The Odds of My Cheese Being Moved

 

Two weeks ago, I complained about the so-called business fable literary technique being used to advance management “science” notions, followed by last week, where I took on the use of, essentially, anecdotal evidence to support already-arrived-at conclusions. Since I’ve left the risk management-types out of my scope of fire for a few weeks, it is, once again, their time.

The whole metaphor of cheese being moved comes from, of course, the book Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr. Spencer Johnson. The ready availability of cheese in this book represents the attainment of success and happiness, and any difficulty associated with obtaining the cheese is analogous to challenges and frustration. The ability to avoid challenges and frustration en route to success in the business world is highly coveted, to say the least. Much silliness has been put forward in this quest, but, silly as it is, it has been embraced (or even gulped down) by gullible managers, eager to be able to quantify the future and reap the rewards of doing so. Alas, the future cannot be quantified, and smart managers know this.

So, what truly constitutes excellent project management? I believe it lies in the ability to quickly grasp the nature of changing circumstances, and act accordingly. Indeed, virtually every business success can be attributed to someone who understood the changing landscape prior to their competitors, and acted accordingly, while almost every business failure can be chalked up to the opposite. Queue the entrance of: the risk managers.

I completely understand the appeal of the risk managers. To those so-called managers who are particularly poor at rapid-response to unanticipated events unfolding before their eyes, these guys must appear as god-sends. Using statistical jargon that would confound the typical MBA, these “analysts” assert that they can, in fact, quantify the future.

Sooo… what are the odds of my metaphorical cheese being (again, metaphorically) moved? It’s 100%, naturally. Circumstances within your project will change, and in ways you could not anticipate at its beginning. Really, think about it – would your expertise be needed if everything unfolded according to plan? While it’s easy (and more than a little rhetorically disingenuous) to set up fictional unwilling-to-change characters and knock them down, the reality is that the way the project team adjusts and adapts to changing conditions is the very heart of successful project management, and those unwilling to adapt were left by the wayside long ago.

And where are the risk managers? Well, they may (or may not) have predicted that some of the unfolding events not anticipated may have occurred, but my question is: so what? Did it alter the response of the project team? In the vast majority of cases, the so-called analysis of the risk managers did not nor would not have altered the project team’s reaction to those changing conditions. And that, gentle readers, means that the entire risk management empire is built on epistemological sand.

The tide can’t come in soon enough.