Picard, Skywalker, or Potter – Who Are You Going To Listen To?

 

As my regular readers are well aware, there are three types of management: Asset, Project, and Strategic, each with their own goals, tools, and techniques. Similarly, there are three heavy-hitters in the realm of science fiction/fantasy cinema: Star Trek, Star Wars, and the Harry Potter series. In previous blogs I’ve described the business model pathologies that afflict the organization when the tools that are germane to one management area are used in others, blah blah blah, with some success; but now I’m thinking that there’s a more direct way of beaming this information (get it?) into my readers’ heads. I’ll equate them with these three fictional memes! It’ll be fun!

Let’s let Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Galaxy-class starship U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation serve as the representative of the Asset Managers.  Picard is outstanding in this role because:

·         He’s stodgy

·         and supremely confident in his powers, even though he’s relatively slight-of-build.

·         The people around him assume he has all the answers

·         but he doesn’t

·         and doesn’t let it show that he doesn’t.

In short, he’s perfect for the Asset Manager role.

I’ll select Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight, as the PMO representative. After all, Luke is young, talented, honest, and has a clarity of vision about who the good guys are, and who aren’t, that Jean-Luc never seems to attain. His area of expertise is not widely-held in the galaxy, and he readily acknowledges that he has a lot to learn before he sits on any ship’s bridge and starts ordering people around in-between pursuing prissy hobbies like archaeology.

If you are looking for someone to add to your Strategic Management Team, you could do a whole lot worse than a person with a résumé like Harry Potter’s. Like all good Strategic Managers, Potter has no doubts about who the bad guys are: if your organization’s competitors win the battle of market share, all that organization is will cease to exist, just as, if Voldemort isn’t stopped from seizing control of the Ministry of Magic, all of the non-dreadful aspects of the dimension occupied by the magic folk will die off. And – let’s face it – everything the Strategic Managers do strikes us mugbloods as magical. They use opaque methods of influencing customers to part with their money in order to give work to our companies! How wizard is that?

So, now you’re a portfolio manager, and you see in the reports that Luke and Harry have provided that your project backlog will cover your organization’s expenses for another six months. You convene a meeting with Jean-Luc, Luke, and Harry, present them with this little factoid that’s causing you to lose sleep at night, and ask them to advise you on how to approach the problem.

“The first thing we need to do is to replace that contract backlog” begins Harry. “The way to do that is to analyze the existing proposal backlog, and capture upcoming Requests for Proposal, evaluate which ones we should pursue, and get to writing. The exact incantation is ‘Capturo ProposalWinRate-ica’!”

“I can add to that” Luke interjects. “By deriving cost and schedule performance information from our project controls staff, I can determine which customers, as well as which types of work, we perform best. I can also tell you, based on our current rates of performance, which projects will come in on-time, on-budget, and which ones we need to worry about. For those PMs who have been telling you that everything with their project is perfectly fine, when it isn’t, well, I can hold up my hand with my thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, and suddenly they have trouble speaking, or lying on their Variance Analysis Reports.”

Jean-Luc is looking at his shoes.

“Captain Picard – do you have anything to add?”

“My analysis shows that your current rate of return on your assets is comfortably above industry standard. I don’t know why we’re even having this meeting, so --- dismiss this meeting! Make it so!”

As you return to your House’s Commons/Degobah Bigelow/Admiral’s Quarters, turning the issue over in your mind, tell me: whose advice will you use?