When PM Virtue Loses Its Appeal

 

It’s been my experience that one of the most – if not THE most – intransigent and difficult problems with setting up and maintaining a successful Project Management Office has to do with the implementation phase. Oh, sure, some of the more technical Projects can present quite the challenge when setting up the Scope, Cost, and/or Schedule Baselines, but once those are in-place the actual Cost/Schedule performance measurement systems aren’t that tough. Baseline Change Control / Configuration Management doesn’t require galaxy-brains either. No, the most obstinate barrier for the PMO, to my mind, has to be the implementation phase. After every last organizational element has been made aware of the effort(s) to advance the PM capability, and Earned Value / Critical Path Methodologies software packages have been installed on multiple machines, PMs, Control Account Managers (CAMs), and Work Package Managers have been identified, and even the General Ledger has been prepped to track costs at the reporting level of the WBS, somehow, when it comes time to actually demonstrate an acceptable level of overall PM expertise, things are found to be wanting. And I’m not talking about finding “it’s” instead of “its” in the Variance Analysis Reports, as infuriating as that may be. I’m talking about Organizational Breakdown Structure elements somehow finding their way into the WBS, or trying to claim the percent complete method as Level-of-Effort when it’s obvious that that particular task should be using Direct Units, or filing a Baseline Change Proposal for no other reason than the Control Account encountered a negative Cost Variance. These are not fat-finger-style errors. Rather, they point to a highly problematic lack of PM capability maturity which, in turn, can have rather serious repercussions across the entire project portfolio. What is a PMO Director to do?

Well, the first thing our afflicted PMO Director needs to do is to recognize the type of business model environment where she finds herself. GTIM Nation will recall my previous discussion of the Eric Hoffer quote,

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.[i]

If I could be so presumptuous as to paraphrase Hoffer, I think the management version of this would be:

Every successful business endeavor begins with a great insight, which then becomes monetized, and eventually turns into an organization that exists primarily to keep itself going, having largely distanced itself from the founders’ original vision, or insight.

If we assume that this is a workable take on the long-term evolution of many organizations’ business models, the implications for the introduction and/or maintenance of the PMO can be profound. For example, if the target macro-organization is already in the just-keep-it-going phase, then any attempt at advancing a capability maturity in general, and PM in particular, is in for a very difficult time. Unless an advanced PM capability was already in-place, and therefore part of the machine that needs to be kept operating, this type of change to an ossified business model is going to be resisted to Cecil B. DeMille proportions. It will make absolutely no difference if the technical approach to the PM capability advancement is the most excellent ever devised – the implementation strategy that gets it quickly and fully operational doesn’t exist for this type of organization.

Also consider the type of workers that tend to populate the organization in the keep-it-going-to-keep-it-going phase. Drawing from the archetypes presented in Michael Maccoby’s excellent book The Gamesman (Simon and Schuster, 1976), the “great insight” phase is likely to see many Gamesman and Craftsman types. As the movement towards monetizing the great insight occurs, more Company Men will occupy the ranks, and more than a few Jungle Fighters are likely to be present. But by the time the keep-going phase is realized, it’s going to be dominated by Jungle Fighters and Company Men, if for no other reason than genuine Gamesmen and Craftsmen will find this type of organization less appealing, if not out-and-out intolerable, and will move on. I’ve worked for organizations that have placed considerable corporate culture distance between themselves and their founders’ original vision, with a significant number of Jungle Fighters and Company Men in upper management, and can confidently assert that such a work environment is both professionally frustrating and anxiety inducing. Advancement in such organizations – heck, even retaining a current position – has less and less to do with merit or virtue, and more to do with the political machinations among its decision makers.

My recommendation to GTIM Nation would be to maintain your managerial expertise – your PM virtue, if you will – and let the chips fall where they may. If you succeed, great. If not, the organization is likely to be on a downward trajectory anyway, and is doing you a favor by signaling as such.

[i] Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/98215-every-great-cause-begins-as-a-movement-becomes-a-business on December 23, 2024, 17:53 MST.