Project Definition Initiation

Most workplace projects fail at the definition stage, not the design stage. When the triggering decision is unclear, every later method produces evidence without a question to answer. Project Definition Initiation forces the organisation to state which decision is open, which decisions are already fixed, and what evidence would change the outcome. It converts a vague ambition — 'we need a new workplace' — into a decidable problem with explicit constraints, before any research money is spent.

• At the very start of any workplace strategy engagement, before research is scoped
• When a lease event, relocation, consolidation, growth plan or hybrid policy review triggers a workplace question
• When a project has stalled and nobody can state the original decision it was meant to inform
• When leadership requests 'a workplace concept' without a defined problem

• Project sponsor (mandatory)
• CRE or portfolio lead
• HR / People representative
• Finance representative
• Workplace strategist leading the engagement

• Business strategy documents or board papers referencing the trigger
• Lease events, portfolio milestones or investment decisions on the horizon
• Any prior workplace studies, surveys or concepts
• Known financial and operational constraints
• Initial statement of ambition from the sponsor

1. Interview the sponsor to surface the business trigger: lease expiry, M&A, growth, cost pressure, culture concern, hybrid friction or portfolio event.
2. Document the decision architecture: which decision must be made, by whom, by when, and what happens if no decision is made.
3. Separate fixed decisions (e.g. the building is already leased) from open decisions (e.g. the workstyle model). Record both explicitly.
4. Define success criteria in decision terms, not design terms: what evidence would make leadership confident to proceed?
5. Capture financial and operational constraints: capex envelope, timeline, headcount assumptions, locations in scope.
6. Draft the strategic scope statement and have the sponsor sign it — literally.
7. Identify which methodology phases and methods the scope requires, and which it does not.

• A sponsor who describes a solution ('activity-based working') instead of a problem — reframe before proceeding
• Decisions presented as open that are politically already closed
• Conflicting triggers between functions (Finance wants reduction, HR wants attraction) — record the tension, do not resolve it yet
• Timelines driven by lease events that leave no room for evidence gathering
• Absence of a named decision-maker: a project without an owner will not survive trade-off governance

• Project definition document with decision statement, fixed vs open decisions, and success criteria
• Strategic scope statement signed by the sponsor
• Constraint register (financial, temporal, spatial, political)
• Initial method plan mapped to the six phases

The decision statement becomes the reference point for every later method: Data Requests are scoped against it, the Visioning Session tests ambition against it, Calibration and Scenario Development use its constraint register, and the final Workplace Strategy document answers it explicitly. Without this output, Recalibrate has no baseline to measure against.

Distinguishing the stated trigger from the real trigger is interpretive work. Sponsors present rational triggers (cost, lease) that mask political or cultural ones (a CEO's dissatisfaction, a failed hybrid policy). No template detects this; an experienced strategist reading the room does.

• Accepting 'we want a modern workplace' as a project definition
• Skipping the fixed-vs-open decision split, so research later 'discovers' options that were never available
• Defining success as a deliverable ('a concept by Q3') instead of a decision
• Letting the strategist write the scope without sponsor sign-off
• Scoping every method by default instead of matching methods to the decision

A European engineering firm requested 'an activity-based working concept' for its 1,200-person headquarters. Definition interviews revealed the actual trigger: a lease break in 22 months and a CFO mandate to cut occupancy cost by 20%. The open decision was not the workstyle model but whether to renew, downsize in place, or relocate. The scope was redefined around a portfolio decision with workstyle implications — reversing the original brief and changing which methods were needed.