Dark Michael Writes A GTIM Blog

 

Yeah, I know my alter-ego, the “normal” Michael, likes to write about the practical and academic aspects of advancing Project Management within organizations, but can we get real here for a minute?  Talking about Game Theory, payoff grids, and Maccoby Archetype derivatives can only get a PM so far. A recent example of how Normal Michael likes to research PM-related topics came about a few months ago, when he was travelling and picked up a copy of On Mental Toughness, a compilation of Harvard Business Review articles, from an airport news stand, part of HBR’s “Ten Must Reads.” After reading it, the only takeaway that I had was that, if you really want to be tougher mentally, don’t read anything that Harvard Business Review thinks will get you there.

So, since we’re free of observing the trappings of academic niceties, let’s jump straight to the real motives and drivers behind advancing the Project Management sciences, shall we? In this regard, I’m reminded of a group class that I attended at my dojo some years back. There we were, wearing our dogis and lined up for our black belt instructor, ready for our usual drills, when he ups and says “Why do you think you are all here?” We students exchanged confused looks, with some offering that we were there to get in better physical shape, while others asserted that proficiency in the martial arts was the reason.

“Wrong!” the instructor stated flatly. “You’re here because of one thing, and that’s fear. Fear of being bullied, perhaps, or of doing poorly in our next tournament, or even finding yourself in a situation where you truly need unarmed fighting expertise, but, one way or the other, you are here because of fear.”

Meanwhile, Back In The (Dark) PM World…

Normal Michael has pointed out in previous blogs the phenomena of executives in an organization exerting varying levels of support for the creation and/or maintenance of a Project Management Office, and how these varying levels tend to be cyclical. This cycle tends to follow a familiar pattern, to wit:

• One (or more) major projects in the portfolio encounters a significant overrun or schedule delay.
• A fact-finding or post-mortem analysis reveals a deficiency in PM capability, particularly for an organization or project portfolio of that size.
• If a PMO already exists, it receives more attention, resources, visibility, etc., etc. If one does not exist, it is created.
• The new/revamped PMO issues policies and procedures, hires schedulers and Earned Value Management specialists, buys/upgrades software, among other things.
• Full participation in monthly Project Reviews occurs at first, but soon, certain low-risk or low-dollar value Projects are exempted from having to present their cost and schedule performance information.
• As more and more work comes in on-time, on-schedule, the shame and terror of the previous overruns fades away. Attention and an emphasis on “doing PM right” is reduced.
• Our friends, the accountants, teaming up with those in the organization who despise cost and schedule performance measurement systems (because it vividly shows their lack of performance) question the expense and trouble the PMO represents, and seek to undermine – if not out and out get rid of – that same PMO.
• Then, as if on cue, another major or high-profile Project incurs a significant overrun or schedule delay, and the process begins anew.

The cyclical nature of this curve is clearly inefficient and wasteful to the macro-organization, but how does one flatten it out? By reminding those executives that, if they retreat on the capability maturity of the PMO, they are essentially inviting such overruns/delays – and it doesn’t take many of those before your larger customers simply stop awarding the high-value, high-priority work in the first place. Essentially, we’re right back to the same thing that brings karate students in to group classes on a regular basis: fear.

Fear is a powerful motivator, but it typically loses its effectiveness over time. And, again, speaking realistically while sounding cynical, policies and procedures, as they pertain to PM capability, will not reliably prevent the macro-organization from hemorrhaging that same capability to the point that staff gets re-assigned, quality control checks on the Management Information Systems deteriorates, and a vulnerability to high-impact, high-profile overruns returns. You can’t document your way to a minimum-acceptable level of PM competence.

Normal Michael isn’t a big fan of Machiavelli, but I am. One particular quote pops to mind:

You know better than I that in a Republic talent is always suspect. A man attains an elevated position only when his mediocrity prevents him from being a threat to others.[i]

And here we have, at last, an insight that Normal Michael would be loath to point out, but is almost certainly true: the dark reason that successful PMOs actually succeed is because they thread the fear needle, between relieving executives of their anxieties that they are sitting atop a project disaster that no one is telling them about on one side, and not perturbing the Project Teams with what they see as onerous additional administrative tasks to set up baselines, collect status, etc., etc. on the other.

But one area where I will agree with Normal Michael is this: risk management (no initial caps), as currently practiced, still has no place in the PMO, even in the dark paradigm.

[i] Retrieved from https://www.azquotes.com/author/9242-Niccolo_Machiavelli on October 8, 2025, 19:52 MDT.