Think You Have A Culture Problem? Think Again.

On more than a couple of occasions I have encountered managers or conference paper presenters who are under the impression that one way of advancing PM capability within the organization is to somehow change the “culture,” by which I took to mean the set of beliefs and attitudes that determine the target organization’s approach to implementing the basics of Project Management. One presenter I remember based the entire implementation progression structure on Bruce Tuckman’s famous “forming-storming-norming-performing” cycle[i], from 1965(!), as if such a sequence should be expected to play out regardless of the scope being pursued, or even the technical agenda that had been laid out to achieve it. And, while I will readily admit that a corporate culture steeped in management philosophies that are inconsistent with – or even hostile to – Project Management will make advancing such a capability extremely difficult, the culture is not the source of your problem. In fact, the poor-culture-is-stopping-my-PM-advancement causality loop might have it exactly backwards. To place “culture” in its appropriate role in the advancement of the PM capability maturity within the macro-organization, I’m going to assert (what I believe to be) a novel idea: culture is downstream from success.
“But Michael!” I can hear GTIM Nation say, “what about all of the communiques from Human Resources telling us how to treat each other? All of the training? All of the team-building exercises? All of the company picnics and office parties? Surely these have a greater impact on corporate culture than a portfolio Cost Performance Index above 1.00!” To challenge such seemingly common-sense objections, I would like to start with a reference to last week’s blog, and its main take-away: never employ the sunk cost fallacy. All of those corporate get-togethers would evaporate pretty quickly if the organization were to realize a drop in its proposal backlog because both its current and potential client base were to realize that that organization couldn’t reliably and consistently deliver its Projects on-time, on-budget.
But to the point of culture being downstream from success, consider a small company with two large Projects making up its portfolio. Project Nice is staffed by people with the same level of technical competency as Project Mean, but there are some differences. Project Nice Team members have, well, nicer offices than the other Project, and spend more indirect dollars on things like office parties and training. Management is on good terms with those Team members, and trust among the personnel is high, resulting in low turnover. This Project Team’s indirect rates are higher because of all of this, but management believes that it’s worth it. Conversely, management on Project Mean treats their employees as expendable, which is actually appropriate, since almost all of them are flight risks. They experience much higher rates of stress than their counterparts, their offices are in trailers, are cubicles, or are cubicles in trailers. Office parties are simply the non-managers getting together at the nearest watering hole after work to blow off steam. Oh yeah, one more relevant parameter: one of these two will succeed, and the other will fail, in dramatic fashion.
Forgive the cartoonishly dramatic contrasts, but they are necessary to perform the following mental exercises. If the market share being targeted by our dual-personality organization values on-time, on-schedule delivery (which is basically everybody), then the culture manifested by the entire org will turn on which Project succeeds, and which one fails. If Project Nice fails (late, overrun, with no follow-on work), because their overhead was too high, their employees too complacent, their managers reluctant to eliminate poor performers, etc., etc., then the entire organization can be expected to manifest the culture of Project Mean. On the other hand, if Project Mean fails because its turnover rates are high, stress-related absenteeism is excessive, or the lack of cooperation (stemming from a lack of trust) results in an inability to meet deadlines, then the macro-organization will most likely see a shift in culture more aligned with Project Nice (if for no other reason than Project Mean’s higher attrition rate).
I believe that the primary driver behind this phenomenon has to do with the natural human tendency to ascribe causality to things that happen sequentially in time, even if it’s inappropriate to do so. In the above scenario where Project Mean succeeded while Project Nice failed, Project Mean might have succeeded in spite of its boorish treatment of its team members, its success really having nothing to do with its harsher culture. Still, it’s been my experience that the successful portion of the organization – however that “success” is defined – invariably ends up setting the cultural tone for the rest, at least until the locus of success leaves that part of the portfolio. Want to change the organizational culture to be more accommodating to PM? Don’t try to “correct” the culture directly. First do PM right, and then…
Simply succeed.


[i] Retrieved from https://www.bitesizelearning.co.uk/resources/tuckman-stages-team-development-forming-norming-storming-performing on March 23, 2026, 19:49 MDT.