Recently I took a trip and stopped by a newsstand on my way out of my home town’s airport to purchase The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team, by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, 2002), to read on the flight. I was hoping that I would find that this book landed squarely in the genre of management science; alas, it was not to be (I should have paid more attention to the subtitle on the cover, which states that it is “A Leadership Fable,” albeit in a much smaller font). Much like Eliyahu Goldratt’s Critical Chain (North River Press, 1997), or even Walden Two by B.F. Skinner (Hackett Publishing, 1948), The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team is a work of fiction that advances a hypothesis.
Let me say that again: it’s a work of fiction that advances a hypothesis.
I remember reading a book by a martial arts expert (it may have been Bruce Tegner) where he lamented receiving letters from fans and students asking about a certain style of karate that they had seen in a movie or television show, and asking if that particular style was truly as effective as depicted. He would have to remind them that what they were watching was a fictional account. That particular style “won” because the script writers had determined that its practitioner would “win.” In the same manner, Goldratt’s characters attributed their success due to their use of the theory of constraints, Skinner’s characters credited attaining near-utopia to their adaptation of the precepts of Behaviorism, and Lencioni’s characters ascribed their company’s turn-around to the protagonist’s insights on leadership and team dynamics. In fact, all of these “successes” were predetermined. They triumphed because those authors wrote that they should in these works of fiction. In fact, in one of the chapters in The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team, the central technical issue facing our protagonist has to do with the proper balancing of the needs of the Asset, Project (product), and Strategic managers, which is what Corner Cube Theory is all about. But even here, the principals reach their solution through compromise attained in meetings – quantitatively balancing the three competing interests in a three-dimensional model is never discussed.
And yet, as intellectually vacuous as I find an attempt to advance a hypothesis through “fables” or other works of fiction, there’s no denying that, in many instances, it works. The three books cited above were all highly successful. Walden Two, combined with Beyond Freedom And Dignity (Hackett Publishing, 1971) had a profound impact on many university’s psychology departments, and there’s a Theory of Constraints Institute based on Goldratt’s writings. And, of course, The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team made it onto the New York Time’s bestseller list. These facts are leading me towards an unwanted conclusion, essentially, if I can’t beat ‘em, I may as well join ‘em.
“But Michael!” I can hear loooonnnng-time GTIM Nation citizens object, “what about Stanly T. Raspberry?” For relative newcomers to this blog, Stanly T. Raspberry is a PM-centric private detective who first appeared in my long-running Variance Threshold column in PMNetwork, and has made several appearances in this blog. He “solves” business model pathology problems the same way that the fictional characters previously mentioned attain success, by his creator writing his experiences that way. My response to this objection would be that Stanly never advocated for a particular management schema, past some plain vanilla PM and organizational behavior and performance axioms. Rather, clients ask for him to investigate the goings-on within a particular organization (usually the Monolithic Corporation), and Stanly does so. Besides, mocking business model pathologies in an 800-word column or blog using a clearly satirical fictional character is very different from creating a nominally legitimate protagonist that overcomes fearful odds by engaging a contemporary management science theory in what is essentially a novel.
This being the case, it is my intent to spend at least a couple of GTIM blogs on an elongated Stanly T. Raspberry PM adventure, only this time he will be actively promoting a relatively new management science concept, the aforementioned Corner Cube theory. If any GTIM Nation citizens wish to have a character based on them appear in this adventure, let me know in the comment section, and I’ll accommodate as many as I can. Candidates will need to tell me about their character, if they should be considered among Stanly’s allies or opponents, and whether or not you want first dibs on actually playing this character should a Hollywood producer sees these blogs, and wants to make a movie out of it.
Coming up next: Stanly T. Raspberry gets a new case!