Connecting Intelligence: Systems thinking and lessons from the sea

Project environments are unpredictable; resilience doesn’t have to be. Consider a sailing ship and the weather that day. By its very nature, this volatility means the ship is designed to handle a wide range of scenarios, and those on board are trained to navigate changing conditions. When we consider our projects, we can draw some similarities. Often, the environments we face will have similar uncertainty, which is why project professionals must be prepared to operate confidently within it.

Project functions

If we consider projects, they function as systems (examples may include interdependent people, processes, constraints and our assumptions) and when these relationships behave predictably, delivery feels stable. When these change or maybe the complexity increases, this introduces volatility, and even small disruptions can cascade into bigger ones. If we then connect this to organisational, political, technological and external pressures the waves of delivery become much less stable. This consideration is important to ultimately understand the connecting reasons for the events under the metaphoric iceberg.

When systems meet their limits

Even the best-designed systems will face stress points and in these situations models, plans and processes can become strained under extreme conditions. Intriguingly, in many cases, the most instructive lessons often come when systems approach their breaking point.

Operating the naval radar story

A powerful illustration comes from life at sea. My former colleague Jason Baggaley (2025) and previously a Royal Navy Captain, who was responsible for ship radar systems. In training environments, radar models behaved beautifully — feedback loops were predictable, optimised and measurable. But real seas are rarely calm. During storms, rapidly moving waves distorted signals and generated ambiguous data. In these moments, the radar did not fail outright, but its reliability reduced. The system continued to produce outputs, yet those outputs required interpretation. The operator had to then shift from structured process to human judgement and intuition to make sense of them.

In one serious incident, Jason described navigating during a storm with degraded radar and low fuel. At that point, confidence in the system model became secondary to crew safety and ship survivability. Operators tried every available fix, but ultimately relied on instinct, shared situational awareness and professional judgement in this case forms of intelligence no algorithm could replace.

Lessons from the storm: Systems thinking in real-world projects

Systems are powerful but not infallible, maps, models and processes only hold if the environment remains within expected parameters. It’s like a car satnav being confused by a local road diversion. Adaptive capacity needs to be part of the system; people become the flexible component when structure fails. Intuition should become an informed response, supporting real-time judgement to overcome issues. Systems thinking helps us see patterns, but cannot control external variables.

In the theme of Connecting Intelligence, as systems models have become increasingly sophisticated and automated, the thinking has at times moved from the practitioner to the tool. Instead of interrogating assumptions, project professionals can become passive consumers of outputs. Models are trusted because they are elegant, comprehensive and data rich, not because they have been actively challenged.

Research and guidance and work from the APM Systems Thinking Interest Network, highlight that systems thinking becomes essential as project complexity increases. However, despite the appearance of neatly structured models often beneath the surface there is a high fragility that may incorrectly present a situation. This is the hidden mass below the metaphoric iceberg: the assumptions, simplifications and environmental influences that tools struggle to represent.

Navigating the way ahead

Project environments are growing more interconnected, volatile and complex. Technology cycles compress. Stakeholder expectations expand. External shocks travel faster through supply chains and portfolios than ever before. We cannot command this weather, but we can become better navigators. Resilience, then, is not the absence of storms. It is the ability to steer with confidence when they arrive, to detect early, decide together, act with discipline and learn at speed. Projects seen as living systems with people at their adaptive core are better placed to thrive in that reality. When the signals get noisy, remember the operator on the bridge: keep scanning, keep talking, keep adjusting. Trust the system you’ve built and the team who can extend it when the seas begin to rise.

Practical takeaways for project professionals

What can the project professional practically take way from this, we propose the following three key actions to implement in your project:

Start by looking to build resilience, not rigidity. Do your homework and consider the variables properly and your response/mitigation.
Design systems with fail-safes and flex points. Create adaptability in process, governance and escalation routes. Maybe have emergency signoff procedures or delegated powers for certain change events.
Prepare the team. This could be through holding a workshop focused on scenario thinking consider some alternative trajectories. Maybe focus on the stress points and get team members to notice the pinch points and have an agreed action plan/escalation to resolve before a system collapses. Practice in some cases to test some additional cases to recognise when conditions no longer match their assumptions.

A lot of this can be summarised in properly preparing for the alternatives. The old saying rings true in that “failing to prepare is preparing to fail”.