What Can The Breakup Of The Beatles Tell Us About The PMO Life-Cycle?

 

Before Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison were joined by Ringo Starr to become the version of the Beatles that attained world-wide fame, they played in low-income, high-crime area clubs of Hamburg, Germany. By almost any measure the conditions were deplorable, and yet this environment led to their attaining many of the performance skills that would lead them to becoming the most acclaimed music group in history. Indeed, the difficult environment appears to have brought Paul, John, and George closer together as they not only survived, but advanced to the point of releasing the recording that brought them to the attention of Brian Epstein, whose talents as producer would bring them success. Paradoxically (perhaps), they were closer to one another during the difficult years, and more distant as they became successful.

Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…

In my last couple of blogs I’ve been discussing the possibility that most organizations – including Project Management Offices, or PMOs – go through an observable and repeatable cycle, oscillating between levels from difficult and marginal to effective and successful, and back again. While I have become convinced of the near-inevitability of these cycles, I am also confident that the time spent in the difficult-and-marginal stages can be shortened, and effective-and-successful ones prolonged if the PMO Director recognizes the cycle and the place the PMO is occupying within it. But to distill the relevant elements of the transitions between waypoints in the cycle, we have to figure out the probable causes of such transitions to see if there’s a way to manage them better. And for this analysis, I want to return to the Fab Four.

In 1966 The Beatles released the album Revolver, immediately prior to what would turn out to be their last tour. The year before they had performed live at Shea Stadium, a venue so loud that they had difficulty hearing themselves play. What’s clear is that, in this phase of their association, they had virtual complete economic and artistic latitude to do whatever they wanted in the music realm. However, within a year three events would unfold that, in my opinion, lead to their assuming a downward trajectory, eventually splitting them apart.

The first of these events was Paul McCartney’s idea that their next album should be a concept album, created as if by a fictional group who could function as a sort of stand-in for The Beatles. While Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band would end up as an unmitigated commercial and artistic success, George Harrison was quoted later as saying that he wasn’t particularly keen on the concept, and enjoyed recording Revolver much more than Sargent Pepper’s. It also marked the point in the history of the group when Paul McCartney took on a notably larger role in setting the artistic direction, or what we PM-types would refer to as the strategic approach. I think that the significant takeaway from this is that, even though Sargent Pepper’s was a success, not everyone on the Project Team was completely okay with the shift in direction.

The second event came about when the group decided to stop touring, also in 1966. McCartney had maintained that performing live was an essential part of their function as a music group, but the others disagreed. It was only after a pair of weather-impacted appearances in the United States made the whole touring experience untenable that McCartney changed his mind, and the group stopped doing live performances (well, at least on a scheduled basis. Their last live performance, on the roof of Apple Corporation, was somewhat impromptu when it happened in 1969.). While all four agreed to stop touring by 1966, I think it’s notable that all but McCartney wanted to stop earlier, showing yet another crack in strategic agenda consistency.

Finally, when Brian Epstein died in August of 1967, the cracks in their strategic agenda cohesiveness became fissures. Paul wanted the managerial functions to be assumed by his in-laws, while the other members of the group wanted to work with Allen Klein. While McCartney would eventually abandon his push to have his wife’s father and brother work as The Beatles’ managers, he would, interestingly, refuse to actually sign his name on to the contract the others drew up with Klein[i].

What do these events all have in common? I think a significant amount of conflict was introduced into the strategic decision-making of the group because some questions had never been adequately addressed, specifically:

• Whose artistic vision/strategic approach was most responsible for their amazing success?
• If the answer to the first bullet was clear, should that person also be setting the artistic/technical direction for the group going forward?
• Who was best able to manage the non-musical interests of the group?
• If those decisions should not have been made by one person, were all four ready to accept the choices rendered by a simple majority vote?

And so it is, I believe, with the lifecycle of the PMO. If the team is objectively performing at a high level, but the reasons for the realized success aren’t obvious, the door has been opened to conflicting versions of the success narrative. These conflicting versions will necessarily obfuscate whose vision for the PMO going forward should be heeded, and whose should be dismissed. Additionally, if and when the difficult decisions on the subject of the PMO’s strategic direction are made, but at least half of the organization is opposed, then the PMO becomes fractured, unable to respond to changing business environments, or even maintain its previous status.

Oh yeah, one last thing: if one of the principals of the PMO wants to bring in a spouse who knows nothing of PM for technical advice, the organization is definitely on the downward slope in its lifecycle.

[i] YouTube video, Why Did The Beatles Break Up?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVlaaH_1Ig8. Most of the hard data in this blog came from that source.