Inclusion Moment: Siobhan Mulcahy, Head of Programme and Project Capability, NATS

Wednesday 5 November 2025

Event: The Rise of the Delivery Partner

This morning I’d like to reflect on how perception, mindset and choice can influence how we collaborate.

Collaboration is the bedrock of delivering, particularly in a client–delivery partner relationship. The Association for Project Management sum it up well when they say that all project and programme work fundamentally relies on the ability to collaborate, often in multi-disciplinary, multi-partner teams and across boundaries and geographies.

This is very important when thinking about the roles we all play in the complex relationships that we need to embrace these days to deliver outcomes and long-term value. Darwin said that ‘those that collaborate and improvise well, generally prevail.’ He made this observation both from the human perspective and that of the animal kingdom; it is very interesting that historically, collaboration was recognised as being fundamental to success.

In research that our colleagues at Southampton University have done recently on the role of clienting in major projects, they reflect that we should probably change the relationships we have when we’re in a client role, away from historical hierarchical delivery and into a world where we focus much more on the role of orchestrator of activities, ensuring that both parties align behind delivering long-term outcomes. This is a very important transition that we need to recognise.

So, if we acknowledge that collaboration is very important, both in our social and business interactions, even when we are bounded by the forms of contracts, we should question what the barriers are in terms of how and when we collaborate. One of which is how we perceive the world around us. If you take perception as being the understanding of the world through our senses, and our behaviours being how we respond to that understanding, that shows a visceral link between our perceptions and our abilities to interact effectively in business.

We need to think hard about how we can change our perceptions when necessary, and how we can focus on changing our behaviours to enable us to move forward, particularly in scenarios where we might be blocked.

I would like to bring that to life with a real example that utilises myself. I am a relatively mature individual; I have started to observe that there was a burgeoning perception that if you were young, you were value-adding, and if you were slightly more mature, you were largely irrelevant. That started coming through quite strongly; at one point I was discussing this with my team at one of our Directorate events.

To bring this to life, I see myself as being authentic; I have a growth mindset; I think I’m courageous and curious. I’ve pivoted my career several times in recent years, into fields that I’d never thought I’d work in, and where I probably would have doubted whether I would add the value that I do.

However, once we started exploring this, I realised that some of my colleagues might see me in quite a different way. It became clear as conversations emerged that people did have perceptions about people who were more mature, with some thinking we were irrelevant and behind the times – some even thought we were institutionalised.

I use that example because when we need to collaborate, it’s very important to recognise that we don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are. That is a very important thing to reflect upon as we go through the content that will be presented today.

We need to break the cycle of only seeing the world through our own individual lens, which has been developed through our experiences, biases and preconceptions. I recently came across some Buddhist philosophy which said that there are three states of the mind:

  • The mind can be like stone – intractable; unwilling to move; not very adaptive. That can be a positive thing in some instances because it can give people a sense
    of stability.
  • The mind can be like sand – and that’s not necessarily a good thing. People like this will tend to go with the flow a little bit; they might be seen as being inconsistent.
  • The mind can be like water – it can flow, it can be adaptive, and it can enable you to collaborate effectively and embrace change.

When reflecting on major project delivery and the relationships that we need to build to deliver the outcomes we’re all interested in achieving, we need to adopt a mindset that is more like water and less like stone. While all perceptions are valuable, and we need a mix in major projects, setting aside your preconceptions will enable you to collaborate more effectively.

Austrian psychiatrist Victor Frankl, who was a Holocaust survivor, said that everything can be taken from man, but the last human freedom is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. That really resonates. True collaboration is based on being open-minded, and only by being open-minded and working together can we achieve the outcomes we’re striving for.

 

About the presenter

Siobhan Mulcahy, Head of Programme and Project Capability, NATS 

Siobhan Mulcahy is an experienced leader in the project profession, with recent roles at NATS, High Speed Two, and Kingfisher plc. Siobhan specialises in building strong
teams and supporting organisations to deliver projects and programmes more effectively, whether through hands-on delivery or developing capability across the business.

Siobhan brings together strategic vision and practical delivery expertise, coupled with a pragmatic approach and a focus on continuous improvement, to help teams succeed. Siobhan is committed to improving capability across the profession by connecting people, sharing best practice, and encouraging new talent and diverse perspectives.

Alongside day-to-day work, Siobhan is an active contributor to the wider project community and is passionate about engaging with others to drive positive change.