Cracking an Unproductive Organizational Culture

Joe Wynne is a versatile Project Manager experienced in delivering medium-scope projects in large organizations that improve workforce performance and business processes. He has a proven track record of delivering effective, technology-savvy solutions in a variety of industries and a unique combination of strengths in both process management and workforce management.

  Organizational Culture   Risk Management   Stakeholder Management  

Unproductive organizational culture will cause schedule delays, team conflicts, cost overruns and under-resourcing of activities. Impact: High.  Likelihood:  Inevitable.  Response: Current project manager will find a naïve project manager to take over so current project manager transfers to another organization.

You probably won't see that item on a project risk log no matter how needed it is. But pause a minute and take a more positive view. What if you could be a project manager who gets work done despite an unproductive organizational culture? You would be a valuable resource.

How then can a PM crack the monolith of an unproductive culture? Doesn’t that take a long, special effort driven from the highest levels?

Don’t concern yourself with the whole organization; you can’t solve that problem. Focus on your project scope, where an unproductive organizational culture can place widespread obstructions in front of your workforce—including withholding information, delaying approvals, refusing consensus, holding back resource availability, and not being transparent with risks known to exist.

For this dire situation, you need special tactics to be successful….

1. Build Trust Continuously
If you do not build trust continuously, you allow an unproductive culture to maintain its grip over your project. Trust is …

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