The Dangers of the Executive Commitment

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

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I know of an organization that is currently working on a huge initiative with a scheduled delivery date that has absolutely no chance of being hit. I mean that literally--it is so far away from being able to achieve the date that it wouldn’t matter how much scope is removed, how many more people are added, how much the quality standards are dropped and how many risks are accepted. It’s simply not going to meet its date.

A reasonable project manager might therefore ask, “Why doesn’t the project get re-planned to a more reasonable date?” I asked that very question, and when I heard the response I knew that I had the topic for this article. The answer was “Because the CEO told the Board of Directors that we would achieve that date.”

Sad but true.

This organization is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars executing a project that is not going to achieve what is expected simply because no one is prepared to tell the CEO that the team can’t deliver on the promise that he made to the board. There are a number of different teams involved in the project, and what is now happening is effectively a game of “chicken”--every team is blindly going forward toward an unachievable goal in the hope that one of the other teams will have to admit defeat first and be the ones who are “blamed” for the CEO …

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