Big Projects, Big Fear, Big Fulfillment

How Big, Messy Projects Create the Kind of Transformation Small Wins Never Will

Scott Wagers (Middelheim Museum Antwerp, Belgium)

"Keep it simple, stupid" - it's the mantra of Silicon Valley, design schools, and management consultants worldwide.

But what if this obsession with simplicity is actually holding us back?

What if it is simply wrong?

Every time we face a complex challenge, a familiar fear slithers through our minds: the dread of getting lost in an endless labyrinth, wasting months or years on something that may never work.

This fear drives us towards simpler projects, safer bets, clearer paths.

But what most people don't realise is that this very instinct - this reflexive retreat from complexity - is quietly robbing us of life's deepest satisfactions.

Sacrifices on the alter of simplification

I've spent the last nineteen years wrestling with this fear.

In my work supporting medical research consortiums, I've watched brilliant scientists hesitate at the edge of complexity, tempted to scale back their ambitions to something more "manageable."

I've watched countless brilliant ideas die on the altar of simplification.

I've felt that same hesitation myself, that whispered urge to simplify, to reduce scope, to stay safe.

But I've also witnessed what happens when we push through that fear.

Truly transformative breakthroughs - like engineering human immune cells to fight cancer - emerge not from keeping things simple, but from diving headfirst into complexity's deep end.

Battling complexity to cure cancer

The T2EVOLVE project is focused on removing the bottlenecks to accessing one of the most exciting therapeutic developments - engineered T-cells.

T-cells are part of the body's immune system and by modifying your own body's cells, people with lymphoma and multiple myeloma who had no hope left because standard therapies failed are being cured.

When we were developing the concept of the project, researchers wanted to work on creating new forms of engineered cell therapy, but that was not what the project was supposed to focus on.

Despite the success of engineered cell therapies, bottlenecks remain that hinder the ability to reach the full potential of engineered cell therapy.

One of those bottlenecks is that there is no standardisation for monitoring the response of the immune system.

Just imagine if mobile networks did not have standards like 5G how much slower the development of mobile phone computing would have been.

The simple approach would have been to let each lab continue working in isolation.

The complex path - the one that people resisted against - was to attempt something unprecedented: bringing together dozens of institutions to create a single standard for monitoring patients' immune systems.

But then something remarkable happened.

As we pushed forward, that very complexity became our ally.

The challenge itself drew people in.

Scientists who had initially been sceptical became passionate advocates.

Within a couple of years, we had achieved what many thought impossible: a unified standard, tested and implemented across an entire continent.

What was particularly satisfying was to see the scepticism melt away and transform into enthusiasm for something that many thought was a mundane aspect of engineered cell therapy.

Big projects are all around us. From consortia to the challenging home renovation, we are constantly faced with the option of staying in our comfort zone or engaging in the complex.

The shed from my nightmares.

This pattern plays out everywhere, not just in scientific breakthroughs. Even in the mundane challenges of daily life, we face the same choice between retreating from complexity and pushing through it.

As my children get older, we seem to be accumulating more and more bicycles. Hence, we needed a new place to store our bicycles.

I felt that familiar fear creeping in. The voice that whispers "this is too complicated," so I hired someone to build the shed.

He built the platform for the shed but had not calculated correctly, so the last row of concrete tiles did not fit.

He then proceeded to assemble the pieces of a shed I had purchased, and it soon became clear that a major piece was missing.

I contacted the site where I had bought the shed, but to no avail.

The guy I hired did what he could but then told me he did not want to do any more.

So, a half-assembled shed sat in our driveway for months.

I decided in the end I would try to put it together. With some research, I found a number for the company in Australia. I called. Someone answered. I explained the situation and the piece that was missing.

Forty-eight hours later, an express delivery guy showed up with the piece.

I thought, look, he put all the pieces together; it will just be a couple of hours of assembly and it would be done.

Wrong.

The pieces were not assembled correctly.

I had to undo and then redo his work.

I got my family involved.

Now a team of five was engaged.

There were even more pieces missing, and the parts did not go together like they did in the instructions.

We could have given up.

Instead, I thought about how we could adapt to do what we needed to do and just put pieces together in ways that made sense.

When it became time to attach the roof, we faced the biggest challenge.

Each time we pushed the roof into the slot of the piece that would hold it in place, I would climb up on a step stool to take a look.

Each time it was not far enough in to let us fasten it.

After countless attempts, we were tired.

It was the end of the day, and we were leaving for an extended trip across time zones the next day.

Again, ready to give up, I looked at my 17-year-old daughter and said, "one more try."

Together we pushed the roof into the slot, and I gave it an extra hard push.

Time to inspect.

My fingers felt wet.

I looked down to see skin of my thumb shoved into into a bloody heap at the base of the nail.

Nonetheless, I stepped up on the stool and checked the roof.

It was in!

I quickly fastened it in place.

When I finally drove the last screw - hands bleeding, exhausted, but triumphant - I understood something profound: the satisfaction wasn't just in having a shed.

The satisfaction, the sense of fulfilment, was in conquering the complexity that had initially terrified me.

That shed still stands today, having weathered one of the strongest storms I've seen in two decades of living in Belgium.

But more importantly, it stands as a reminder: when we push through our fear of complexity, we don't just solve problems - we transform ourselves.

The biggest problem with big projects is that we tend to apply small project thinking and expect it to work.

A small project mindset would have been to give up when pieces were missing or things did not go well.

A small project mindset assumes that if something is not working, the plans are wrong.

So, you look to fix the plan.

A big project mindset requires that you abandon the plans and focus on the goal.

If you wait for the plans to be right, the delays will just continue to increase.

Embracing complexity

Here's what I've learnt from both cancer research and shed-building: our instinct to simplify is often wrong.

When we encounter complexity, our first impulse is to reduce it, to break it down, to make it "manageable."

But some challenges - whether they're coordinating dozens of research labs or wrestling with a seemingly impossible construction project - demand that we do the opposite: embrace their complexity fully.

This doesn't mean being reckless. It means understanding that the path through complexity isn't about having the perfect plan – it's about having the courage to adapt when plans fail.

It's about gathering allies when the challenge proves too big for one person. It's about pushing through that final moment of doubt, even if your hands are bleeding.

The next time you feel that familiar fear of complexity creeping in, remember: on the other side of that fear lies not just accomplishment, but transformation.

The greatest risk isn't that you might fail at something complex - it's that you might succeed at something simple and never discover what you're truly capable of achieving.

If you want to experience the fulfillment of a big messy research project start by positioning your research for substantial funding: Get the free guide to substantial funding.