We talk a lot about collaboration — but often what we really mean is coordination, compliance, or “just make it happen.”
The project teams I work with aren’t short on effort. More often, they’re short on clarity:
Clarity of purpose
Clarity of roles
Clarity of decision-making
And the root cause? Too much clutter. Too many reports, too many parallel priorities, too many layers of process.
Thoreau wrote, “Simplify, simplify.” He wasn’t talking about project governance, but maybe he could’ve been.
The more complexity we add, the less time we have for real conversations.
The more noise we tolerate, the less signal we hear.
The more we manage the work, the less we do the work.
In the projects I support, we start by clearing the fog and focusing on the fundamentals:
What truly matters?
What’s getting in the way?
What can we stop doing?
Simplicity creates the space where true collaboration can happen, the space where teams move from doing the work to doing it together, effectively.
At Peopleology, we help teams strip away clutter, focus on what matters, and build clarity that drives real collaborative outcomes.
