From Chaos to Order: How Great Leaders Organize Complex Community Projects

Complex projects require complex management, including balancing budgets, meeting timelines, and pleasing stakeholders. It’s important to define expectations and take the time to align people and resources if you want a project to be successful (and not ruffle too many feathers along the way).

In this article, we’ll look at how to take your community projects from chaos to order. We’ll look at how sticking to core principles, like structured planning and clear vision, can turn potentially chaotic projects into high-impact community successes. We’ll also look at some real-life, large-scale community project examples of what these core principles look like in practice.

Principle #1: Always Start With an Investment in Clarity

It all starts with clarity. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t get it done right. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to build a manageable social calendar for your personal life, put together an event, or oversee a larger project at work or in your community. Defining purpose and goals is an essential first step.

It may sound simple. But it’s also critical. This initial step requires your full attention if you want the rest of your project to go smoothly.

If your community project leaders don’t have deep insights and understanding of the project, they will inevitably hit walls where they lack the knowledge to make confident decisions. This can lead to delays, mistakes, and wasted time and resources. Here are a few questions you can ask your leadership team to make sure you have clarity in the right areas before you get a project in motion:

• What problem are you trying to solve, and why does it matter? Are you putting in a playground? Reclaiming a historic building? Planning a Fun Run? Building a Zoo? No matter the scope or scale, clarify the impact and purpose of your project so everyone understands why you’re doing what you’re doing.
• Who will be affected by this project, and what does success look like for them? Clarify your stakeholders. Who is involved and who will be looking for specific results? What do those results look like for each group?
• What resources (time, money, people, equipment) do you realistically have to work with? How can you get the project done? This impacts goals and expectations.
• What does “done” look like, and how will you know you’ve reached it? What are the metrics that define your finish line? This is how you keep your teams aligned as you go.
• What must happen first, and what decisions can wait until later? What are your “we need to make a decision now” priorities, and what can you decide as you go along?

Use this early stage to gain precision, set the stakes, and ensure clear expectations for everyone involved.

Principle #2: Prioritize Timelines and Budgets

Plans, teams, tools, and personal requests from stakeholders — there are a lot of factors that will want to claim priority with your project. The two things that need to take priority above all others are your timeline and your budget. These don’t have to be set in stone (they can adjust as you go based on circumstances), but they should be up to date from the beginning and maintained as you go.

Budgets are pretty straightforward. In most cases, you know the money you have to work with. However, if there are gray areas, make sure you have enough clarity ahead of time or work below your means. Don’t overstretch with unclear funding.

Laying out timelines is trickier. It’s hard to argue with cold, complex numbers in a budget. But people, especially in community and nonprofit settings, can debate about prospective costs versus timelines all day long. And that’s okay. That’s part of the planning process. Throughout this process, though, it’s important to emphasize the value of time as something with equal importance to money (and which, at times, is even more valuable).

If you want to set realistic time and expense expectations for your project, it’s best to bring in expertise that can speak from experience. Look for contractors who have “been around the block” and can provide realistic, up-to-date estimates. Often, people and organizations within the project can help here as well.

PlaygroundEquipment.com is an excellent example of this. The original equipment manufacturer of playground equipment has a comprehensive, partner-level business model that provides hands-on budgetary and timeline support to its clients installing commercial playgrounds in community spaces. Its resource pages even offer advice on budgeting and timeline planning, informed by extensive experience across the United States.

Working with a knowledgeable partner can replace chaotic guesswork with more accurate estimates of both cost and time. Always go beyond basic research and seek informed information when planning out these key areas.

Principle #3: Build Your Team With Purpose

Chaos comes from a lack of team building. When people don’t know their purpose or the responsibilities of each person involved, it can hold a project up and create echo chambers where everyone is talking and nobody is acting.

You must assemble the right team to maintain order under pressure. In a corporate setting, this is straightforward. Teams and departments already exist to address issues across billing, R&D, and sales. But a nonprofit or community-based project? Those require a different approach to team building.

The first step is identifying the right groups to involve. At times, this might be a manufacturer, like the PlaygroundEquipment.com example above. It could also mean getting someone from an area with weaker executive function and greater influence.

When the administration in Greenville, North Carolina, went to set up its Unity Park, the city’s mayor, Knox White, made sure that “neighborhood leadership was absolutely involved in every iota of this park.” As they cleaned up the 60-acre space and prepared to pour tens of millions of dollars into revitalization efforts, Knox and his planning team put local leadership at the front of the charge. They were integrated into the planning process to ensure that the end project met the needs of the people it was designed to serve.

When considering clarity for your project, it’s good to start with stakeholders (as we covered in Principle #1, but you also want to be careful with team members. Take the time to consider who should be influencing your project. Then source individuals from those areas with the insights and authority to support you.

From there, bring everyone together with purpose. This is important because a local neighborhood leader won’t have the same responsibilities as a contractor or an equipment manufacturer. Set expectations and assign tasks with clarity. Make sure everyone is on the same page, and invest in keeping your core team unified and focused throughout the project.

Principle #4: Tackle Complexity in Stages

When executing a community project, it’s essential to break down the steps and spread them out. Use your timeline to stage complicated or unknown elements so you don’t waste resources.

This concept explains how the Department of Transportation (DOT) in New York City successfully developed a pedestrian plaza to meet the needs of foot-bound commuters, addressing goals strained by low-quality transportation options. The goal of the project was to decongest Times Square and its overcrowded sidewalks and dangerous traffic routes. The suggested goal was to convert an area into a prototype of a walk-only pedestrian space.

Initially, DOT installed lawn chairs and planters and used paint to create a temporary version of their final ideal. They gathered data on the safety of the experimental space and gauged user behavior, traffic flow, and the overall effectiveness of the idea. When the data came back positive, the city confidently invested in the full-scale project.

Using a prototyping stage provides you with a proof of concept to justify budgets and timelines without waiting months or years after a project is complete. This gives a sense of purpose and order that you can’t reclaim if you’re operating in uncertainty until a project is complete.

Order in Chaos: Keeping Community Projects on Track

Invest in clarity. Prioritize timelines and budgets. Tackle complexity in stages. Build your team with purpose.

If you want your next complex community project to succeed, start with these four principles. These provide a strong sense of structure and purpose that can keep your project on track, even when issues arise or challenges threaten to take you off track.

Image Credit: Photo by Mahmoud Zakariya: Pexels