Gorilla in the Cockpit

"Whether you lead a company, a project or your life, Gorilla in the Cockpit is a smart investment." -Scott A. Snook, Professor, Harvard Business School Open the Megaproject Black Box and Avoid Billion-Dollar Disasters

• Despite decades of analysis, thousands of reports, myriad methodologies, and countless experts, major and megaprojects (those over $1 billion) and change initiatives keep failing, Why?
• Gorilla in the Cockpit offers a revolutionary way to understand megaproject failures. It opens the Black Box to reveal the hidden drivers of project crashes. The root causes cannot be found in traditional project management books. They are neither technical nor financial. They are human. "Highly valuable for our executive board and 150 direct reports in transforming the mindset, communication, and strategic outlook in a way that led to real-world results." -Wolfgang Pitz, CEO, SpaceTech; ex-Space Program Manager, Airbus Defense & Space

Gorilla in the Cockpit doesn't stop at diagnostics and explanations. It offers a solution based on the latest discoveries in neuroscience, psycholinguistics, and behavioral economics, with practical application to real-life projects. Its systematic framework encompasses all steps of leading and managing megaprojects, from design to procurement, stakeholder management to execution, and handover to sustainability.

Learn how to:

• Challenge how you see, approach, and lead megaprojects-and massive change programs in your organizations.
• Expose the hidden human patterns that destroy billions (and trillions) of shareholder value and taxpayer money each year.
• Show a revolutionary way of understanding what happens in the project Black Box and why this drives 65% failure rates.
• Explode the myth that major project failure is inevitable.

• De-Risk your project flight path and boost your project success rate. "Gorilla in the Cockpit is a rare look behind the scenes of megaprojects by two seasoned experts. If you want to understand what really goes on in big projects, why they fail so often and what it takes for them to succeed, this book is a must-read." -Bent Flyvbjerg, professor at Oxford and Copenhagen, principal author of How Big Things Get Done and Megaprojects and Risk.

Auteur

Vip Vyas is a Socratic advisor to Boards, CEOs, and CXOs helping them catapult their organization and projects to new performance frontiers. He is an enthusiast of breaking up limiting belief systems and creating unique strategic advantages for turning big ideas into reality.

As the originator of the Flight Path model, Vip (and his team and suitcase) have traveled across dozens of countries (35 at the last count), working with executive teams to unlock their corporate Black Boxes and achieve results beyond the predictable,

His journey has taken him to work in the mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta (where machine guns and kidnappings are rife), to the scorching deserts of Qatar and the Middle East, to the blustery gales and turbulence of the North Sea, and the meteoric rise of China and the wider South-East Asia.

His first book, Gorilla in the Cockpit, co-authored with Thomas, is the product of over a quarter of a century's investment in tackling and turning around highly complex projects across wide-ranging sectors such as Banking, FMCG, Government, Digital Technology, Oil & Gas, Petrochemicals, Power, Mining, Renewables, and large-scale civil infrastructure, with a total aggregate value exceeding USD 70+ billion.

Of all the global megaprojects Vip has been involved in, his most confronting one was on a micro-scale. That of performing live on stage, in a band, in front of 5000 people, at the South Bank next to the River Thames, London, England. His approach to overcoming his gorillas (a flurry of self-defeating thoughts, total fear, and sheer panic) as he stood in front of an eager crowd, waiting to be entertained, has been instrumental in shaping his perspective on leading change in multi-dimensional settings.

British born of Indian descent, Vip now lives in Hong Kong with his young family. He has studied strategy and execution at the Harvard Business School, been a visiting consultant at the London Business School, and an Executive Consultant at the Säid Business School, University of Oxford, for the Hong Kong Government's Major Projects Leadership Programme ("MPLP"). His thought leadership has been featured in many top periodicals, including Forbes, INSEAD Knowledge, and Duke Corporate Education's Dialogue.