The Underrated Hazard Of Obstructionism

It’s time for another payoff grid (the Game Theorists’ favorite tool) to shine some light on that perennial enemy of the PMO, obstructionism. You see, PMOs don’t fail because PMI® failed to identify the best ways of capturing scope, schedule, or cost baselines; nor due to any deficiency in recognizing the best practices from across the PM universe (excepting, perhaps, the pixel-ink wasted on risk management [no initial caps]). No, PMOs often fail due to the insufficiencies of their implementation strategies, specifically where they do not line up with the dynamics of the macro-organization. And here’s the kicker: even when the most suitable implementation strategy for certain organizations has been selected, it still might fail, due to this aforementioned obstructionism.
So, how does a PMO Director deal with obstructionism? First, let’s identify the specific varieties and their sources. GTIM Nation knows of my respect for the brilliant Michael Maccoby, specifically in his book The Gamesman (Simon and Schuster, 1976), in which he lays out four archetypes of corporate workers/managers:
·The Craftsman doesn’t much care about for whom he works, but cares very much about the quality of his output.
·The Company Man tends to take on the persona of the organization for whom he works.
·The Jungle Fighter succeeds via calumny and political maneuverings rather than the quality of the output.
·The Gamesman doesn’t see his paycheck as a roof over the head or food on the table. Rather, he sees the entire workaday experience as some sort of game, where his renumeration are as tokens.
Back to the payoff grid. Imagine an evaluation of corporate workers along two axes: one scores if they are poor or middling performers as opposed to high performers, and the other scores if the worker is politically savvy, or not a good political player at all. Here’s what that would look like, along with the (likely) home of each of the Maccoby archetypes:

	Low/Middling Performer	High Performer
Very Political	Jungle Fighter	Gamesman
Hates Engaging in Office Politics	Company Man	Craftsman

I’m going to continue under an assumption that might not be very popular outside PM circles, and that is high performers will, by nature, gravitate towards wanting an advanced PM capability within the macro-organization. Our friends, the Accountants, may believe that the point of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth,” and to that end the desire to deliver scope on-time, on-budget may or may not be entirely incidental. But outside those who adhere to the MSW speciousness, delivering on-time, on-budget means a great deal to the enterprise’s success rates. So, if advanced PM acumen is consistent with the Gamesman’s and Craftsman’s persona, that just leaves us with the left-hand side of the performance ledger (pun intended).
Unfortunately, this is where obstructionism lives, and is therefore more dangerous. If it’s one thing I’ve noticed about the Jungle Fighter types with whom I have had the misfortune to work, it’s that they can’t stand the notion that they would be identified as getting ahead solely on their political maneuverings rather than actually contributing to portfolio success. To this end they will tend to hover near the High Performers, to see who will actually succeed. The High Performers who appear to be nearing a success story will suddenly see the Jungle Fighters attempting to connect more often in order to poach high-profile but ultimately easy-to-execute pieces of scope or function in order to be more closely associated with the unfolding success story. Conversely, if a High Performer is running into extreme difficulty, and finds themselves in a situation where it takes Herculean effort just to avoid a large overrun, then the JFs will disassociate themselves from that Project as fast as they can. In the case of the PMO Director attempting to advance PM capability maturity, if it looks like it’s already headed towards success, then you’re fine. But, if they sense that such an effort will fail, they will abandon the PM cause quickly, and bad-mouth you and your attempts to bring about genuinely beneficial change to the organization.
But as bad as the Jungle Fighters are, the Company Men are perhaps even worse. This archetype acts as dead weight on the PMO Director’s efforts. They won’t actively use the associate/disassociate strategy, based on the perceived odds of PM advancement success. Rather, they will seek to continue to pull a paycheck with as little disruption to their employment universe as possible. The near-twin tactics of the Slow Roll and Silent Veto, even though they can be very difficult to detect when deployed, are easily as toxic as any other obstructionist strategy. And, in a final, cruel twist, organizations that are struggling with a portfolio full of late and overrunning Projects are the ones most likely to attempt to set up a PMO in the first place, meaning that there’s a good possibility that it’s already predominantly populated by the low performer archetypes, i.e., obstructionists.
I’m not recommending extended training in psychology prior to initiating a PMO implementation. But I will say that not being aware of these organizational behavior and performance pathologies, specifically obstructionism, will sink your efforts faster than overly investing in risk managers.
No initial caps.