Winning the Lottery With Project Management

 

Okay, maybe you can’t get a leg up on how to buy a winning lottery ticket using PM techniques, but the similarities between what Project Managers do and betting on unique future events unfolding a certain way are myriad. I got to thinking along these lines when I was asked what would I do if I were to win the lottery, specifically, would I go on working?

The more I thought about it, the more I came to recognize the parallels I alluded to in the first paragraph. I’m pretty sure that, should I come into fantastic wealth after buying a $2 lottery ticket, I would not continue working my present job (sorry, Cameron). It’s not that I don’t enjoy my work, or that I think I’m not very good at it. It’s just that project management tends to be pretty stressful. It’s axiomatic that something will not go as planned on every single project, leaving it to the PM to take the actions necessary to ensure the eventual outcome remains relatively as-predicted, even in ever-changing (or even chaotic) environments. Our friends, the asset managers, are comparatively free of such chaos as they execute their duties. Budgets, accounts receivable and payable, payroll – these business transactions are carried out in a highly formulaic fashion. It’s so formulaic, in fact, that in many instances it’s illegal to carry out such duties in anything other than the proscribed, mandated fashion.

PM, on the other hand, and as I’ve said multitudinous times, is a completely different animal. By definition a “project” is a unique endeavor, with identifiable beginning and ending dates. Being as it is a unique endeavor; the lessons learned from previous experiences may or may not be applicable. Some elements are universally analogous, sure, such as breaking the work down into sub-components (a Work Breakdown Structure), identifying the resources needed to accomplish the scope (a time-phased budget), and some sort of identifiable duration (a schedule). Go much further past that, though, and the universal truisms – and, therefore, reliably repeatable guidance – become far more rare.

But that doesn’t stop a plethora of self-identified experts from trying to push their ideas as universally applicable in the PM realm, no siree. Take, for example, our friends the communications specialists. If I’m subjected to one more article or talk about how all PMs are somehow duty-bound to “engage stakeholders,” I think I will communicate my opposition to such drivel by imitating the sound my Collie makes when he’s throwing up on the carpet at 3:00 a.m. Bonnie Cooper, writing on the Corporate Education Group website, states “One of the most critical aspects of project management is doing what's necessary to develop and control relationships with all individuals that the project impacts.”[i] Now, I’m sure Ms. Cooper is a very nice person, but this statement raises a few questions, to wit:

• Is it even possible to identify all the individuals a given project impacts?
• How do you “control” relationships? Anyone who even thinks this is possible has clearly never owned a pet cat.
• On what basis do you assert that developing and controlling these relationships is “one of the most critical aspects” of PM? Can you point to a study where identical (or even similar) projects were undertaken, with relationship development and control present at a robust level on Project A, while absent on Project B, where Project A significantly out-performed Project B, with this stakeholder engagement stuff being the proximate (or even material) cause?

But it all sounds so great, doesn’t it? I mean, by controlling the relationships with everyone who’s affected (not “impacted,” unless the result of your project comes in to kinetic proximity to others) by the project, you can, to at least some degree, control the way the future unfolds, right? By spending energy on “stakeholder engagement,” doesn’t that lessen the chances of adversarial relationships spontaneously erupting, and thereby endangering your project?

Short answer: well, umm, not necessarily.

If Project Management techniques, such as risk, quality, or communication management, could alter the way the future unfolds, then, taken to their extreme, wouldn’t there be examples of their ability to do so in such a way as to represent extreme success, similar to winning millions off of a single lottery ticket? There aren’t, and they can’t. What they can do, however, is to better prepare the PM practitioner to deal with the way an uncertain future does unfold, and that increases your odds of success to something a bit better than one in 292,000,000.

[i] Cooper, Bonnie, “What You Must Know About Stakeholder Management,” retrieved from http://www.corpedgroup.com/resources/pm/WhatMustKnowStakeholder.asp on April 16, 2016, 2:00 p.m. MDT.