Look! Free Consultants!

 

Some years back I was attending the wrap-up luncheon for a just-complete project management seminar, hosted for the paper presenters, track designers, and other instructors. The lady who was in charge of this particular wrap-up session posed a question to the room: after encouraging us to be open and frank, she asked what we would do to improve the next such seminar. I held up my hand.

“Waive the entrance fee for all paper presenters.”

The sponsor was incredulous, and made no attempt to mask her contempt for such an idea.

“Think about it” I continued, “these people are coming here, presenting original research,” (okay, I admit that I’ve endured endless sessions where the presenters go over the same old stuff, and it seems to happen at every seminar, but, for now, bear with me) “and you charge them for the privilege of doing so. Since your organization’s stock and trade is the collection and dissemination of new ideas, shouldn’t you be encouraging them, rather than discouraging them?”

My idea died on the ballroom floor, amidst much harrumphing.

But I believe it bears re-examining, if for no other reason than this concept serves as a kind-of bullstuffing detector when it comes to the presentation of project management concepts and ideas. I know one prominent author/practitioner of Earned Value Management concepts who has made quite a bit of money without expressing a single original idea about EVM, its implementation, or its place in the portfolio management universe. He just keeps blabbing on about known precepts, and thinks of himself as having a legitimate place at the advancement-of-management-theory table, while every person who knows the score simply rolls their eyes at this fellow’s material.

Consider one of my favorite targets, the risk management consultants. What are these guys selling, really? A partial quantification of the future. However, the future cannot be quantified. So, again, what are these guys really selling? A chance for a given project’s management to appear sophisticated and advanced in the selection of the sort of information that persuades their decision-making. It’s reminiscent of that iconic episode of the American situation comedy Cheers, where presumptuous waitress Diane is beating everyone else at the bar in their football pool by basing her decisions on things like which team hails from a city with a foreign-born symphony orchestra conductor.

I also like picking on communications consultants. Hey! Communications consultants! Guys, get this through your heads: conflict exists! It has since Eve bit the apple! And it will continue to exist until the Second Coming! Now, put this in your peace pipe and smoke it: talking it out will not eliminate it! My enemies despise me, because they are all jerks. Letting them know “where I’m coming from” will not make them less jerky, and my having a more thorough understanding of what makes them jerks will not make me like them. It really is that simple.

Most of the major management institutes, associations, and societies do not pay their columnists and bloggers. This simply invites charlatanism, and lots of it, and it is reflected in their material. The Project Management Institute® has an entire section of the PMBOK Guide® dedicated to risk management, and another to communication management, for crying out loud. And the last time I actually opened and looked inside an edition of my old venue, PMNetwork, more space was devoted to graphics than to the actual articulation of ideas, let alone new ones. I belong to another project management-esque organization that also provides certifications and a monthly magazine, and they refuse to pay their writers. This organization’s monthly magazine’s contribution to the advancement of management science can be measured in microns.

In the universe of consultants, bloggers, and columnists, specifically within the project management world, you do, indeed, get what you pay for.