Dr Teslim O. Bukoye recently presented an Association for Project Management webinar on how nudges can help project practitioners improve stakeholder decisions, engagement and project outcomes. The webinar builds on the recently published APM How-to Guide, How to Nudge Your Project Stakeholders to Achieve Better Outcomes, co-authored with Professor Jens K. Roehrich. The guide positions nudges, small changes in how choices are presented to help people make better decisions while preserving their freedom to choose, as practical tools that complement established project management practices by supporting better choices, strengthening alignment and enhancing delivery across the project life cycle. The concept was popularised by Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, whose work on choice architecture showed how defaults, prompts and framing can influence behaviour without removing options.

The webinar, with over 150 project practitioners and scholars, explored a simple but important message: projects do not succeed through tools, processes and governance structures alone. They succeed through people, decisions, behaviours and the way choices are presented at critical moments. Using practical examples, the session showed how small design choices such as defaults, prompts, framing, social proof and feedback can help project teams reduce friction, improve follow-through and make better decisions under pressure.

The pre-session responses provided a useful picture of the starting point. Many participants reported limited prior familiarity with behavioural nudges. At the same time, participants already recognised that behavioural factors matter for project outcomes, with “influence is strong” and “influence is very strong” standing out. The most frequently identified project challenge was delayed decision-making, followed by scope creep, stakeholder resistance, poor follow-through, late risk escalation and information overload. This confirmed that the challenges practitioners experience are not only technical or procedural, but also behavioural.

The post-session responses suggested a clear shift from awareness to practical application. Participants reported stronger understanding of how nudges can support project management practice, including how nudges could be used in project settings, how they may influence project behaviour and their practical value for projects. When asked where they were most likely to apply nudges, stakeholder engagement was the strongest area, followed by team follow-through, risk escalation, planning and estimation, project reporting, scope control and governance or stage gates. Open responses also pointed to practical situations such as decision-making, following up actions, communicating changes in reporting procedures, reviewing RAID actions, engaging stakeholders and supporting proactive decision-making.

A key advocacy message from the session was captured in the question: Who designs decisions in the project governance ecosystem? The visual used in the webinar positioned the behavioural choice architect within the wider governance environment, alongside project funders, owners, sponsors, steering committees, PMOs, project managers, project teams, suppliers and users. The central argument was that if project success depends on decisions and behaviours, then choice architecture should be treated as part of project governance.

This raises an important question for project management practice and policy: should responsibility for shaping the decision environment be made more explicit within project governance? The session invited practitioners to think beyond traditional controls and consider how nudges can support decision framing, priority setting, risk escalation, stakeholder prompts and behavioural feedback.

The webinar contributes to a growing global conversation on behavioural project management and practice-led scholarship, helping project practitioners recognise that better outcomes depend not only on managing tasks, but also on designing the conditions in which people make better choices.