Why PMs Can’t Have Nice Things

 

I’ve relayed this story before, but it bears repeating for this week’s topic. I was part of a project controls team that had been asked to do some scheduling for a Human Resources department in the process of updating its software system. After pulling together and freezing the baseline, the team performed the first status pull, and took the results to the head of the HR organization. We pointed out that the project was likely to finish late, due to a few tasks on the critical path that were taking longer than expected. This communication was given on a Friday.

“Call in the entire department to work this weekend!” the manager demanded.

We were quick to point out that the personnel involved in the tasks that were pushing the finish milestone out were confined to just a few HR personnel, but mostly in the software engineering team providing support for the overall effort.

“No difference” he maintained. “This project is too important to risk delays while my staff is at home.”

“Just to be clear” we told him, “the vast majority of your department has nothing to do with the specific tasks pushing the project’s end date out. They will have literally nothing to do with accelerating the accomplishment of the activities we’re talking about here.”

The guy just stared at us, and pushed out the e-mail that demanded everyone in his (unfortunate) department work the weekend.

Of course, PMs readily understand the futility, and even the harm, of such a reaction. The project doesn’t benefit, not in the least. The workers’ morale couldn’t have improved upon seeing the e-mail demanding that they abandon kids’ soccer games, birthday parties, or even just relaxing time on their own, doing nothing at all – indeed, common sense informs us that that department’s morale probably cratered, especially since the everyone-must-work-free-overtime tactic seemed to be the go-to solution to this manager.

So why, do you suppose, did he do it?

I think the answer is clear. He probably spent considerable time in a college-level business school, where he learned that the purpose of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth.” And what tactics make that happen? Well, getting the most out of your assets, of course! Are you the manager of a team of people, who get paid at a certain rate? Well, to advance the function of all management, by this teaching, one must get those assets to work over and above the level at which they are paid. It’s like getting free professional support, right?

I know that the vast majority of GTIM Nation – if not all of us – have experience working for organizations that expect or out-and-out demand “free” overtime. Once the initial thrill of becoming a staff member and having an actual salary fades, we quickly realize that we may have been better off back when we were hourly workers. I was laid off from the first company I worked for out of college after five years for the grave sin of charging two – two! – hours to an overhead account (when I had actually worked five hours on the overhead task), instead of charging every single hour to a direct account. My “manager” had given me the task, and provided the account I was to charge to, without disclosing the secret that this work was expected to be performed for free, and I paid a stiff price for her coyness.

Project Managers know that delivering the customers’ scope on-time, on-budget is the true point of management, and has far, far more weight on overall organizational success than, say, whether or not we should have rented or purchased the copy machine. Asset Managers can’t, or won’t, understand this, because they were subjected to business college professors who sold them on the “maximize shareholder wealth” stuff, including the notion that the return on investment (ROI) is the ultimate evaluator of management decisions. Don’t believe me? Engage in this quick mental exercise: imagine two identically-sized projects. Project A delivers a high-quality scope on-time, under-budget, and the customer is thrilled. The project team is comprised of highly-talented personnel who arrive late, leave early, and consistently fail to observe the company’s dress code, often in dramatic fashion. Project B is late and over budget. However, its Project Team arrives early, works late, doesn’t charge all of the hours they work (i.e., free overtime, conspicuously performed on weekends), and are dressed impeccably. If this happens in your organization, which team is likely to be commended? Disciplined?

You see my point. The Asset Managers have been ensconced in the middle of commonly-accepted business models for so long that they’ve lost sight of the actual point of performing Project Management. It’s kind of a funny coincidence that Generally Accepted Accounting Principles were first propagated at around the same time that Niccolò Machiavelli was writing The Prince. The business model pathologies that cling to the Asset Managers’ strategies like a pair of Tiberian bats have become so reflexive that it’s next to impossible to reason their practitioners out of using them and, by using them, they essentially oppose basic PM tactics.

There are lots of sources of frustration for Project Managers, and some of them are within our own ranks (cough, risk managers, cough). But PM practitioners should feel at liberty to, when confronted with some of the Asset Managers’ goofy strategies, say under their breaths “That’s not the way that works.”

Or, alternately, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”