Built-In Engagement

 

My oldest son graduated from a prestigious law school and works as a trial attorney. During a recent visit home he and his fiancé disagreed about the hair color of the opposing council at a trial she had seen. After hearing them go back and forth a couple of times, I interjected.
“Objection! Evidence not corroborated by the witness!”
“That’s gibberish” my son replied.
“Not according to the law shows I’ve seen.” 
“How would you like it if I were to just place near-random project management terms together as some sort of assertion?”
“Sadly, it would be nearly indistinguishable from much of what passes for legitimate PM writing” was my reply. And, in an instant, I knew what I wanted to blog about this week.

Valid theories in science – even management science – do not need catchy but inchoate phrases to gain acceptance. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. This hypothesis turned theory when it was supported by experimental evidence. But consider some of the things we, as PM practitioners, accept as axiomatic, but haven’t been supported by anything but the most subjective and anecdotal of evidence.

For example, a comment on one of my blogs was “Quality needs to be buil(t) in, not controlled and managed in.” The commentrr, I’m sure, didn’t come up with this on his own – it had surely been repeated multiple times in classrooms, professional society chapter meetings, or in his workplace. But I don’t even know what that means. When creating products or providing services, if you have a good design/technical approach, use the appropriate tools, materials, and methodologies, and employ people with the appropriate level of expertise, barring human error a quality product or service will be delivered. The distinction between building, controlling, or managing “in” is fairly amorphous, rendering the distinction functionally irrelevant. And yet we, as a PM community, are somehow expected to accept this saying uncritically. I think the true nature of the assertion that “quality needs to be built in, not controlled and managed in” could be articulated as “hire more quality engineers, and pay them better, or else you will be made to look stupid for not knowing the difference between ‘built-in,’ ‘controlled-in,’ and ‘managed-in.’” (Actually, it might be kind of fun to isolate a dozen or so Quality Engineers, and have them define “built-in,” “controlled-in,” and “managed-in” in sufficient detail as to be able to differentiate any quality initiative as belonging to just one category, and then compare their answers.)

Another commonly-accepted idea is that all project managers must “engage stakeholders.” I think this term was created to be deliberately vague, in order to push the poorly-articulated theories of the communications experts (how ironic is that?). Take the first part of the term, the word “engage.” According to dictionary.com, this term can have polar opposite meanings, ranging from “to attract or please” (#4) to “enter into conflict with” (#7)i.   

The definition of “stakeholder” isn’t much more precise. According to BusinessDictionary.com, the definition is “A person, group or organization that has interest or concern in an organization.”ii  By this definition, the Washington Redskins are stakeholders of the Dallas Cowboys (which pretty much necessitates “engage” definition #7 to be used).

So, just to be clear, a term that can have as wildly differing meanings as “attract or please your employees” to “enter into conflict with your enemies” has no practical meaning at all on its face. And  yet, to “engage stakeholders” has become so uncritically accepted in modern PM circles that to even challenge it is to risk being permanently identified as hopelessly backwards in the management sciences. Does that seem right?

Now, excuse me as I prepare to “control-in” my “engagement” of the “stakeholders” who leave comments in the comment section…

  i Definition of “Engage,” retrieved from Dictionary.com, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/engage, August 23, 2015, 11:38 MDT.
 ii  Definition of “Stakeholder,” retrieved from BusinessDictionary.com, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/stakeholder.html, August 23, 2015, 11:43 MDT.