The Fantastic Voyage Of Project Management

 

I’m not sure that everyone is aware of the impressive Project Management-themed movie from 1966, Fantastic Voyage. It had a large special effects budget, extensive world-wide release, and introduced American movie star Raquel Welch. The plot centers around a technology that miniaturizes matter at the atomic level, but only for one hour (who knew sub-atomic physics could be so punctual?). A scientist has discovered how to make the effect permanent, but has suffered an injury resulting in a blood clot in his brain during an assassination attempt. The clot is inoperable from the outside, so a five-person crew is loaded into a small submarine, miniaturized, and injected into the scientist in an attempt to dissolve the blood clot with laser rifles from the inside. The sub and its crew are made so small as to evade detection by the scientist’s immune system; however, once the miniaturization effect begins to wear off, they will become visible to the scientist’s white blood cells, and can be expected to encounter a fate that oddly resembles being consumed by a giant glob of shaving cream.

“Perhaps, Michael” I can hear GTIM Nation say, “Fantastic Voyage is not recognized as a Project Management movie because it has little to do with PM and is, in fact, just a good old-fashioned 1060’s-style science fiction romp,” to which I say “au contraire! It has some extremely useful PM insights, needing only a prescient reviewer like me to point them out!”

Take, for example, the fact that, even with a five-member Project Team crew, one of them, Dr. Michaels (the medical chief and circulatory specialist, no less) turns out to be a traitor. Here we have an extremely important, potentially world-altering project, with a Project Team hand-picked for their technical acumen, and even here we have a (Maccoby archetype) Jungle Fighter, in a key technical position. I have addressed this phenomenon in a couple of different ways in this blog, one using the Maccoby archetypes (Craftsman, Gamesman, Company Man, and Jungle Fighter), the other taking a more Gaussian Curve angle. This take involves the recognition that, for any given novel technology or PM strategy,

• A small percentage of the organization/Project Team will readily accept the approach,
• A larger percentage – about one standard deviation from the mean on the left side of the bell curve – will accept the approach, but only after having been convinced of its efficacy.
• Another standard deviation to the right of the mean will maintain a high level of resistance, and must be (almost literally) dragged kicking and screaming into the realm of contributors.
• Finally, a remnant will never be truly on board with the stated technical agenda, even if they maintain a façade to the contrary.  The earlier the PM can identify this type and get rid of them, the better the chances of attaining the scope, on-time and on-budget.

In the movie, Dr. Michaels isn’t identified as the saboteur until very late, and nearly succeeds in killing the patient (wait – don’t doctors take some kind of oath?). So late, in fact, that the miniaturization effect has begun to wear off, and Michaels, trapped in the relatively exposed pilot house portion of the submarine, is drowned in a huge glob of shaving cream dissolved by a now-aware white blood cell.

The next PM lesson apparent in Fantastic Voyage has to do with the aforementioned introduction of Raquel Welch. She would go on to star in many other movies, becoming something of an icon. What does this have to do with PM? Well, if in a five-person submarine crew Project Team you can have a Jungle Fighter/Traitor, it’s also extremely likely you have a future star, perhaps even a (Maccoby archetype) Gamesman. This person doesn’t need special attention to execute the current project’s scope; however, if you anticipate that this person will be with the organization for future projects, it’s probably a good idea to help guide them in the more nuanced aspects of Project Management. There will be lots of times that the scope must be suddenly and radically changed, and these types’ presence on the Project Team is your best guarantor of being able to still come in on-time, on-budget.

Perhaps the most useful PM insight that Fantastic Voyage brings has to do with the whole too-small-to-be-noticed-by-the-white-corpuscles business. One of the most damaging organizational behaviors to attempts to mature a given capability is the slow roll/silent veto treatment. This is where members of the organization claim to your face that they are on-board with your initiative, but simply don’t show up when their actual participation is required. This is one management pathology that should be considered big enough to merit a response the moment it’s encountered, even if it appears small. Most of the time, simply noticing it and calling it out is sufficient for eradication.

By observing and calling out this behavior, you’re actually doing your contrarian a huge favor. After all, you wouldn’t want them attacked by a huge glob of shaving cream…