Organizations that enshrine and enforce the concept of Corporate Singularity will be more proficient at managing projects; more economic in use of project time, resources and money; more sensitive to the issues of acceptance and receptivity. They will enjoy Superior Project Performance…time after time after time…



Organizations that continue to allow rampant Project Multiplicity will keep generating waste, replication, errors and failures – time after time after time...

At any moment in time, every organization will be in the throes of change to a greater or lesser degree. Projects; tens, hundreds even thousands vie for resources, time and attention; concurrently striving to address defensive, offensive, expansion, growth, contraction and improvement pressures.

Business schools, research firms and consulting organizations proffer significant empirical research that at least 75% of all business projects or change initiatives fail to meet expectations, partly or wholly. Most, if not all analysis conducted on project failure examines how a project was managed and what went wrong… in other words looking at a specific change initiative or project as a Singularity!

My perspective differs somewhat, my research focused on Project Multiplicity within the context of Corporate Singularity. Here are my findings…

Viewing and managing a Project as a Singularity has advantages; it reduces complexity; enables focus and is attractive since it offers clear delineation of scope, costs, timing, resources, etc. These advantages; however, are limited to the perspective of those tasked with project delivery, after all, a singularity is far easier to envision and control.

Unfortunately, Project Singularity carries the burden of harmful traits to the organization as a whole and, by extension, to the project at hand. These traits are latent at the onset yet carry the potential to rear up at any moment, guaranteed to complicate and conflict the orderly progression of the project from inception to implementation and beyond.

These traits, in whole or part, can rip a good, worthy project to shreds. Essentially they are guaranteed to the project to cost more, take longer, with lower quality, unsatisfactory acceptance and less than acceptable bottom line contribution.

I label the major Project Multiplicity traits as follows:

Machiavellian Multiplicity: Turf wars, politics, competing egos and not-in-my-backyard perspectives dominate decisions and actions… Corporate Singularity is of secondary importance, protectionism rules at the expense of Corporate Singularity...

Competing Multiplicity: Diametrically opposed objectives, rationale or plans; often focused on the same target for differing purposes… Multiple Viewpoints of Corporate Singularity, what it is, who owns it and why – whoever delivers first, wins…

Singularity Multiplicity: Silo viewpoints occlude reality and practicality, incremental singularities proliferate as disconnects surface… Corporate Singularity is open to interpretation; silos plug gaps and chasms of their own making with solutions of their own making...

Multiplicity Generators: Reactive, insular responses to multiple demands of competing interests; resulting in too many projects, too often, each in isolation... Corporate Singularity becomes policy rather than process and, exception handling becomes the norm…

Assumptive Multiplicity: Compelling business case arguments usually “end” at out-of-scope boundaries; downstream and parallel impacts are rarely fully inclusive… Corporate Singularity has no boundaries, disconnects abound...

Divergent Multiplicity: Corporate objectives are diluted, secondary to the need to personalize or customize according to whim or circumstance… Corporate Singularity infers commonality and standardization, entrepreneurial energy has to find a niche…

These traits are indicative or symptomatic of influences that hinder the mechanics of projects. They increase the negative impact of the dynamics and politics that surround projects and without doubt, they usually preface disastrous project optics. Let me explain…


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This is an abstract of a TLIR Research Subject to be presented in 2006 at the European Conference on Technology Management, Leadership and Governance, Paris, France and at the International Symposium on Knowledge and Change Management, Prato, Italy. All Rights Reserved.

If you would like to receive a complimentary copy of the final, refereed paper (when available) please send an e-mail request to Tracey@TLIRGroup.com.