Attack of the Gadflies

 

One of the downsides to working in the project management profession is the common occurrence of those who are convinced that their particular experience is so much more profound than their colleagues’ that they become full of criticisms for any practice that fails to comport precisely with their way of doing things. Indeed, part and parcel of their professional approach is to always have something to complain about, for if the project were to be executed entirely consistent with their wishes, and it were to go badly, they would be exposed for the pseudo-intellectuals that they are. 

Infuriatingly, these are not confined to the occasional (unfortunate) project team. I’ve been on document-generating committees that were positively thick with them, and they contributed about as much as one would expect to the final product – which is to say, virtually nothing at all. And, while I’m certain that most (all?) other professions have their fair share of this type, project management is somewhat vulnerable to them due its nature as a part of the management sciences, which are aptly categorized as “soft science.”

I found myself wondering what would happen if the other, hard sciences were to be similarly afflicted. As it turns out, they are. In Thomas Kuhn’s landmark publication The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962) he points out that, in virtually all cases where one scientific theory replaces another, those supporting the more modern, valid theory are derided, criticized, and condemned by those who embrace the existing theory. Eventually enough data is collected and presented to lead a majority of practitioners in the specific field of research to accept the newer, more valid theory, initiating a “paradigm shift” (yes, Kuhn introduced the term).

Now, stop and ask yourself – why should that be so? Why isn’t it that, at least in the hard sciences, even a single researcher who can reproduce the results that verify the authenticity of their hypothesis in an experimental setting can immediately overturn the existing, erroneously held idea, and enjoy widespread acceptance? Well, as I discuss in my upcoming book Unavoidable Hierarchy, the reasons have to do with unchanging human behavior. For the long answer, you will have to buy the book. The short answer: even with reproducible results in-hand, existing theories are difficult in the extreme to overturn – and that’s in the hard science, with, again, reproducible results in-hand.

The issues become even more difficult in the management sciences, since very few (if any) of our theories can be tested in an experimental setting. With no reproducible results either way to help settle the issues, upon what do the gadflies tend to base their assertions? If you answered personal experience, go to the head of the class.

Now, instantly, the debate becomes one of whose experience is the more profound and universal. But unless they happen to be Frodo, Samwise, Merry and Pippin, returning to the Shire after having saved Middle Earth from being converted into an Orc-infested hell-hole, I have a news flash for the Gadflies: your experience isn’t that much different from all of the ones of your colleagues’. Oh, they may have had more readily-recognizable projects or persons involved, but even that carries with it its own irony: claiming some profound PM insight from an experience on a large project only means that there were exponentially more parameters involved, parameters that couldn’t have possibly been recognized, much less quantified. In other words, the theories that the gadflies perpetrate stem from hopelessly compromised experiments.

How can you defend against the assault of the gadflies? I’m not sure you can … but you CAN do two things to deal with them: (1) learn to identify them (making strong assertions based, not on scholarship or hard data, but on personal experience is a dead give-away), and (2) avoid becoming one of them. And all that takes is a little humility.