Insidious Things Keeping The Job From Getting Done

 

Project Managers, by definition, grapple with obstacles to completing their defined scope, within budget and time constraints, virtually every working day of their lives. I won’t expand the definition to “problem solvers,” since that’s what every working person on the planet does, but I will point to a specific pair of problems that seem to confront PMs all the time, but are truly insidious in that they don’t necessarily present as obstacles to achieving project objectives. In fact, these barriers I want to discuss come across as the exact opposite, as if they’re there to help.

They are not.

When I was working my first book, Things Your PMO Is Doing Wrong (PMI Publishing, 2008), I had some conversations with the excellent Bud Baker, Professor of Management at Wright State University, about a management phenomenon known as the “silent veto.” This is where an organization is attempting to advance a certain capability maturity, and the existing personnel claim to be on-board with the initiative, but when it comes time to actually implement the new aspects of the business model they simply don’t contribute. The implementation grinds to a halt, and those responsible for getting that particular job done suffer the consequences. Bud pointed out an even more insidious variation, the “slow roll.” This is where the members of the organization tasked with performing the tasks involved in such initiatives aren’t really in a position to be as blatantly non-contributing as the silent veto-ers (such as in the military), so they claim up-front to be totally copacetic with the efforts, and even actually contribute – just not enough to achieve success. The slow-rollers gain a sense of how much effort is behind the initiative, and will mete out their backing efforts at the precise rate needed to appear to be helping, but not enough for project success. After too much time has elapsed in pursuing the new objectives, frustration sets in, funding is withdrawn, and those responsible for getting that particular job done suffer the consequences.

Next up is a business model pathology largely attributable to our friends, the Asset Managers, and has to do with a claim to duplicating effort. As I have written in this blog previously and extensively, the Asset Managers’ overriding theme of “maximizing shareholder wealth” is so intellectually vacuous that it astounds me that it’s still being taught as supposedly advanced business schools, but it is a prevalent presence in most organization’s management culture. The way it tends to impact PMs specifically has to do with specific functions needed for specific project work. Say your project has an extensive number of items requiring inventory, and the spreadsheets aren’t doing a sufficient job of keeping everything straight. These items are already being tracked by the general ledger, since they had to be procured in the first place, so that your need for enhanced inventory management has nothing to do with the balance sheet. But, when you arrange to purchase an off-the-shelf inventory system, somebody pops up and states “You can’t do that. We already have an inventory system, and we don’t want to duplicate effort.” Is this extant inventory system available to your project team right now? Is it less expensive than the alternative? Can it easily and quickly isolate the inventory germane to your particular project? Will an additional system actually harm the organization’s overarching Management Information System Program? Unless the answer to every single one of these questions is an unqualified “yes,” the “can’t duplicate effort” objection is irrelevant and invalid. Why not duplicate effort? If the project can afford it, whom, exactly, is being harmed?

The reason I’ve tagged these two phenomena with the “insidious” label is because they pretend to help your project while doing the exact opposite. The slow-rollers will point to any effort that they’ve put in to the achievement of project goals as proof that they are contributing, all the while knowing that they’re not doing enough, in time. The can’t-duplicate-effort crowd will insist that their position is entirely reasonable, common sense-driven, and even obvious to everyone involved, since, in this mindset, duplicated effort equals wasted effort. But the project that has been completed with absolutely no waste doesn’t exist, and to pretend otherwise is nothing more than managerial kibbitzing. Imagine trying to estimate resources where absolutely no “duplication of effort” takes place, where every single activity had exactly zero overlap from function to function. Even attempting to eliminate any form of redundancy is virtually guaranteed to generate functional gaps, schedule delays, and overruns.

These two tactics don’t help, they hinder, and those who perpetrate them are naïve. Or insidious