.” The meeting goes on. No more flying...
There are big, monumental, screw-ups…. Or “cagadas”. And then there are cagadas so big that someone should build a monument to them. The kind that doesn’t just destroy a project. It changes an industry. I’m thinking now about that traffic model that cost a traffic advisor millions and millions because its forecasts were more optimistic than Putin’s three days “special military operation” in Ukraine. That mistake changed the way PPPs with traffic risk were viewed. Contractually. Financially....
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics did one of those experiments that sounds stupid… Not because you probably pay them with your taxes… But because you realise it explains half of the disasters in business. They took people to a forest. Then they gave them a simple instruction: “Walk in a straight line.” That’s it. No MBA. No strategy deck. No 147-page governance framework. Just walk straight. C’mon you can do it! Several participants were convinced they had done...