Avoid the danger of underestimating complex change

When it comes to regulatory or financial crime initiatives, failing to meet deadlines or deliver the required changes can have serious consequences. At best, delays can lead to operational difficulties and spiralling costs. At worst, they can mean regulatory fines, unwelcome scrutiny, and reputational damage. What’s more, when projects derail, teams and individuals are often personally affected, with morale suffering and even potential job losses.

We’re often called into programmes that are already behind schedule or falling short of expectations, which gives us a clear view of where things go wrong.

Based on that experience, here are four essential lessons for anyone leading a complex change programme. Keep these in mind, and you’ll be far more likely to set your project up for success from day one.

One of the most common mistakes we see at the start of a project is underestimating its scope, especially when it’s planned as a series of isolated work packages. Projects incorporating a ‘waterfall’ approach, where each phase relies on the one before it, can easily stall at a particular stage when dependencies are not managed. 

An individual project manager is unlikely to be aware of the full implications of delays across the various workstreams they are overseeing. To run large-scale programmes effectively, someone in the organisation needs to review each project as part of the broader portfolio. This holistic perspective helps leaders spot overlapping timelines and interdependencies across workstreams and departments, reducing the risk of bottlenecks and delays.

For example, in one project we encountered, a high-stakes initiative planned in isolation hit delays, setting off a domino effect that impacted other key programmes. We helped the project team step back, take stock of parallel projects, spot the dependencies, and rework their plans.

By shifting away from a rigid, single-track approach, they managed to keep the workflow steady and reduce the risk of setbacks.

When planning a large-scale project, costs are always front and centre in decision-making—often influencing whether the project gets the green light at all. However, an obsession with cutting costs can backfire. A common example is over-reliance on junior resources. This might seem like a sensible way to save money at the start of a project, but it often leads to delays as less-experienced teams struggle with steep learning curves and make elementary mistakes that add cost and time. 

We’ve seen this approach result in mounting stress, missed deadlines, and the eventual need to call in experienced external consultants to rescue the project. This only adds more unnecessary costs and delays, as new teams need time to get up to speed or redo poorly executed work.

Bring in the right expertise from the start to plan thoroughly and build your project on solid ground.

Projects can also stall if the crucial step of gathering a range of expert views is overlooked.

When creating a project plan, seek the advice of experienced team members who know the territory. Find people who have ‘done it before’. Their insights can be invaluable to know how assumptions, timelines, resources and budgets should be managed. 

In several projects we have supported, problems had arisen that experienced professionals would almost certainly have pre-empted from the start. Not having the benefit of this input, the project team faced needless risks and challenges.

Tapping into experienced in-house insights can bring early clarity and highlight potential risks. To go one step further, pair that expertise with an outside perspective. External views help identify blind spots internal teams might miss, especially where staff turnover is high. Bringing in specialist consultants can offer an impartial view of what’s truly needed to make a project succeed.

Even the best-planned programmes can fail if there aren’t enough resources to support them. In a recent project, our client experienced delays because the right people weren’t free at the critical point that they were needed. The waterfall structure of the project created interdependencies that caused the situation to snowball. The initial capacity bottleneck led to extended timelines, as other projects were left on hold, waiting for staff and budget to become available.

If you’re planning a project, ensure you have ample capacity upfront by assembling a high calibre team with the right skills and knowledge. If internal resources are stretched, consider bringing in external consultants or phasing project stages to align with availability. 

Making capacity a priority from day one is the bedrock of successful delivery. It reduces delivery risk and impacts to the team.