“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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Project Management Saving The World
| GTIM Nation knows of my disdain for the old saw that the point of “all” management is to “maximize shareholder wealth.” Even though this assertion is easily overturned, it’s still commonly taught in business schools around the world. I firmly believe that this tenet of commonly-embraced management science is not only wrong, but its acceptance has led to a whole host of bad business decisions, and that its continued assumed preeminence represents a menace to the advancement of management science and, by extension, the success of all mankind. Okay, that’s a bit much to digest all at once, so let’s break it down into management-sized pieces, kind of like a Work Breakdown Structure. One of the biggest economic issues in the United States right now has to do with the development of data centers. These data centers have generated a great deal of controversy, mostly centering around their need for electricity and water, as well as their projected impact to the economies of the areas where they are located. Those in favor of these centers often point to the anticipated benefits of employment and generated tax revenue for whatever government is in place for that locale. From my perusal of the news/opinion pieces on their development, those opposed appear to have the much louder voices, and those voices are proving to be persuasive indeed. But consider: what’s the point of these data centers? It’s mostly to enhance current internet capabilities, but also to help advance the field of Artificial Intelligence, or AI. Okay, so what happens if AI becomes more advanced? Naturally, doomsday scenarios abound, much as they did when computers first became commonplace in the nominal execution of management duties. Last I checked, the world has not come under the control of a supercomputer threatening to attack multiple metropolitan areas with nuclear weapons, as in The Forbin Project. My best guess as to the impact of AI on management in general and Project Management in particular is that its use will reduce the number of dumb decisions made in business settings. As Milton Freeman famously said, “So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free-enterprise system.”[i] Consider the folly of all of the businesses, large and small, that pursued unproductive to straight-up silly goals, and the economic resources that they ultimately wasted. Now consider what would happen if such business decisions were to be culled from the arena of workable ideas before they even sought funding, even by as much as 5%. If the businesses in the United States alone did this, the increase in GDP would be $1.514 Trillion (USD). Just for the record, besides the US, there are only 10 countries world-wide with a GDP above that increase. Of course, advances in AI are absolutely not confined to the US, and an improvement in better decision-making of only 5% might prove conservative. In short, advances in AI can have a profound positive effect on people’s lives across the globe. What’s standing in its way? The aforementioned opposition to data centers, for one. I do not have access to the board rooms and inner dealings of the executives who are seeking to construct these data centers, but it’s easy for me to speculate that at least some of them are being advised by their Note that I am absolutely not talking about stakeholders here. PMI defines stakeholders as “an individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project, program, or portfolio.” I’m talking about customers, both current and potential. Customers are different. Those pursuing data centers need to interact with them in such a way that they not only cease opposing these Projects, but will actually help make it happen. How to do that? Show them the product or service being provided, how it will make their (business) lives better, and by how much. This PM-orientation has the chance to utterly re-do the conversation with respect to the data centers, and, by extension, an improvement of the management sciences at a scale previously held to be unattainable. But that’s not going to happen under the “maximize shareholder wealth” paradigm. No, if the business world is to be saved, it simply has to be by Project Management. [i] Retrieved from https://www.azquotes.com/author/5181-Milton_Friedman/tag/capitalism on 26 August 26, 2026, 20:16 MDT. |
Posted on: August 31, 2026 10:34 PM
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Consultant, Or Auditor?
The answer to the question in the title might not be as clear-cut as some in GTIM Nation believe, and to demonstrate this let’s break out the Game Theorists’ favorite tool, the Payoff Grid. Consider that both consultants and auditors seek to review the target organization’s business practices as they manifest in its reviewable outputs, hoping to glean insights into its management techniques and how those techniques are eventually implemented and executed. This being the case, the two axes for the Payoff Grid readily present themselves: (1) Is the organization doing something correctly or incorrectly, right or wrong (as determined by either the named audit standard, or the Consultant’s personal opinion), and (2) Is the person making this determination correct, or incorrect? Here’s the Grid:
As is the case in most of these Payoff Grids, Scenarios B1 and A2 show the ideal, sought-after outcome. The Consultant/Auditor makes the right call, and revisions to the organization, its business model, and practices can be based on reliable information. But it’s in the abnormal Scenarios where the trouble lurks, so let’s get right into them. While both Auditors and Consultants are vulnerable to the abnormal Scenarios, the Auditors are more likely to err in A1, while the Consultants are more likely to err in Scenario B2. Here’s why. An Auditor will usually be hired by an agency outside the target organization, for the purpose of finding fault or errors in the way the target is executing scope, recording transactions, performing proper safety functions, etc., etc. To this end the Auditor would never want to find themselves making a determination that falls within Scenario B2, which would represent a failure on their part to correctly identify a real problem. A B2 error could end the Auditor’s career if that uncaught error ended up causing catastrophic results later. On the other hand, an A1 error has very little downside, at least to the Auditor. The target organization would simply have to spend more time and energy developing either an evidence package that explains why the determination is mistaken, or, in a surprisingly high number of cases, admit to the “error” and provide an evidence package on why it won’t happen again. Same Payoff Grid, but very different payoff scenario for the Consultant. Consultants are almost always hired by the host organization, meaning that somebody within said organization has recognized a vulnerability or shortfall in performance, thinks that they know the approximate area of causality, but lacks either the technical expertise or organizational clout to specifically identify and rectify it. Consultants in areas where the targeted practice or underlying management science is clearly and thoroughly captured in some sort of codex, and where the collection of the evidence package is well-proscribed (like in accounting) have a fairly straight-forward path. Not so outside those confines, as in Project Management, which brings us to our very first barrier to consultant accuracy: what’s the audit standard, or baseline against which the host organization is being evaluated? Typically, this would be the Consultant’s education and experience, augmented by some published standard, such as the PMBOK Guide®. But those three bases vary wildly – the PMBOK® alone has gone through eight revisions. All things fail by irrelevant comparisons goes the saying, and there’s going to be considerable pressure for the Consultant’s findings to be consistent with the things their sponsor suspected in the first place. Then we have the problem of mono-dimensionality. Recall the old saw “affordability, availability, quality: pick any two.” Does the host organization have a business model oriented towards availability and affordability? Then the recommendation that additional resources be used in pursuing a higher level of PM quality would probably not be indicated, but a consultant using just the PMBOK Guide® as the standard might recommend exactly that. Also consider the makeup of the host organization. Is it dominated by the Maccoby architype Jungle Fighters and Company Men, with Craftsmen and Gamesmen in short supply? Then the recommendation of more scrupulous adherence to the aforementioned PMBOK Guide® couldn’t happen, even if it was the right call. And these are just two out of a myriad of factors that should come into play when formulating a workable correction to an existing management strategy, let alone the discovery of the optimal one. What we have here is a situation where two different but related roles of organizational outsiders, tasked to evaluate that organization’s business model or management practices and generate findings/recommendations for the errors they perceive, are working under pressures that push them towards a specific type of bias. Let me be clear: I’m not asserting that most (or even a plurality of) auditors or consultants will succumb to these influences, and allow their findings to stray from an even-handed approach. What I am saying is that, if the results of this outsider’s analysis are influenced by who is paying for them, even in the slightest degree, then we’re no longer in the realm of the management sciences. So, sure, go ahead and hire consultants and work with auditors. Just understand why and in what direction they are may err. |
Posted on: August 21, 2026 03:23 PM
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“And then a miracle occurs…”
| A famous cartoon by Sydney Harris has two men standing in front of a chalkboard with equations on it. In the middle of the equations are the words “And then a miracle occurs,” with one of the men telling the other (in the caption) “I think you should be more explicit here in step two.” Of course, being the geek that I am, I thought this hilarious. It also came to mind repeatedly during a real-life experience, which I will share. At a conference on the topic of machine learning and predictive analytics I attended, there were some paper presentations worth the price of admission, but others seemed oriented towards a specific product. Intrigued, I visited the exhibitors’ hall, and interacted with many of the vendors who had set up booths. Without exception, they boasted of their abilities to pull data from multiple sources and multiple formats, and also showed a variety of histograms, pie charts, area diagrams, etc., etc., as their available outputs (unfortunately, none of them demonstrated the capacity to deliver information via Chernoff Faces, but that’s another day’s blog). I approached several of them, and politely engaged them thus. “It’s my opinion that all Management Information Systems have the same basic architecture, in three sequential steps. Step One: data is collected based on a certain discipline, or binning structure. Step Two: this data is processed via some sort of methodology into information. Step Three: this information is delivered to decision-makers in such a way that they can use it to make, well, decisions. You have demonstrated your product’s ability to collect data from different sources, and your booth is festooned with samples of its output. Here’s my question: what methodology do you use to convert the data into usable information?” I was somewhat disappointed to receive the same basic answer (or a derivative) from every single vendor: It’s whatever the customer wants to use. One vendor in particular started a discussion so overwrought with jargon that I had to interrupt, and ask point-blank “Your marketing material claims the ability to produce ‘predictive analytics.’ Suppose I came to you representing a mid-sized company, and I was ready to purchase this product. Exactly what would you be delivering?” The answer, padded as it was with the aforementioned excessive jargon, basically came down to “it depends.” At least they didn’t go straight to “And then a miracle occurs.” I thought then, and believe now, that this was something of a disingenuous answer, in that on the one hand, these vendors were selling a capability in the vein of predictive analytics, and on the other were simply deferring to “customer preferences” when it came to how such an output was to be achieved. I could have told them then and there, the customer wants you to deliver an information stream that could be legitimately considered to be in the realm of predictive analytics, with the data they currently have available. If these potential customers knew how to do that at the present time, they really wouldn’t have a need for your product, now would they? But besides the pursuit of a “predictive analytics” package that could deliver the relevant, accurate, and timely information stream needed to obviate most (or even all) of the decisions for whatever level of management at which it’s aimed, we have the layered dynamic of macro-organizational decision oversight versus the latitude of movement that managers would require in order to bring their projects in on-time, on-budget. Put another way, does the owning organization reward managers who make all of their decisions consistent with policy, procedure, and even the unstated aspects of organizational culture, with mixed ultimate results; or, does it value those managers who bring their projects in on-time, on-budget, but bend an occasional unstated/undocumented rule from time to time? I would maintain that this is not a trivial dichotomy. For another mental exercise, imagine that one of these vendors did have the methodology to convert available data into a reliably predictive analytical information stream, and were simply reluctant to disclose it to some wise-guy inquisitive booth-visitor. And suppose that, once this system came on-line to its buyer’s home organization, that it informed said manager that the best course of action was contrary to previously-communicated organizational goals or agendas. What happens then? It's long been my considered opinion that organizational culture is downstream from individual Project Teams’ success. Are you looking for a significant organizational culture change? Don’t waste your time kvetching to the staff about how they should behave better. Instead, get the Projects in the portfolio to come in on-time, on-budget a majority of the time, using a specific set of PM strategies. That’s when the real culture-change miracle occurs. |
Posted on: August 10, 2026 11:07 PM
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Back To The PM Future (A Parody)
| I was taking a long walk with my wife (who, incidentally, also holds an MBA) at 2:45 P.M. on June 21, 2026, when a DeLorean with some strange gizmo on its trunk seem to come out of nowhere (why so specific as to the time and date of this walk? I’ll explain shortly.) A tall, wild-haired fellow wearing a lab coat exited the car after a hasty parking job, and approached me. “You’re Michael Hatfield, the blogger, right?” “You have the advantage of me, sir.” “I’m one of your readers – you can call me Doc. I recently became a PMP®, and I’ve been trying to track you down in order to answer one question.” “For so much effort over one question, I hope I can answer it.” “I’ve been reading your blog on ProjectManagement.com for some time now, and I’ve noticed you often point to the difference in type, not degree, between Asset Management and Project Management.” “Yeah, that’s one of my favorite soap boxes.” “From the time period I come from … uhh, I mean, the place that I come from, the Asset Managers’ narrative has completely dominated the management sciences, especially the whole business about how the point of all management is to ‘maximize shareholder wealth.’ Here’s my question: If you had access to a time machine, and could go back in time to substitute the PM’s approach to management for the Asset Managers’ version, when and where would that be?” “Oh, that’s easy” I replied. “Go back to the 1913 Income Tax Act in the United States. It passed immediately after the 16th Amendment. If I could go back in time to the one moment in history that locked the Asset Managers’ narrative into the dominant role in the management sciences, it would be then.” “How would you change it, if you could?” “Rather than use a general ledger for computing individuals’ or corporate tax load, I would use an Earned Value Management System, and pull a percentage from failed Projects. That way, original estimates would have to become more accurate, and tax penalties would go against mis-managed Projects in such a way as to discourage poor performance, along with its attendant wasted resources. Assets sitting around aren’t good for anything, much less the basis for assessing taxes. It should be based on how those assets perform, or fail to perform.” “Can I give you a ride in my DeLorean?” “Can my wife come too?” “There’s really not enough room…” ** * * |
Posted on: July 31, 2026 12:11 AM
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