The bestselling author of four books, Dan Gardner is an award-winning journalist whose eye-opening and mind-expanding talks help audiences challenge assumptions and find creative solutions to pressing problems facing their organizations today. Can we improve our ability to forecast the future? How can we better manage risk in business and life? Why do big projects so often fail and how can we get them right?

Dan recently joined us “Inside Our Boardroom” to explore these questions and more, diving deep into his book How Big Things Get Done and the surprising factors that determine the fate of every project, from home renovations to space exploration and everything in between.

Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Getting Big Things Done: Why We Fail and How Not To

Speakers Spotlight: Why are we bad at big projects and can AI help us?

Dan Gardner: That’s a really fascinating and complex question. The pace of life, the pace of information, and our attention spans certainly contributes to it and for a very specific reason. When we are moving fast, we have to make quick judgments — we’re constantly processing information at lightning speed. That gives our intuitive psychology, our “system one” psychology, more free reign. As wonderful as that system is, it’s not good for complex problems. And what are you faced with when working on big projects? Complex problems.

When it comes to AI, there has to be a fundamental change before AI starts to have a substantial impact on big projects for a very simple reason — you can’t trust it. It hallucinates. If it hallucinates something that’s easily fact-checkable, you’ll catch it, but if it hallucinates something to do with a large complex technical problem, like that bridge you’re building is going to fall down — we can’t do that.

Will AI have a role in future in the future of big projects? Undoubtedly, but only after they’ve cracked that crazy problem of hallucination.

Dan digs deeper into the psychology behind why projects fail in the video below, a topic he explores in depth in his keynote, “Getting Big Things Done On Budget and On Time”.

SpSp: How does a successful project start? And who’s done it right?

DG: Most big projects start the wrong way. What you should do at the start of each project is ask the question, why? Why are we doing this? You might think that’s common sense, but if you look at the genesis of most big projects, people often stumble backwards into them. Somebody will come along and say, “we should build a bridge to the island.” And someone will say, “Fantastic. Let’s build a bridge to the island.” Then somebody else will say, “No, we should build it here.” And somebody else will say, “A bridge is too expensive.” And that’s how the conversation goes. What’s missed? Why? Why do you want to build a bridge? That’s the first step.

To show you how incredibly powerful and essential that question is, let’s talk about one of the world’s most successful mega projects in modern history. In the mid 1990s, some Spanish officials came to the Canadian American architect Frank Gehry. They wanted to transform an old building into a suitable home for a Guggenheim art museum in the northern Spain city of Bilbao. 99 out of 100 architects would simply say, yes or no. Frank, however, starts every project the same way. He asks, why?

So, the officials told him about the city of Bilbao, how it was once a place of heavy industry, but the heavy industry was now gone. The area was economically depressed, and they hoped having a Guggenheim art museum would bring tourists north. Frank’s response was, “Now I get it. This is about economic development. You want to revitalize the city. Now let me think about it.”

As Frank thought about it, he realized that they’re project, as proposed, could not possibly work. For tourists to want to go to the Guggenheim art museum in Bilbao, they had to know it was there. How can you give them that knowledge? Through global media attention. How do you get global media attention for a building renovation? Has that ever happened before? So, Frank told them that their project, as conceived, couldn’t work and offered an alternative. He went to Bilbao and found a derelict factory down by the river. “Knock that down,” he said, “and I will design a piece of spectacular architecture that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. That could get you your global media attention.”

That project ended on time, under budget, and with massive overbenefits. It basically revitalized the economy of an entire city, and it only happened because Frank Gehry asked, “Why.”

Hear more about why the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a shining example of a big project gone right, and how the power of “why” can change the trajectory of your project for the better.

SpSp: You recommend a “think slow, act fast” approach. Why is this critical to the success of a project?  

DG: If you look at the track record of failed projects, there’s a pattern. We call it, “think fast, act slow”, and it leads to quick and superficial planning.

With quick and superficial planning, you don’t get the chance to discover problems, and you don’t get the chance to discover the solutions to those problems. That’s the important part because when you’re planning, things are safe. Budgets don’t explode. Schedules don’t go up in flames. That only happens in the delivery of a plan, and if we engage in quick and superficial planning, we don’t discover those problems until it’s too late. That’s when things go very, very wrong. One problem happens after another, they start to collide, and when that happens, a project that starts as an excited sprint becomes a long, slow death march to the end.

That’s the pattern of failed projects. Why does it happen? Human psychology. Every single element of human psychology that is relevant to big projects leans in the same direction. It leans in favour of overconfidence. We’ve got it figured out. we know what to do, we’ve done enough planning, let’s just get on with it. Overconfidence is what kills projects.

The solution is to reverse that, to “think slow, act fast”, which means engaging in serious, rigorous, exhaustive planning. Yes, that does slow everything down, but it also gives you a plan that’s reliable. So that when you go to delivery, it’s smooth. Smooth is fast. That’s how you succeed.

Risk Perception and Misperception

SpSp: What is a common misunderstanding we have about risk?  

DG: Understanding risk perception and how we get risk wrong begins with the fundamental element of psychology. If you don’t understand human psychology, how it works, and the bifurcation between intuitive judgment and analytical judgment, you will get risk wrong for a very simple reason. Your intuitive judgment is dominant. It’s system one, with system two being analytical.

System one — intuitive — is instantaneous. You look at the problem and feel that you should or shouldn’t worry about this or that. System two — analytical — takes conscious thought, it takes time and effort. When it comes to decision-making, you immediately get your intuition. That’s automatic, it comes whether you want it or not. Then, you can choose to think about it carefully. What we know from overwhelming research is that typically, we don’t think about decisions carefully, which means intuition is totally dominant.

A great psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, used a wonderful metaphor for this. He calls it the elephant and the rider. Imagine a rider sitting on top of an elephant, and they say, “I’m in charge. Look at me. I’m up here. I’m the big man.” But who’s really in charge? If the elephant wants to go this way, the elephant’s going that way. It doesn’t matter what the rider says. That’s the relationship between our two systems. System two — analysis — is the rider who thinks they’re in charge, but, in reality, the dominant partner is intuition, the elephant.

In this stimulating and entertaining presentation, Dan Gardner shows the explanation lies in our brain and the ancient environment that shaped it. The good news? Understanding how psychology can lead us astray is the first step to catching our mistakes about risk and making smarter decisions.

In his keynote, “Risk Perception and Misperception”, Dan explores how in-depth how our brain and environment shapes our risk response. The good news? Understanding how our psychology can lead us astray is the first step to catching our mistakes about risk and making smarter decisions. Learn more in the video below:

Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last

SpSp: Tell us about your new book, The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last?

I co-wrote this with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. The backbone of the book is the story of Wikipedia. Now “trust” and “Wikipedia” are probably not words that people naturally put together. If you’re as old as I am, you’ll remember that when Wikipedia first appeared, it was a joke. If anybody can write anything, how on earth can it be an encyclopedia of reliable information?

Flash forward 25 years and guess what? Wikipedia is one of the world’s most trusted information sources, if not the most trusted. It’s absolutely an amazing turn of events, and what underscores that point is that over those same 25 years, trust collapsed in institution after institution in country after country.  

How on earth did Wikipedia manage to do it? How did they manage to create this trusted information source from a bunch of volunteers scattered around the world? That’s what the core of the book is about. But it’s not just about Wikipedia. We also look at a number of other institutions that failed to maintain trust or succeeded in the same way as Wikipedia. Such as, Airbnb or Uber.

We need to understand that trust is absolutely fundamental to anything we want to accomplish, because cooperation is fundamental to anything we want to accomplish. We have to work together to accomplish anything that’s worth accomplishing, and there’s only one way — trust.

Dan’s fifth book is coming out October 28. Learn more about it in the video below:

Hire Dan Gardner to Speak at Your Event

A former journalist and national affairs commentator, Dan’s work has won or been nominated for every major award in Canadian newspaper journalism, including the National Newspaper Award, the Michener Award, and the Canadian Association of Journalists Award.

Dan is the New York Times bestselling author of four books — Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear; Future Babble; Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, which was named one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist, Bloomberg, and Amazon; and, his most recent, How Big Things Get Done. His forthcoming book, The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last, will be released on October 28, 2025.

Contact us to learn more about Dan Gardner and what he can bring to your next event.