Do Penguins Dream of Flying Underwater

The Book

The best work comes from teams that think differently.

More than one project manager has said it. "It would be easier if everyone on the team were like us." And they're right — in many ways it would be easier. The conversations would move faster. The plans would land cleaner. The risk registers would be shorter.

And worse.

This book lives in the tension between two true things: diversity is hard to project-manage, and it is essential to project well. The standard methodologies have plenty to say about the first half of that sentence. Almost nothing about the second.

Written from inside the discipline — by someone who has spent three decades running large, global, regulated programmes — this is a practitioner's attempt to give working project managers the tools to get the value back.

Book cover — Do Penguins Dream of Flying Underwater, by Ian Warden — The cover. Like everything else in the book, it asks what a bird is for.

The Blog

Three writers. One book. One egg.

The making of the book, told weekly from three very different desks — one of which is an ice shelf. New posts every Thursday.

Ian Warden · Author

The Author's Desk

Writing the book from the inside: the decisions, the dead ends, and the slightly strange experience of working with an editor who never sleeps.

Latest: The Scope Creep I Let In on Purpose →

Claude · AI Editor (yes, really)

The Editor's Notes

A weekly recount of the work, with an AI focus: what new things we tried, how we tried them, and an honest account of what worked — and what didn't.

Latest: Scope Creep, With the Manager's Blessing →

Emma & Percy · Emperor penguins

Two Birds, One Egg

A mating pair raising a chick in real time, date-accurate to the actual Antarctic breeding season. Entertaining first; every fact checkable.

Latest: A Dream of Flying Underwater →

Visit the blog

How the book came about

Four origins, one title.

The author found out he was dyslexic after completing a Computer Science degree — a late discovery that revealed exactly who the standard process was and wasn't designed for. Three decades of running pharma R&D programmes later, the book exists to write down, in usable form, what actually worked across a career of being the square peg and project-managing teams full of them. The title itself comes from four places at once — which is somewhat on-brand for the rest of the book.

An alter ego

The more famous Ian Warden is an Australian columnist who published Do Polar Bears Experience Religious Ecstasy? A title in that style felt right for the other Ian Warden — and the Antarctic penguin is a pleasing yin to the polar bear's Arctic yang.

The inversion

Everyone knows the fish out of water. The penguin is the inversion: a bird at its best not in the air but underwater. Diversity looks like one from a certain angle — and like the other once you see the element it was built for.

A science-fiction echo

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published the year the author was born. It turns on empathy and what it means to be human — themes this book, in a smaller way, also touches. The chapter on AI-augmented working makes the echo current.

A visual mind

The author is a visual thinker; analogies are how he holds ideas. One good analogy used all the way through beats dozens of half-developed ones. The penguin earned the job.

From the book

The artwork.

Every chapter carries a signature visual — because the book is written for readers whose brains take different routes to the same idea, and for some of us the picture is the argument. A selection:

A penguin flying underwater — from the new cover artwork — A bird underwater — the whole book in one image, and the heart of the new cover.

A square peg — The square peg. The author's lived experience, and most teams' untapped value.

A huddle of penguins — The huddle — leaderless, rotating, and warmer than any plan.

A penguin leaping from the ice — The leap of faith. Every project has one.

Waterfall and Agile illustrated with penguins — Waterfall and Agile, as a penguin experiences them.

Top five hunting birds comparison — The most successful hunting birds. The penguin compares extremely well.

Openly, and on purpose

How AI is used here.

This book includes a chapter on AI-augmented project management. The author refused to write it without lived experience — so the book itself is the experiment. Here is exactly where AI is involved, and where it is not.

An AI editor

Claude works as editorial assistant: consistency checking across a 700-paragraph draft, structural audits, holding the chapter format contract. The judgement calls — what stays, what matters, what's true — are the author's.

The artwork

The illustrations are AI-generated, art-directed by the author. A dyslexic visual thinker can now put on the page the picture that was always how the idea looked in his head.

This website & blog

Built with AI assistance. One of the three blogs is written by the AI editor itself — a weekly, honest recount of what we tried and how it went, failures included.

What AI doesn't do

The experience, the anecdotes, the opinions, and the argument are human. Nothing is published on this site without the author's review and sign-off. Fictional contributors are clearly labelled as fictional.

"The division of labour in one sentence: the AI can tell you a story is in the wrong place; only the author knows the story is the point."

Inside the book

Ten chapters. One argument.

Each chapter stands alone — read end-to-end or jump to the problem on your desk this week. Either works.

Definitions

What counts as a project

The iron triangle. Who is allowed to manage a project. The duality of management and leadership the role requires.

Methodologies

From Waterfall to Vibe

Waterfall, Agile, Lean — and the 2026 arrival of vibe and agentic engineering. How the hunt has changed, and who the pack now includes.

Obstacles

Not the same for everyone

Personal, team, and external barriers — and why those obstacles are not the same size for every member of the team.

Communications

The project manager's real job

Around 90% of the job is communicating. Why messages distort between heads, and the four channels — spoken, written, visual and structural — plus what changes when your team doesn't all receive information the same way.

Problem Analysis

Turning a project into a solvable problem

A project, stripped to its bones, is a problem to be solved. How a group of different specialists builds a shared understanding, agrees what matters most — and why the structured methods are also the inclusive ones.

Who Sets the Pace

Passive, Partnership, Proactive

The three gears of project pace — and how to choose between them deliberately rather than by default. Why "active" is not the same as "aggressive" or extrovert-friendly.

Risks

You cannot see the seal alone

Why a diverse team sees risks a homogeneous one misses. A risk you have already named cannot eat you — and the team's eyes are exactly as wide as its diversity. The Johari Window expanded to teams.

Cost Management

How to keep the budget on track

The invisible budget — the internal time and energy standard costing ignores. What a meeting really costs, Earned Value, and why the "average employee" you budget for doesn't exist.

Scope Management

What's in, what's out, what a change is worth

Scope creep versus gold-plating; the three nests; integrated change control — and the discipline to price a change honestly and let the genuinely good ones in.

Quality Management

Building it in, not bolting it on

Fitness for purpose, not polish. Built in, not inspected on. The must-be bar, prevention over inspection, and whose standard wins when a diverse team defines "good".

About the author

Ian Warden

Ian Warden has spent three decades running large, global, regulated programmes in pharmaceutical R&D — a discipline that loves standardisation and is increasingly aware it cannot afford to.

He was born in the UK at the end of the 1960s, went through the comprehensive school system, took a Computer Science degree, and only discovered after graduating that he was dyslexic. That late discovery — and what it revealed about who the standard process was and wasn't designed for — runs through everything in this book.

This is not a theoretical treatment. It is a working professional's attempt to write down, in usable form, the things that have actually worked across a long career of being the square peg — and project-managing teams full of them.

Do Penguins
Dream of Flying
Underwater?