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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. |
Posted on: March 30, 2026 10:29 PM
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Finally! A GAAP Concept PMs Can Get Behind!
| When I was taking accounting in graduate school, my professor had a pretty cool story illustrating the concept of the sunk cost fallacy. Proceeding from the price of San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge, which was around $35M USD in the early 1930s (about $777M in 2026 USD), he proposed an alternate ending to its construction, where an inventor appears and proposes to build a 100% safe and reliable transporter-like device that would do the exact same job as the massive bridge, but cost only $3M to deliver and operate in toto. Our fictional inventor appears on the scene with this proposal and device when there’s only two months left before bridge completion, and it has already incurred $30M in costs. In short, the alternative solution would ultimately save $2M in total costs, but would, of course, leave this monumental almost-completed bridge in-place. What’s the right decision here? Well, if we’re respecting the proper use of the sunk costs rule, we would go with the inventor and his teleportation device. My professor was quick to point out that, since the decision-makers were politicians, and the optics of a massive almost-complete bridge being what they were, that their decision would almost certainly be to elect to complete the bridge, but we all saw his point. The sunk cost argument should always be considered to be invalid when used to support a strategic decision about which projects to finish, and which to abandon. A much less fanciful example can be seen in the history of the Iowa class battleships of World War II. The U.S.S. Kentucky was ordered and laid down in 1942, the same year as the key naval battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. At those battles, where none of the opposing surface vessels laid eyes on the other, the utility of the aircraft carrier as the primary naval vessel over the battleship became apparent, and aircraft carriers became a priority for naval construction capacity. The Kentucky was to have been the sixth and final Iowa class battleship, but various delays in her construction led to the circumstance where she was still being built at the completion of hostilities, in September 1945. Various changes in her design were proposed to make her more compatible with the post-WW II Navy, but none of them were carried out to completion. She was cancelled at around 73% complete, and ultimately sold for scrap in June 1958.[i] The cost of an Iowa class battleship in the 1940s was $100M USD[ii], which is approximately $1,995,411,042 in 2026 dollars.[iii] Staying in 1942 money, at 73% complete, Kentucky’s cumulative Earned Value would have been $73M, meaning it had a Budgeted Cost of Work Remaining of $27M. Based on what we know of her fate, had anybody asserted the argument that the “remaining” budget of $27M should have been spent in order to avoid “wasting” the $73M already committed, that person was (rightfully) ignored. I have to admire those in the U.S. Government who arrived at AND implemented that decision. The optics must have been terrible, like leaving the Golden Gate bridge just short of completion, but they made that decision anyway. I can only imagine how furious I would have been had I been the PM of that effort. Of course, some of the $73M was recovered. Kentucky’s propulsion system was removed and used in other naval vessels, and the steel was sold for its commodity value[iv]. But, for the most part, the decision to build her in the first place, with the aid of 20/20 hindsight, was a mistake. Returning to the present-day, I can’t help but to wonder how many of today’s Projects would fall by the wayside if sponsors and executives alike had a more finely-tuned and robust maintain-or-suspend/cancel algorithm in our business models, based on the recognition that the sunk costs argument is a fallacy. In the news recently have been stories on some prominent automobile manufacturers cancelling their Electric Vehicle (EV) lines, including Ford, Honda, Kia, Nissan and Volkswagen.[v] I would speculate that, like the Kentucky, this could not have been a painless decision, given the amount of unique infrastructure that must have gone into creating those lines in the first place. Note that I am NOT advocating for Projects to be able to show an acceptable Return on Investment (ROI) to be considered a candidate to continue when the continue/cancel decision has to be made. ROI is predicated on the estimated Gain from Investment, a hopelessly subjective parameter when it comes to evaluating Projects within a portfolio. But I do have two takeaways when it comes to the decision to pull the plug on a given Project: (1) anyone who invokes the sunk costs argument should absolutely be ignored, and (2) we PMs need to be able to muster the courage to know when the scope we’re pursuing has lost its efficacy. [i] Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kentucky_(BB-66) on March 16, 2026, 20:13 MDT. [ii] Retrieved from https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/the-navys-best-decision-ever-100000000-for-an-iowa-class-battleship/ on March 18, 2026, 19:55 MDT. [iii] Retrieved from https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1942?amount=100000000 on March 18, 2026, 19:57 MDT. [iv] Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kentucky_(BB-66) on March 18, 2026, 20:52 MDT. [v]Retrieved from https://www.autoblog.com/carbuying/these-18-automakers-are-walking-away-from-ev-plans on March 18, 2026, 20:17 MDT. |
Posted on: March 20, 2026 08:29 PM
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Designing The PMI® Correctional Program
| I’m convinced that the one of the reasons that the Asset Managers’ business model theories dominate the management sciences domain is due in large part to the fact that, if a business doesn’t strictly abide by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), they’re almost certainly breaking some law. Tax revenues are heavily dependent on organizations maintaining their accounting systems properly, and governments generally don’t tolerate being cheated out of their tax revenue. This being the case, when governments do become aware that some organization isn’t complying with GAAP, those responsible, after the machinations of that country’s legal system complete their processes, will often be fined, or even sent to jail. Now, compare and contrast that outcome with the expected consequence of a Project Management Office Director, or even specific Project Managers, who routinely flout the most basic of PM techniques and guidance: they may be subjected to excessive tut-tutting by self-identifying Subject Matter Experts. Of course, we PM-types know that, at some point, such PMBOK®-eschewing scofflaws will see their project portfolios perform worse and worse, eventually encountering large-scale overruns and delays. But in a business environment where an estimated 70% of all projects fail[i], being the PM of one of those doesn’t carry nearly the avoid-at-all-cost weight as potentially going to jail. What’s the world’s leading Project Management-facilitating organization to do in this situation? I have a radical idea: ratchet up the punishment for flagrantly disregarding foundational Project Management theory and practices. Not anything as drastic as fines or jail time, but more than the current consequences, the aforementioned tut-tutting. First, let’s delineate which PM “crimes” will qualify for these repercussions. Some of the more egregious ones that pop into my mind include: ·Claiming zero Variance at Completion (VAC) when your Project is over 80% complete, and your cumulative Cost Performance Index (CPI) is below 0.75. ·Submitting a “get well” Baseline Change Proposal for the ensuing overrun. ·Trying to put clear Organizational Breakdown Structure elements into the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). ·Claiming the Level of Effort (LOE) method for collecting Earned Value for over half of your Project’s Work Packages when Weighted Milestone and Direct Units are more appropriate. ·Tolerating your organization’s accounting system not collecting actual costs by WBS elements at the reporting level. I’m sure GTIM Nation can come up with many more, but you get the gist. Once found guilty of these infractions, what, precisely, should be the punishment? This is where the pilot PMI® Correctional Program comes in! This Program should be designed to compel the guilty parties to attend certain “training sessions.” Coburg Banks, a multi-sector recruitment agency in the UK, published a list of “The Most Ridiculous Corporate Training Sessions Ever Created[ii],” and I think we should use two of them. These sessions can be made to be conditions for retaining one’s PMI® credential, and include the following titles: ·The “Emotional Intelligence Mime Workshop[iii].” A few hours in the same room with a person in suspenders and wearing clown white makeup alone would be difficult, even without the flailing movements attempting to convey management insights. ·“The Corporate Karaoke Icebreaker[iv]”. But, since we’re seeking to punish with only a thin veneer of presenting legitimate training, the singer’s voices should sound like a combination of George C. Scott and Jabba the Hut as they put the PMBOK Guide® to music. ·One of my very own is “Leaning In To The Synergy Of Agile PM.” This “training” session will have every single slide in the deck chock-full of clichéd jargon, printed in a font that precludes readability from even those seated near the front of the room. The presenter, equipped with a laser pointer aimed at every single word as it is being read, will recite the contents of these slides, verbatim, in a droning monologue. At the end of the day of having to endure these sessions, the ·Circling back to the issue of the “boiling the ocean” approach, how would you leverage your Project Team’s emotional intelligence to attain this noble goal? Your answer should be no fewer than 1,000 words. ·Take a blank piece of paper, and fold it into an origami swan that clearly conveys the distinction between Asset, Project, and Strategic Management. Name this swan “Fred.” ·Take Fred to your organization’s badge office, and make the case that it should be given an identification/building access badge. If anyone objects, accuse them of not respecting neither yours nor Fred’s “learned truth.” For those instances where the “trainee” catches on that he is being subjected to an elaborate punishment rather than a legitimate training program, be prepared for the challenge “I don’t think this program is legit. There’s no managerial insight to be had by creating an origami swan, and I think you instructors are trying to hide what’s really going on here.” Reply simply “Trying to hide what’s really going on? As in claiming zero Variance at Completion with a CPI of 0.75?” [i] Retrieved from https://www.mosaicapp.com/post/project-failure-rates-causes-statistics-every-pm-should-know on March 10, 2026, 20:31 MDT. [ii] Retrieved from https://www.coburgbanks.co.uk/blog/the-most-ridiculous-corporate-training-sessions-ever-created on March 10, 2026, 20:59 MDT. [iii] Ibid. [iv] Ibid. |
Posted on: March 12, 2026 10:57 PM
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How Coupons Overturn A Basic Theory Of Management
| GTIM Nation knows of my utter disdain for the Asset Managers’ favorite axiom, that the point of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth.” It’s not just that this saying is provably wrong on its face, it’s that MSW is also the ultimate source of so many business model pathologies that have proliferated to the point that almost no major corporation is free of them. Yet MSW is taught in business schools all over the land, as if it’s so thoroughly accepted as to be well-nigh un-challengeable. Well, I just happen to love a good challenge, especially and particularly in the management sciences realm, so I’m going to take this one on with an item that’s so common and unremarkable as to be considered irrelevant: coupons. I grew up in a large, middle-class family, which pretty much required my mom to become rather adept at clipping coupons from the daily newspaper, as well as from any magazines we received. It was (and still is) a great way to stretch the household budget, particularly with groceries and cleaning supplies. Savings would easily climb into the double-digit percentage range, making the act of clipping coupons just a step removed from cutting the prices ourselves directly. While all of this coupon-cutting was going on, my father worked in the advertising business which, of course, is oriented towards getting consumers to select certain products and services over others. So, what’s a manufacturer of, say, a new laundry detergent to do if they want to break into an already highly-competitive, if not saturated, market? A quick walk down the cleaning supplies aisle at your local grocery store will immediately inform even the most casual observer that slick packaging, catchy product-naming, and preferred placement on the store’s shelves will only get you so far. A powerful advertising campaign can also be rather effective – it can also be ineffective, as well as expensive. And, depending on which studies one accepts, product loyalty can be very hard to sway. According to Forbes.com, …in reality, nearly three-quarters of customers say that it would take around four bad experiences before they switch their business to another brand.[i] Having never experienced a “bad” experience with laundry detergent, I wouldn’t even know what it would nominally take for me to experiment with a new one. So I’ll ask again: what’s a new manufacturer to do? We all know the answer, so let’s say it together: issue coupons. Coupons used to be confined to newspapers and magazines, but now it’s rather common for publications or newspaper/magazine inserts to be composed of nothing but coupons, and not just for groceries and cleaning supplies. Entire sections of my local newspaper (usually the Sunday funnies) will be wrapped in coupons, for camping equipment, clothes – even computers and peripherals. On-line shoppers can often take advantage of a discount code, which is essentially a digital coupon. Now that we’ve established that coupons, in various forms, are almost omnipresent, I’ll ask the detonation question: how do they “maximize shareholder wealth?” Obviously, they do not. Indeed, they do the exact opposite. Instead of pulling in the most profit that can be obtained from a specific transaction for the given product or service, they actually minimize, or even eliminate, said profit. Savvy coupon-cutters can obtain products below the costs of offering them in the first place. So, if the point of all management is to maximize shareholder wealth, how does one explain, not just the existence of coupons, but their ubiquitousness? Were the Asset Managers not consulted prior to the Issue Coupons-decision being made? Are those who made this decision insane, or completely uninformed of the point of all management? I would speculate that, if one could pin down the Asset Managers who acquiesced on the issue-coupons decision what they were thinking, the response would be something along the lines of “we needed to do this in the short-term, in order to attract customers. As soon as we can establish the customer base, we’ll knock this nonsense off.” But if we take a step back, doesn’t this entire discussion point to the supremacy of Project Management? Think about it: a coupon is essentially saying “Hey, potential customer! We’re willing to slash our prices (i.e., minimize shareholder wealth) in order to show you how we can do a better job of delivering Of course, the decision on how, when, and to what degree to monetize any organization’s goods or services is a crucial one, and will change over that organization’s products and services lifespan. But, in my way of thinking, to assert that MSW is the point of all management is to engage in management science reductionism on the one hand, while speciously grasping for MSW supremacy on the other, and it just doesn’t add up. Even with use of a coupon. [i] Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianswinscoe/2025/05/07/marketers-underestimate-how-loyal-customers-are-and-dont-understand-what-drives-their-loyalty/ on February 23, 2026, 19:01 MST. |
Posted on: February 26, 2026 09:57 PM
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PM Lessons From Waiting Tables
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My first two years in college I worked as a waiter in the local version of a well-known family restaurant chain, located in a rather large shopping mall. I had been working there bussing tables right after graduating high school, and was genuinely surprised at the promotion – this particular franchise had only hired waitresses previously. I worked weekday nights and weekends during the school year, while carrying a “full-time” load at school, so I kept pretty busy. The whole time I was doing it, though, I remember thinking that, as soon as I could get a college degree, I would then get a “real” job, and all of the unpleasant aspects of working in a family restaurant – wildly varying work load, difficult customers, low pay, having to constantly clean tables, seats, work surfaces – would be a thing of the past. It wasn’t until much later that I came to realize that working in that environment gave me valuable insights into the world of management in general, and Project Management in particular. My first surprise was the drop in my hourly pay rate. As a busboy, I was making around $2.65 per hour. But, as a “tip-eligible” employee, that rate dropped, I think it was by more than a dollar. It wasn’t a big deal, I would soon realize, since making more than one dollar per hour in tips was usually fairly easy. Lesson #1: Your employer is probably going to pay you the least amount that they possibly can while still having the job performed. Next surprise had to do with how much of an impact the others on the team have on your ability to attain success. I don’t know if this is the nominal model for managing the dining area of restaurants – I assume it is – but this one divided its tables into clusters called “sections,” and the head waitress would assign your section at the beginning of your shift. Of course, some sections would tend to be more tip-generating than others, and were highly coveted. My expectation that section assignment would be on some sort of rotation was immediately overturned: it was obvious that the higher-tipping areas (those six-table clusters that would be filled before others) were being assigned to the head waitress’ favorites – and I was not one of those. Also in-play was the behavior of the cashier/hostess, who would seat customers at specific tables. Make her mad, and she would alternately seat nobody in your section, or fill all six tables at once (“bombing”), making the providing good service to any of them almost impossible. Lesson #2: The other people in the organization can enhance or ruin your chances at success, even if it does not appear that they occupy a position that would enable them to do so. My solution? Get better by learning more, presenting cleaner and happier, and working harder. I continued for some time on the head waitress’ no-friend list, but the manager noticed the change. Before long I was being scheduled to “open” the restaurant, the earliest possible schedule slot, meaning that I had to be assigned to the main sections. Soon my tip income increased to the point that not all of my textbooks had to be bought from the used shelf, and I could actually go out on a date from time to time. Lesson #3: If you make the customers happy, the rest of the organization will perceive you very differently than if you don’t, which I consider to be a rather PM-centric phenomena. Perhaps the harshest of lessons: Some of the others in the organization, even if they present as friends, will betray you for even the slightest advantage. A few of the waitresses who had initially congratulated me on becoming the first waiter in that particular franchise were among the first (and worst) when it came to alerting the head waitress of any mistake I made or flaw they observed, no matter how trivial. So that leads to... Lesson #4: Be stingy with your trust. Lesson #5: The use of ex parte discussions to harm the reputations of workplace rivals is by no means confined to the office environment. I eventually became aware that my near-desperate attempts to get on the headwaitress’ good side were perceived by her to be an indication of a lack of character on my part. Late one afternoon, when business was slow, I found myself standing behind the “fountain,” the workspace that had the coffee machines, soda dispensers, juice and ice tea containers, a sink, and a clear view of most of the tables in the restaurant, when the headwaitress came up and stood beside me. After a long moment, and seemingly out of the blue, she turned to me and said “If it’s one thing I can’t stand, it's wishy-washy people.” I immediately recognized that she was, of course, talking about me. Without missing a beat, I replied “Well, you know, I can take them or leave them.” The headwaitress struggled mightily to maintain her usual stern look for a few seconds, but then burst out laughing. We were friends from that point on, leading to the final takeaway... Lesson #6: Don’t take workplace conflict personally. |
Posted on: February 17, 2026 09:54 PM
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