Is Your Consultant Being Trained To Fail?

 

As most of GTIM Nation is aware, B. F. Skinner was the father of the psychological school of Behaviorism, which essentially holds that all human behavior is learned, derivative of operative conditioning experiences throughout life. While Behaviorism as an all-encompassing school of psychologic thinking has seen a significant erosion of its standing since its heights in the latter part of the 20^th Century, that by no means it should be considered insubstantial in the quest to understand human, ahem, behavior. It remains highly relevant, even if it can’t explain human thinking on a comprehensive scale.

Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…

Take, for example, the dilemma of the PM consultant. Presumably, everyone who seeks or enjoys employment as such a consultant is not only advanced in the management sciences in general, and PM in particular, but has attained a certain level of recognition for this level of expertise. Some managerial or executive entity, having recognized a deficit of such expertise within their own organization, reaches out to this consultant to try and find out if they can help the deficient org. Here’s where things get dicey. Let’s posit that the deficient org has a portfolio of projects that are performing poorly in cost or schedule space, and is looking for some kind of magic pill that would turn this performance around. This raises the obvious question, how did that portfolio come to miss deadlines and overrun budgets in the first place? Most likely for having adopted and operated under a business model that gives short-shrift to (even basic) PM approaches. Let’s further stipulate that our nominal consultant, being actually advanced in management sciences in general and PM in particular, points this out, and, after a valid data-gathering cycle, documents some specific recommendations.

What now?

Does the organization’s manager who brought in the consultant go back to some executive meeting with the expectation that the recommendations will be written into policy, and immediately mandated? That may be the hope, but that’s not usually what happens. The managers in the org who have a vested interest in maintaining the existing business model will not stay silent in the face of such a proposed upheaval, cost/schedule performance of the Project portfolio notwithstanding.

On the other hand, if the sponsor was actually aware of the PM capability advancements needed, but was going unheeded in the board room, and brought in the consultant to add gravitas to his already-asserted urgings, then the problem was a lack of a viable implementation strategy for the needed changes, not the validity of those recommendations.

Then we have the scenario where the portfolio is performing poorly across multiple projects, indicating a non-localized causal agent. In other words, the characteristics of the business model that are interfering with the Project Teams’ ability to come in on-time, on-budget are “owned” by multiple layers of the macro-organization. The patient has several problems, not just one injury that can be treated with an expectation of a complete recovery. When such broad-based issues are found, in almost every case the root of the problem is going to be the presence of a lackadaisical attitude with respect to customers and clients which has permeated multiple parts of the macro-organization, and is being reflected in the way the business model evolved to its current poorly-performing state. This scenario means that the consultant, in order to bring about the necessary improvements to the Project Management Office, would have to not only identify the broad-based, wide-ranging changes needed, she would have to actually implement them, or at least give the organization’s hiring manager a workable way of doing so.

So, here’s where the B. F. Skinner angle comes into play. Consultants are as susceptible to operant conditioning as the rest of us. If, after having performed their data gathering and evaluation process, they come back with their PMBOK Guide® guns blazing, they will, in all probability, not be invited to stick around. Even pretend auditors can come into the facility and point to all the things believed to be sub-standard. On the other hand, a demonstrated failure to move the needle on advancing PM capability would also lead to a dismissal – but not immediately. The hiring organization is far more likely to allow a consultant more billable time if they’re not on the receiving end of eat-your-peas-style haranguing, and are, instead, advised to take smaller, more cosmetic steps towards PM maturity, like additional training, or a presentation or two on Communications Management.

Should this tendency be blamed on our consultant? I would argue no. Consider the fact that organizations that, at one level, will admit to a deficiency of PM expertise, while burying those characteristics of the overarching business model that are far more oriented towards “maximizing shareholder wealth,” end up conditioning the PM experts to behave in a very specific manner. Perhaps not as automatically as teaching white mice to run a maze, but an imposed conditioning nevertheless. In short, if the PM consultant fails to effect the type of change towards a more cost/schedule performance positive stance within the macro-organization, don’t blame him. Blame the ossification of the business model that keeps such changes from happening without major organizational upheaval, and the operant conditioning inherent in hiring consultants.

It’s a PM-hostile combination.