On Going Too Far…
| Much of the pixel ink spilled in advancing Project Management has to do with encouraging organizations that do not use its precepts to change their ways, recognize its utility, and thenceforth thrive. Make no mistake – I’m all for this. To a point. After that point, I have to ask, how much is too much? In my point/counterpoint-format debate, documented in PMNetwork (February 2008) with Dave Hillson (a.k.a., “The Risk Doctor”), David stated “…risk is an uncertain event or condition that—if it occurs—has a positive or negative effect on achievement of one or more project objectives.”[i] I quickly pointed out that such a definition excluded no part of the management process. I believed then, as I do now, that the risk management (no initial caps) crowd were (and still are) seriously overextending their epistemological purview. My understanding of this assertion is that almost every aspect of managerial decision-making can be reliably informed by performing Gaussian curve-based analyses, which I whole-heartedly reject. Generally speaking, they simply didn’t know when their preferred techniques’ efficacy started to deteriorate into irrelevance. Sadly, they’re not alone. As GTIM Nation knows, I’m a huge advocate of Earned Value Management Systems (EVMSs), and have no problems asserting that they are an absolutely essential aspect of the Management Information Systems supporting any real project of any real size or importance. And yet even here are multiple opportunities to over-play its importance at the urging of self-appointed experts, including those who belong to organizations that issue “guidance” on EVMSs. How does one know if those pushing Earned Value have gone too far? Probably the most obvious such indicator has to do with the development and use of the Estimate at Completion (EAC). Again, GTIM Nation knows of my opposition to the so-called “Bottoms Up” EAC, which involves re-estimating the remaining budget, adding that figure on to the cumulative actuals, and declaring victory. This method is not only wasteful in time, energy, and money, but it’s also demonstrably inaccurate when compared to its EVM-calculated counterpart, via the formula: EAC = BAC / CPI |
Posted on: October 21, 2026 08:08 PM
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Are We Having Fun Yet?
| The quote “Find something you love to do, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” is generally attributed to Harvey Mackay, but there are many similar quotes that may pre-date it. In any case, it’s been my experience that Project Management can be a truly rewarding profession, particularly if one happens to be good at it. It has also been my experience that PM can be highly frustrating, to the point of wanting to bite through twelve-penny nails, even if one happens to be good at it. I was engaged in a conversation with a friend recently, who passed along some advice his mother gave him, along the lines of “very few people ever get their dream jobs. You can either work at something you love for very little money, or something you hate for better money, but don’t expect to come into a ‘dream job.’” I quickly recognized the Payoff Grid implications of this advice, so:
If you are experiencing Scenario A2, good for you. I’ve been there, and it’s a great place to be. And, while its opposite Scenario (B1) may appear highly distressing, there are actually some benefits that can be gleaned from it, as I discussed in a previous blog “PM Lessons from Waiting Tables.”[i] Being in this situation can teach rather valuable lessons, even if the circumstances are less-than-desirable. Which brings us to the two Scenarios consistent with my friend’s mother’s advice, A1 and B2. PMs who engage in Scenario A1, perhaps for charitable or other, similar reasons, bring their expertise to efforts that are typically more noble than those that are more closely tied to their further monetized counterparts. Perhaps their dedication to a cause outweighs their need for renumeration, but whatever the particular circumstances, good on them. And, finally, we arrive at Scenario B2. If you, as a PM, are being paid well, but hate going in to work, I’ve also been there, and it can be straight-up dreadful. But why does it have to be this way? Well, I’ve compiled my top three reasons why the PM gig can be difficult, and here they are, in ascending order. 3. Involvement of non-Triple Constraint “experts.” I attained my PMP® in 1993 (#1004), so I’m kind of old-school on much of the PM codex. Back then, the PMBOK Guide® had eight chapters – the first three representing the so-called Triple Constraint of Scope, Cost, and Schedule. I take a highly skeptical view of the other five. GTIM Nation knows of my disdain for the risk managers (no initial caps), and of the Communications Managers and that whole business of “engaging all stakeholders,” even those who don’t want your Project to succeed. Quality, in my view, is a subset of Scope, since contractual quality standards are almost always documented in the Scope description. And Procurement, along with Human Resources, belongs under the Asset Managers’ umbrella. Procurement (a.k.a., accounts payable) is even part of the General Ledger, so, yeah, I’m justifiably skeptical of the capacity of these other five to either survive the redundancy test, or else meaningfully contribute to bringing in your scope on-time, on-budget. I have found that dealing with their demands on your time is often a PM buzz-kill. 2. People who hold the title of “PM,” but hate its precepts. They don’t call Project Management “the accidental profession” for nothing. Sometimes people who are strong in the technical discipline involved in a project but have never attended a management class in general, or a PM one in particular, will arrive at the helm convinced that the whole Work Breakdown Structure, Earned Value or Critical Path business is for the birds. These people will make life difficult for not only the PMO Director whose portfolio includes their work, but also for the Project Controls Specialist who is unfortunate enough to be assigned to them. Cringe-inducing office environment, indeed. 1. Asset Managers who are dead-set against PM. Think I’m exaggerating by placing these guys at Number 1? I’m not. In the early years of my PMNetwork column, The Variance Threshold, I actually had a PM, who identified himself as a U.S. Air Force officer, write to me saying that the accounting department he was working with refused to set up a chart of accounts that was aligned with his Project’s WBS. In other words, it was impossible to create an Earned Value Management approach to assessing his Project’s cost performance – he was, so to speak, flying blind. And, while other like-minded Asset Managers might not be as blatant in their anti-PM approach to conducting business, a low-level mistrust will often manifest in other ways. You see, their education informed them that the General Ledger is the natural and true source of any management information involving costs or budgets, so, when the PM-oriented usurpers arrive, these anti-PM types can become less than helpful. To be clear, I'm NOT saying that all Asset Managers are like this. But those who are can definitely become a millstone around the neck of the PM. What can be done? I genuinely don’t know. These are the types of problems that don’t easily lend themselves to template remedies. But, if all PM gigs were fun, our employers wouldn’t need to pay us as much, now, would they? [i] https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/79563/pm-lessons-from-waiting-tables |
Posted on: October 09, 2026 10:43 PM
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The Management Genius Of Abraham Lincoln
| In her excellent book Team of Rivals, The Political Genius Of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster, 2005) Doris Goodwin chronicles how Lincoln defeated Senator and former New York Governor William Seward, Ohio Governor Samual P. Chase, and former Missouri Attorney General Edward Bates to secure the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1860 before she explores how Lincoln would add these very men to his cabinet once he was elected President. The three would serve as Secretary of State, Treasury, and Attorney General, respectively, even though they still held considerable animosity against Lincoln. While Seward would ultimately come to like and respect Lincoln during the American Civil War, Chase was not inclined to do so. Chase would, in fact, conspire against Lincoln to replace him as the Republican nominee in the election of 1864. Nevertheless, Lincoln kept Chase in the cabinet, believing him to be the best man for the job. I can only imagine how difficult it was for Lincoln to sacrifice his political future’s security and personal comfort in keeping a known adversary in his government, simply because of Chase’s capabilities. Goodwin actually quotes Lincoln as saying We need the strongest men of the party in the Cabinet. We needed to hold our own people together. I had looked the party over and concluded that these were the very strongest men. Then I had no right to deprive the country of their services.[i] Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World… I remain convinced that one of the most toxic and far-reaching causes of a whole variety of organizational behavior and performance pathologies has to be the neglect (or even abandonment) of the organization pursuing, to the best of its ability, a meritocracy. If your team or group isn’t interested in attracting the most talented people that they can afford, irrespective of their immutable characteristics, then the odds of your team attaining a high-performing level of performance has already taken a hit. The abandonment of sustaining a meritocracy within the macro-organization can take many forms, but I’ll focus on the three that I’ve seen most often, and hold to be the most reliable red flags that this is the case. Nepotism. This particular path for diverting from a meritocracy is, perhaps, the most understandable of all, given the extent that parents are nominally inclined to sacrifice for their children. An entrepreneur starts a business, sees some level of success, and wishes to share that success with their family members by offering them jobs. But this deviation is plain from the start. If those same children were already employed in appropriately-paying jobs, they should not need additional help well into adulthood. Of course, there are exceptions, and I don’t envy those exceptions. One very capable fellow I worked with happened to be the son of a senior executive, and worked himself very hard indeed, knowing full well that the appearances would point to his not having earned his position on his merits. However, at the same company I also worked with two of the owner’s kids, and they were very poor performers. They knew they could not be fired, or even corrected, and it showed in their work habits. This company, coincidentally (?), had a serious morale problem. Cronyism. Cliques and clans within the macro-organization are common to the point of being ubiquitous, but that doesn’t make them any less toxic. People who advance within the organization due to their connections instead of actual contributions very much set the stage for Maccoby archetypes[ii] Jungle Fighters and Company Men to advance at the expense of the types that would actually contribute to that organization’s success, Craftsmen and Gamesmen. Once the technical direction gets set by the popular over the talented, the bad decisions accumulate, and the macro-organizational death spiral is likely to follow. Kiss Up, Punch Down. If you happen to observe this behavior in any of your colleagues or superiors, it’s a sure sign that a deviation from the meritocracy is underway. If one or two people in your organization are given to subtly (or dramatically) acting differently towards others based on whether or not they perceive that this other is in a position to help them professionally, then it might just be an annoyance. But if this type of behavior becomes more common, it means that somewhere, sometimes, this behavior works, otherwise it would have been eliminated through sheer Skinneresque behavioristic no-reward cycles. To be clear, I am absolutely not recommending that a PMO Director willingly tolerate clear opponents within their management circle. What I am saying is that differences in opinion on matters of determining the optimal technical approach or implementation strategy in advancing PM maturity is NOT a sign of disloyalty. And it doesn’t take the intellectual discipline of an Abraham Lincoln to recognize that. [i] Goodwin, Doris Kearns, Team of Rivals, The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Simon & Schuster, 2005. [ii] Maccoby, Michael, The Gamesman, The New Corporate Leaders, Simon & Schuster, 1976. |
Posted on: September 29, 2026 09:53 PM
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“You’ve Got To Ask Yourself One Question … ‘Do I Feel Lucky?’”
| I’m confident that the majority of GTIM Nation, and many other readers who have just happened by, will instantly recognize the quote in the title. It is, of course, uttered by none other than Inspector Calahan, from the first Dirty Harry movie, played masterfully by Clint Eastwood. Each time he utters the line, or some variant, Inspector Calahan is pointing a large hand gun at a suspect who has just committed a serious crime, a weapon is within easy reach, and they’re being asked if they want to risk being shot. The reason I’m bringing it up is because it strongly reminds me of a particular organizational behavior and performance pathology, one that affects everybody in the company so afflicted, but PMs specifically, and it is this: does the organization you’re working for believe that you are lucky to be there in the first place? Of course, this unstated question is not being posed at the end of a deadly weapon, unless the organization we’re talking about here is some sort of organized crime unit. Instead, it’s a part of the culture, it permeates throughout, and manifests in several different ways. On at least one other occasion I’ve shared with GTIM Nation the story of the time I was interviewing for a PMO Director job at a mid-sized aerospace engineering firm, but it bears repeating here. The conference room was filled with engineers and engineering managers, and the Human Resources director. The engineers and (real) managers asked challenging and insightful questions about the type of cost and schedule performance measurement systems I would implement in a variety of settings and circumstances, and what would be expected out of them and their staff in order to make it work. I thought I was doing a bang-up job of addressing their concerns, when the discussion turned to HR. It was finally her turn, and she looked at me like she was doing me a favor for even being there, and asked “Why do you want to work for (company name)?” I actually had a really good job at the time, and was participating in this interview only because a friend of mine had asked me to, having recognized just how backward this company was from a PM capability point of view. As good as I had it, if these people could make a better offer, I was completely okay with entertaining it, hence my attending the interview. “I’m not sure that I do.” I began. “What does this company offer that would make it an attractive destination?” You would have thought that I just insulted the appearance of her pets, based on her reaction. The interview abruptly ended, and I never heard back. Which was just as well. What the HR director inadvertently showed was that this particular company thought an awful lot of itself, to the point that they were more than willing to display its arrogance to potential workers. If it was so transparently haughty to interviewees, imagine how it displayed this hubris to its existing employees. Where the “you’re lucky to be working here” narrative gets really interesting is when we use it to analyze how the four different Maccoby architypes[i] would deal with it. Generally speaking, the organizations that have more Gamesmen and Craftsmen will outperform those with a preponderance of Company Men and Jungle Fighters. But the organizations that holds the “lucky-to-be-here” narrative as part of its corporate culture will tend to repel Gamesmen, who are known for needing the decision-making latitude to take risks to bring in more work. Similarly, Craftsmen, who are focused on providing the highest-quality good or service that they can, will easily become frustrated when corporate policies and procedures mandate a technical approach that isn’t necessarily the optimal one, but the lucky-to-be-here zeitgeist strongly dissuades operating outside of those confines. Conversely, the Company Men will tend to swallow this dysfunctional macro-assertion in its entirety, and behave consistent with that belief. The combination of the presence of a significant number of Company Men in the organization, combined with this belief, will almost invariably deliver the phenomena of managers who are willing to fail (in PM space, to bring in their projects on-time, on-budget) rather than operate outside company guidance, even in the smallest degree. And this environment is perfect for the flourishing of Jungle Fighters, who can use their favorite tactic, the ex parte conversation, to point out every single variation from policy/procedure, large or small, real or perceived, to the detriment of their enemies. In short, the presence of the “you’re lucky to be here” narrative in any given organization’s culture will drive away the true performers, and lead to a highly political office environment. So, unless you’re really in to working in highly politicized workspaces, when you are evaluating a potential place to work, well, “you’ve got to ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky (for working here)? Well, do ya, PM?” [i] Maccoby, Michael, The Gamesman; The New Corporate Leaders, Bantam Books, 1978. |
Posted on: September 21, 2026 10:09 PM
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“No Good Deed Goes…”
| In the runup to the decisive World War II battle of Midway, there was sharp disagreement between the Hawaii-based U.S. Naval cryptologists, headed by Joseph Rochefort, and the Washington D.C.-based intelligence office about the next target of the Imperial Japanese Fleet. Rochefort was convinced that it would be Midway Island, while Washington was equally certain that it would be elsewhere in the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea. A member of Rochefort’s team came up with an idea: the coded name of the IJN’s next objective was “AF,” but nobody seemed to be able to agree on what “AF” was. Rochefort arranged to have secure message sent to Midway, instructing them to broadcast an uncoded message indicating that their fresh water plant was malfunctioning. Soon afterwards, the Americans intercepted a Japanese transmission indicating that “AF” was short of drinking water. Rochefort was right. As a result, the commander of the U.S. Fleet sent to intercept the Japanese was provided with what was essentially the entire IJN order of battle, including dates and times. Skillfully positioning his fleet northeast of Midway, Admiral Spruance was able to inflict a massive defeat on the Japanese Navy, even though he was outmanned, out-gunned, with fewer, inferior aircraft and less experienced pilots. Indeed, the only tangible advantage the United States had going into the Battle of Midway was its superior intelligence, and that was a direct result of Joseph Rochefort’s expertise and tenaciousness. So, was Rochefort recognized and rewarded for his invaluable insight that led to the saving of hundreds of American lives and shortening the war? Well, no. Admiral Ernest King, head of the Navy at the time, personally disliked Rochefort, and refused to consider the attempts by Admiral Chester Nimitz to recognize him.[i] The fact that King was co-located with the very same naval intelligence organization that should have arrived at the correct conclusion well before the Hawaii-based team did, and was embarrassed because of having been out-performed by Rochefort’s team, had something to do with King’s ill-placed animosity[ii]. Rochefort was eventually reassigned to a Floating Dry Dock in San Francisco, and never served at sea again.[iii] Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World… If you completed the question in this blog’s title with the word “unpunished,” go to the head of the class at GTIM Nation University. It’s been my personal experience that, of what I consider my major career accomplishments, every single one brought with it new enemies, entrenched, vindictive, and permanent. I think that this particular organizational behavior and performance pathology goes well beyond failure to recognize achievement where and when it’s due. I believe it points to a profound departure on the part of the owning organization from a meritocracy, and its arrival into a politically-driven swamp, almost certainly significantly populated by Maccoby archetype Jungle Fighters. Are you currently in such an organization? This particular pathology has several symptoms, and the one I’ve noticed that turns up in its early stages has to do with the blurring of the lines of distinction when it comes to recognizing success and failure. In one particular instance, I was given a task that was considered extremely difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish, by an overtly hostile upper manager. He also “assigned” one of his favorites, a fellow I’ll call “Bob.” At the start, Bob was a no-show. If things were to get done, I would have to do them. As the deadline loomed, and it started to look like I would actually cover the scope on-time, Bob started hanging around my office more often. Not that he would actually do any of the work – he just wanted to be seen and associated with me at that stage. The day that I was transmitting the deliverable Bob wouldn’t leave my office. I came to realize later that his owning organization had perfected the art of glomming onto success stories that they really hadn’t contributed to, and fleeing failures for which they were, in fact, directly responsible. Sure enough, when the recognition came for having successfully performed the scope on-time, on-budget, the credit went to … Bob. Other signs include the persistence of ex-parte discussions on contested technical scope, the isolation of any Craftsmen or Gamesmen Maccoby archetypes by the Jungle Fighters, and, of course, the aforementioned misplacement of attribution for success, accompanied by failure to hold poor performers responsible. I believe that this is one of the motives for those who push back against the implementation of the PMO: Earned Value and Critical Path Methodology-based Management Information Systems are brutally effective in reliably identifying the winners and losers of the PM game within the macro-organization, so the poorer managers naturally hate being exposed as such. So, for all those over-achievers within GTIM Nation (almost certainly a plurality, if not a majority), keep accomplishing, by all means. Just be aware of the dark side of it: the word “unpunished” pops to the mind when reading this blog’s title for a reason. [i] Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rochefort on September 5, 2026, 21:02 MDT. [ii] Retrieved from https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2026/june/justice-joe-rochefort on September 5, 2026, 21:52 MDT. [iii] Ibid. |
Posted on: September 10, 2026 11:08 PM
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