Hey! What Are These Ds Doing On My Project?

 

I had to smile when I saw that the ProjectManagement.com theme for August was virtual project management. Back in my PMNetwork columnist days I actually wrote a piece by that very title, and it was fun to do. That column was based on the computer game The Sims, a version of which my older son had set up with a house that contained four members of a project team: the PM, an administrative assistant, an engineer, and a technician. We gave them all template personalities, and I wrote about the behaviors we witnessed, the strangest of which had to be the PM’s predilection for tickling the other members of the project team once he began to lose popularity. Happens all the time in your projects, right?

Since I wrote that piece over a decade ago, the producers of The Sims have come out with far more sophisticated versions of the game. If I were to recreate a nominal project office for an updated version of that column, I would have a few upgrades to interject myself, based on the archetypes described by Dr. Michael Maccoby in his book The Gamesman.

In The Gamesman, Dr. Maccoby describes four basic archetypes:

• The Craftsman doesn’t really care as much about who employs him, but does care about the quality of his output.
• The Company Man tends to adopt the persona of the team around him.
• The Jungle Fighter gets ahead by engaging in gossip and calumny, taking credit for others’ accomplishments and deflecting accountability for his own errors.
• The Gamesman (after whom, obviously, the book is named) doesn’t perceive his paycheck or other perks as representing a roof over his head and food on the table; rather, he sees these things as tokens in some grand game. Because of this, this type tends to both possess a mastery of the business they engage in, and are willing to take more risks than the other archetypes.

I have also previously written of the incomparable Dave Post, who worked with me on a paper presentation on the topic of Project Management implementation strategies. Dave pointed out another version of employee archetypes, in this case the types of reactions the project team could be expected to manifest in the implementation process. He theorized that, if the employees were to be represented on a bell curve, that:

1. The leading edge of the curve would represent the early-adapters. These people probably had beta-format VCRs (if you aren’t old enough to know what “beta format” means, I don’t want to hear from you; and, if you don’t know what a VCR is [was], are you really old enough to be on a project team?), and could be counted on to readily embrace the change being introduced.
2. About one standard deviation around the left side of the mean represents those who will accept the change, but only after they have been convinced that it will be beneficial to them in the short-to-medium term.
3. About one standard deviation towards the right side of the mean represents those who will resist participating in the implementation process, and will only come on-board when they realize that most of the rest of the organization has done so.
4. At the tailing edge towards the right of the curve are those who will oppose your implementation, no matter what pressure is brought to bear.

Did everybody notice how I switched from bullets to letters in the two lists? Dave and I, lacking originality (apparently), decided to refer to our archetypes by these letters. Somewhat coincidentally, these archetypes align with Dr. Maccoby’s rather loosely:

• As are Gamesmen,
• Bs are Craftsmen,
• Cs are Company Men, and
• Ds are Jungle Fighters.

When we discuss virtual project management, another way of stating this subject is the modelling of project management environments, where various strategies can be employed and tested for efficacy without actually endangering budgets or critical schedules. I believe that a key component is the modelling of the project team itself, with considerations of how the PM can handle the team’s interactions representing a key parameter.

And if you PMs believe that there are no Jungle Fighters, or Ds, in your project team, think again.