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London Olympics - by Sir John Armitt: Case Study

Sir John Armitt was the leader of the project to build all infrastructure and facilities for the 2012 London Olympics. It was a huge undertaking made more challenging by the context of London. Armitt demonstrated strong leadership skills in managing politics and stakeholders. He was praised for maintaining good relationships and collaboration during the complex project. Armitt also took a visionary approach, being willing to take risks and try new ideas, which helped deliver an outstanding final project.

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Shubh Jain
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173 views

London Olympics - by Sir John Armitt: Case Study

Sir John Armitt was the leader of the project to build all infrastructure and facilities for the 2012 London Olympics. It was a huge undertaking made more challenging by the context of London. Armitt demonstrated strong leadership skills in managing politics and stakeholders. He was praised for maintaining good relationships and collaboration during the complex project. Armitt also took a visionary approach, being willing to take risks and try new ideas, which helped deliver an outstanding final project.

Uploaded by

Shubh Jain
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LONDON OLYMPICS

- By Sir John Armitt


CASE STUDY
BY
Shubh Jain (2k20/UMBA/69)
Vanshika Gupta (2k20/UMBA/88)

John Armitt
INSIGHTS OF CASE

Sir John Armitt is an excellent example of what an effective leader looks like. Armitt took on the
project of building all of the infrastructure and facilities for the 2012 Olympics in London. Executing
the infrastructure for any Olympics is a huge undertaking; London presented another challenge in the
project. Armitt is recognized and commended by many for the 2012 Olympics in London.
Being a project leader champion involves many qualities that Armitt possessed. With the scope of the
Olympics project, there is a lot of collaboration across many boards and companies. Armitt had to
make appease many people. Ray O’Rourke, chairman of the construction company, praised Armitt for
being able to manage politics and multiple project stakeholders during the entire Olympics project.
Maintaining good relationships with stakeholders is a trait that not all project leaders have
maintained. These collaboration skills showed Armitt’s traditional duties of being a project leader
champion.

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INSIGHTS OF CASE CONT…

Armitt’s ability to implement nontraditional duties on top of the traditional duties of project
management are what makes him stand out. His method is to mentally be prepared that 30% of ideas
might not work, but 70% of ideas will deliver big wins. This type of vision and risk taking definitely
contributed to the outstanding final project that Armitt was able to deliver.
Armitt will continue to be an example of what a champion project leader encompasses. His project
leadership and management skills continue to be in demand since he went above and beyond in the
2012 Olympics project. Armitt has led many more large-scale projects and continues to give advice
about leadership, especially where politicians are involved. The advice that Armitt gives is visionary
in the sense of coming up with new ideas that are not traditional. However, he is being listened to
after he proved himself with the 2012 Olympics project. Armitt showed that successful project
management happens when leaders execute both traditional and non-traditional duties.

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How was Sir John Armitt a perfect Project
Manager?

After reading the case study “Leading by Example for the London Olympics” one of the
characteristics I thought to be closely associated with Sir John Armitt would be credibility. He ran a
“major contractor”, responsible for engineering the first high-speed rail system. The second
characteristic that fits him especially in this case would be that he is a creative problem solver. Having
to not only developing the Olympic site in a heavily “congested” city but also keeping the Paralympic
games in mind shows how creative he had to be. Lastly, Sir John Armitt models a flexible
management style this is apparent because of his years of overcoming multiple challenges between
budgets, which are always changing throughout projects and not including politicians as much as
other people usually do, he was able to make the challenging decisions they would normally put off.

4
What according to you were his skills that a
Project Manager should have?

 Organizing under conflict 


 Experience
 Decision-making
 Productive creativity
 Cooperative leadership

5
Comment on his approach to handle powerful
stakeholders.
Sir john armit used to handle powerful stakeholders by creating the atmosphere calm. He was
Described as a “stabilizing influence, giving confidence that the project could be delivered,” Armitt
brought high credibility and a history of competence to his role in leading the development effort.
Armitt approach to new project was incredible. He always said that “We need to find ministers who
are prepared to say to their departments, ‘You are free to make mistakes. You are free to mentally
allocate some of what you are doing to the 70/30 projects where, in fact, there is a good 30% chance
that it will not work—but the 70% is worth going for, so let’s go for that. If it goes wrong, you won’t
be hanged, but you will actually be praised for having a go. Because we are willing to take a risk,
there will be certain things that will be successful.”’ As he noted, innovation carries risk, but it can
also deliver big wins. “If you want to innovate, you have to accept that there are risks, and so you
need flexibility in your budget,” states Armitt. “And you need to be open and honest about that.

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THANK YOU
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