Adrian Morey explains why people stick with expensive building projects like the Sydney Opera House even when they run over budget, but abandon organizational transformation efforts that lack visible progress. Physical infrastructure delivers tangible results you can see. Internal change is invisible, so stakeholders lose faith before it pays off.
With something like a big physical asset, you know, those big projects, those, you know, iconic projects you've mentioned, it's very visible. You don't start it and then go, well, actually we've changed their mind, or very rarely. And so there's often a commitment that you're going to succeed, you're going to have something at the end of the day. And often, you know, in terms of some of the original objectives around timelines and cost they're complete failures. But in terms of then the overall outcomes, yeah, you've got iconic pieces of infrastructure or buildings that serve a purpose. You know, the Sydney Opera House, for all, for all, all intents and purposes whilst it was being built was an absolute, you know, disaster. But now it's one of the iconic sort of, you know, 7 sort of modern wonders of the world. Whereas your transformational, um, initiatives within organizations don't have the same
visibility.
And so people can quickly lose faith if they're not seeing concrete outcomes, if they're not seeing material progress. You know, you can— we're saying we're spending all this money, but what are we actually getting for it?
Ep 35 Your Strategic Stagnation Isn't a Framework Problem—It's a Story Problem
The YouTube Strategy School: Why Your MBA Didn’t Teach You Strategic Thinking
