News & Insights

Why Organisation And System Clarity Matters On Large, Complex Projects

Poor role clarity is a recognised psychosocial hazard in the workplace. Descriptions and suggested controls for this hazard tend to focus on an individual’s immediate role clarity, including reporting lines, responsibilities, and managing flux in tasking.

This is indeed essential to a productive, safe, successful team and workplace.

The impact of role ambiguity has been a feature of organisational research since the 1960s. And here’s just a little of what is known: when role clarity drops, you can be sure that trust, collaboration and overall productivity will also drop.

On large and complex projects project leaders must move their thinking beyond the boundaries of a single organisation into the ecosystem of multiple organisations and disciplines.

Likewise at PHI we’re project focused. Our survey tools dive deep into role, organisation and system clarity. For example, in addition to personal role clarity we assess team member understanding of each organisation’s role and success factors on the project. Does it really matter if project team members don’t understand the role of other organisations on a complex project? We say, yes, and the data across multiple project health factors tells the story.

On our highest performing projects, we see individual AND organisational role clarity at 90% plus. This is exceptional and typically correlates with higher collaboration between organisations and a shared results focus. Taking the time to detail and explain your project system and the role of each organisation has tangible benefits right across the project.

A major transport project that we support, under a PPP with a JV delivery, has recently reported 96% role clarity alongside multiple indicators of high performance. This is a complex system in which role clarity is critical to avoid conflict, duplication of effort, and unnecessary delays in resolving who is working on what (and why).

At Project Health Insight we view role, organisation and system clarity as a special ingredient to project success.  Our measurement tools give leaders insight into where ambiguity exists and strategies for fast resolution.