The Puzzle Isn’t the Project

Welcome to issue #010 of Under the Surface. Each week, I share one thoughtful piece to help you grow, lead and thrive in the messy reality of project work. If something lands - or misses - I’d love to hear your thoughts. And if you’re exploring what’s next, you can join the Pathfinder waitlist to go deeper with others on the same journey.

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What if we put all the pieces on the table… and still couldn’t solve the puzzle?

That thought crossed my mind the other week, somewhere between the second and third silence of the meeting. One of those long commercial reviews - the kind where everyone is polite and quietly calculating.

You know the sort.

There were seven of us around the table. Most in their fifties, a couple younger, all male. Buttoned shirts, open laptops, eyes shifting between spreadsheets and body language. The room itself wasn’t tense exactly - not at first - but you could feel the weight of the numbers, the gravity of the situation, before anyone spoke.

People nod. Listen. Clarify. Push back. Smile occasionally. You hear words like “realignment,” “carryover,” “reprofiling” and you wonder if anyone actually believes what they’re saying, or if it’s just the language we all use to avoid saying something harder. Something truer.

There’s a certain choreography to these meetings. No one teaches it to you. You just… absorb it over time. You learn when to hold back, when to float an idea, when to sit still and say nothing at all. You learn that sometimes a pause is more powerful than a point.

At one point, someone made a proposal. Reasonable enough. But as he spoke, a few glances shifted across the room - not towards him, but towards each other. Not quite agreement. Not quite resistance. Just a flicker of calculation. What’s the play here? What does he know that I don’t? What piece of the puzzle is he holding back?

That’s the thing. You sit there with your notes, your numbers, your read of the contract. But you never have the full picture. And you’re not supposed to. That’s the game. Everyone has a piece. Some guard theirs tightly. Others reveal them in stages. And sometimes - even when the stakes are survival, not profit - the pieces never come together.

Psychological safety is a big part of this. According to BCG, employees in high-trust environments are four times less likely to quit than those in low-trust ones. And yet, in rooms like these, trust is implied but rarely felt. The silence isn’t safe; it’s strategic. A defence. A calculation. A way to stay in the game a little longer.

As Amy Edmondson puts it.

I don’t say that with judgement. I understand it. In projects like these - infrastructure, engineering, construction, EPC - protecting your position is part of the game. Collaboration is the principle, but self-preservation is the practice. And so we circle around the puzzle, hoping someone else has the missing bit, or hoping no one notices that we’re missing ours.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team starts with this very issue: an absence of trust. Without it, artificial harmony replaces real conversation. People perform consensus. Teams avoid conflict. And work stalls before it begins.

And yet, amid all that, I still catch glimpses of something more human. A weary glance. A softened tone. A half-sigh, half-laugh. At the end of the meeting, one of the senior leads lingered behind, fingers moving his pen like a little acrobat, just… sitting. Not rushing off. Not reaching for his phone. Just still.

That’s what stays with me. We’re not robots. Not players in some neatly structured commercial theatre. We’re people, making decisions with partial information, under pressure, in systems that don’t always make sense.

I sometimes wonder what the next generation will make of all this. Will they inherit the same meeting rooms, the same silences, the same language of control and caution? Or will they find another way?

Maybe that’s naïve. Or romantic. But if we don’t believe things could be better - if we don’t at least imagine a future where we approach this work with more trust, more visibility, more shared belief - then what are we really doing?

Human behaviour’s fascinating, isn’t it?

Sometimes I think the puzzle isn’t really the project.

It’s us.

Yours,

Gerwyn

PS – What we’re building at Coron Projects

I’m building something for project professionals who want more than just tasks and titles. Pathfinder is a new kind of membership built for people in engineering and construction who are ready to grow, lead and thrive on their terms. No corporate bullshit. No gatekeepers. Just the tools, support and mindset shifts that help you take ownership of your career.

It’s currently in development and if that sounds like something you might want in your corner, you can join the waitlist here and include “Pathfinder” in the message.