Project Failure as a Scapegoat for Organizational Failure (Part 3)

Majeed is a business transformation manager with over 25 result-driven years of international business improvement experience. He has been an active volunteer within PMI communities since 2005, and his main passion and focus is on ethics and authentic leadership in project management.

  Governance   Leadership   Organizational Project Management   Portfolio Management   Strategy  

Organizations often talk of project management failure and put us in a vicious cycle of cause/effect analysis loops. The problem is that we look for the cause of project management failure where the light is--and not in the dark spot where the true issue is. This three-part series helps to uncover some key underlying and recurring sources of confusion within organizations. Part 1 looked at decision-making dilution; Part 2 explored methodological and structural confusion. We now turn our attention to leadership pollution and conclude our series.

Leadership pollution

1. Professional vs. political arena. When the communication skills of leaders become so good that it becomes their only competence, the organization runs the risk of becoming a political arena. Every time a decision is made that seems to defy professional logic, there is often a political component to it. The decisions are often made to benefit a few individuals rather than the project or the organization.

The profession of project management often makes organizational weaknesses more visible. This of course puts accountability and responsibility on several individuals or group under question, and the process become more political than professional governance.

The more political strengths that some have to position …

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