PMI® Saves The World!

This blog’s title is preposterous, you say? PMI® is simply a professional organization devoted to advancing Project Management within the realm of management science, you believe? Well, have I got news for you: our beloved Project Management Institute is front and center in the fight for saving the World (from bad management, at the very least), and I’ll show you why.
As a point of comparison, let’s look at another entity known for consistently saving the World (or Western Civilization, anyway): James Bond. As he saves the World, whom does Bond overcome? Well, usually it’s SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion.[i] While SPECTRE is depicted as vast, it’s actually controlled by only 21 people.[ii] What are these 21 people after? Wealth, basically, expressed either in power, political influence, destructive weapons assets, or currency. Consider the following table[iii] (warning! Spoilers ahead!):

Film	Villain	…who’s after:
Goldfinger	Auric Goldfinger	Maximizing wealth by cornering the world’s gold market.
Thunderball	Emilio Largo	Maximizing wealth by using a nuclear warhead to blackmail NATO.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service	Ernst Blofeld (SPECTRE)	Maximizing wealth by holding the world ransom by threatening to release bio agents.
Live And Let Die	Dr. Kananga	Maximizing wealth by dominating the world’s drug trade.
The Man With The Golden Gun	Francisco Scaramanga	Maximizing wealth by acquiring a device that would enable domination of the solar power market.
A View To A Kill	Max Zorin	Maximizing wealth by destroying Silicon Valley, and dominating the remaining microchip industry.
The Living Daylights	Georgi Koskov	Maximizing wealth through arms and drugs sales.
License to Kill	Franz Sanchez	Maximizing wealth through illegal drug sales.
Golden Eye	Alec Trevelyan	Maximizing wealth by transferring massive amounts of currency electronically, and then destroying the computer memory of the transaction.
Tomorrow Never Dies	Elliot Carver	Maximizing wealth by being the only approved news source covering a war between China and Great Britain.
The World Is Not Enough	Elektra King	Maximizing wealth by destroying oil supplies transiting the Bosporus.
Casino Royale	Le Chiffre	Obtaining wealth in a high-stakes poker game, in order to sponsor terrorism.
Quantum Of Solace	Dominic Greene	Maximize wealth by cornering the supply of water in Bolivia.
Skyfall	Raoul Silva	Maximize wealth by cornering the cyberterrorism market.
Spectre	Ernst Blofeld (SPECTRE)	Maximize wealth by the whole terrorism, revenge, and extortion thing.
No Time To Die	Lyutsifer Safin	Maximize wealth by using nanobots to carry out targeted assassinations.

As alert members of GTIM Nation have no doubt noticed, a common theme among Bond villains is that they are trying to maximize various forms of wealth. Now, where have we seen this motive before? Oh, I know! It’s from the assertion maintained by many business schools that the point of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth.” I have often mocked this concept, but it’s still prevalent throughout much of the business world. And it’s not just James Bond films pointing to the ubiquitousness of this goal – other examples abound. Michael Keaton was in a film entitled Mr. Mom, where he is forced into the role of housekeeper due to a layoff from his automotive engineer job, because his organization is perceived to not be cost-effective. If only there were an internationally-recognized institution that offered an alternative to this whole notion that maximize-shareholder-wealth is the exclusive goal of management. Wait! There is!
Compare and contrast that narrative with Project Management’s, that the point of our management is to fulfill the customers’ scope requirements, on-time, and on-budget. Maximizing our service to others is a common component of many highly-regarded philosophical works, and its monetized derivative doesn’t fall far from those decent roots. Of course, if the customer seeks to do something illegal or immoral, then we’re talking something completely different. But that’s on the person defining the illegal or immoral scope – not on those who strive to perfect delivering on (legal, ethical) project objectives in the most efficient and effective ways possible. While James Bond (and his many derivatives) may be turning back the villains attempting to maximize their wealth by using fisticuffs, guns, tanks, exotic cars (including ones that can turn into submarines), and even space shuttles, PMI® uses the furtherance of superior business models and techniques to advance our epistemological goals.
To be sure, I am not recommending any over-the-top direct action against those who appear to be opposed to the things your PMO is attempting to accomplish, even if you have some really cool gadgets by which you could do so. But I would like to suggest this: if the executive who seems to be anti-PM in his words and decisions just happens to bring a hairless cat into the conference room during the Project Reviews, while the director of your PMO just happens to be wearing an Omega Seamaster wristwatch, you may indeed be involved in a higher-level management science conflict than you had realized.


[i] Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECTRE on November 18, 2025, 16:15 MST.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.