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Aligning Business Strategy 101
| Aligning your PMO’s business strategy would, at first glance, appear to be a relatively simple thing. Just get the projects within the portfolio doing a better job of PM-ing, and you’re there, right? Well, no, there’s a lot more going on, and this blog entry will help you evaluate some of the key factors in performing this key function. GTIM Nation will recall my oft-cited axiom: Quality, Affordability, Availability, pick any two. Meaning that, within any given industry, you will have customers who will tend to fall into the following categories: ·Those who insist on high quality, but want it at a good price, and are therefore willing to wait for it. ·Others who also want high quality, but are unwilling to wait, and so are willing to pay more for it. ·Customers on a budget, but still need it right away, and so are looking for a simple get-the-job-done solution. The clear implication here is that the first step in formulating a business strategy is to make an honest assessment of where your organization falls within this structure. In other words, with respect to your org’s competition, which of the above customer sets do you believe you appeal to the most? Keep in mind that, even though most project-based organizations are regularly involved in the Request For Proposal – Proposal Submission – Contract Award cycle, and the determining factor is typically the lowest bidder on a proposal that convinces the customer that that organization is capable of delivering the requested scope, the Affordability factor is not necessarily negated from the get-go. It’s not at all unusual for a client to award the contract to a well-known, reliable organization over a lower-bidding relative unknown, particularly if the work is high-priority or high-profile. With this structure in place, let’s now examine some of the common strategies that might be more appropriate for a given management environment than others. For example, take the first of the above bullets, an organization known for delivering high-quality output, at a competitive price. Quality, check, and affordability, check, leaving only availability. For most organizations in this bin, the indicated strategy is to treat the employees (talent) very well, keep the facilities in top-notch condition, and ignore the Asset Managers when they come around spouting that maximize-shareholder-wealth drivel. When this type of organization asserts that their most valuable asset is their people, they’re not blowing smoke. Their customers are willing to queue up for this particular good or service for a reason, so an emphasis on PM is clearly indicated, as well as an aversion to cost-cutters, or those who go on and on about Return on Investment. Those are Asset Managers’ strategies, and should not hold prominence in this type of organization. Next we have companies that attract customers also seeking high quality, but need it quickly, and are therefore willing to pay more for it. Again, as long as high quality is a draw, it must be maintained, meaning that your workforce must be more talented, your facilities as good or better, and your PM capability adequate, if not superior. As with the previous category, the threat here is that, should the executives listen to the Asset Managers’ cost-cutting strategies, the result, sooner or later, will be a lapse in quality or delivery. And make no mistake – any reduction in the cost of producing a given good or service has the potential to negatively impact on the quality (or availability) of that good or service. The line between cutting waste and cutting into productive capability is very fine, and often rather fuzzy. And, if a move to ostensively cut waste does impact scope delivery or quality, it usually ends up being recognizable only after the damage has been done, and customers have been lost. As we have seen, a robust PM capability is indicated in each of the two already-evaluated scenarios. Isn’t there any room for the Asset Managers? Well, yes, here in the situation where the good or service being provided is of low or middling quality, but is affordable and readily available. Since this customer base is attracted by lower prices, any opportunity to lower production or delivery costs will not only carry greater appeal, but is likely to make your competitors’ life more difficult. Some of the more, shall we say, unfortunate aspects of doing business in this particular niche is that your employees tend to be more interchangeable than the organizations that exist in the other two arenas, meaning that, while they may be more available, they will also not make as much in salary/benefits, and will be less likely to stick around if and when another opportunity presents itself. Also, this is the place where PM is less relevant, since customer satisfaction is less of a factor than in the other two environs. In summary, if your organization’s customer base falls into one of the first two bulleted situations above, go ahead and use the appropriate tools from the PMI® toolbox. Hire PMPs®, write Work Packages, employ Earned Value and Critical Path Methodologies. If, however, your org’s customer base is best described in the third bullet above, well, take it easy. Your organization isn’t that serious about PM, unless they are planning on making a play to appeal to one of the other bulleted scenarios. And these, GTIM Nation, are the basics of aligning your PMO’s business strategy with the rest of your organization. |
Posted on: December 22, 2025 09:25 PM
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Santa Claus, PMP®
| GTIM Nation may be getting tired of my pushing back on the Asset Managers’ axiom, that the point of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth,” but I think that many business model pathologies have their genesis in this notion. From the 1970s-era idea that “GM is in the business of making money, not cars,”[i] to having to endure those insufferable project portfolio analyses predicated on the Seeing as how ProjectManagement.com’s theme for December, philanthropy, fits nicely into the Holiday’s “Season of Giving” motif, I thought it would be fun to bring in an unlikely ally in exposing the moral and intellectual vacuousness of MSW: good ol’ Saint Nick himself. Now, I don’t take this approach lightly – some years back I was asked to review a PM-themed novel set at the North Pole, where Santa, preparing for his yearly present delivery run, was being left anonymous notes about the problems in his toy manufacturing apparatus. I really disliked it, and told the author as much. Never heard from him again. For the record, I will NOT be discussing the historical Saint Nicholas of Myra, but his extremely fanciful derivative character, the one who lives at the North Pole, and every Christmas Eve sets out in a flying reindeer-propelled sleigh to deliver toys to all the good boys and girls around the world. For just a moment I would like to invite GTIM Nation to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and remember a time when you believed the mythology surrounding Santa Claus, and think about all of the joy that brought to your young life. Now think of the character of Ebeneezer Scrooge, from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and the amount of frustration and grief he brings to those around him prior to his three-spirit-induced epiphany. Quite the contrast, no? But the basics of each one’s business model is easy to discern:Santa Claus amasses an enormous amount of assets (the toy industry in the United States alone is estimated at over $40B annually[ii]), only to dissipate them in their entirety, with absolutely no material recompense. I would argue that this places Santa firmly in the PMI® business model, since PM seeks to deliver on the customers’ expectations of Scope, Cost, and Schedule. Scope? It’s to bring joy, so, check. Cost? Santa’s visits are free (to the kids, anyway), so, check. Schedule? It all happens on Christmas Eve, so double-check. Scrooge, on the other hand, aggressively acts to maximize his wealth, as shown when he heatedly rejects the two gentlemen who come to ask for a donation to help London’s impoverished, and maintains such poor working conditions in his office that the badly-treated Bob Cratchett is refused in his request to add more coal to the cold rooms’ fireplace. Also, upon encountering the ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge tells him that he was “always a good businessman,” which could only be taken as true as long as the point of his business was not to bring happiness to others, which Marley’s ghost quickly (and emphatically) points out. Also consider what happens to Scrooge as he encounters the three spirits, Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet-to-Be. Does he become more attuned to maximizing Also consider the contrast between Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, and Bob Cratchett. Each are valuable members of their respective teams. But whereas Bob Cratchett is treated poorly by Scrooge himself, until after the visits of the three spirits, and then (and only then) Scrooge finally treats him better. Rudolph is also treated poorly, but by the other reindeer. It’s Santa himself who steps in to elevate Rudolph to the point position on the flying reindeer team, and he didn’t need supernatural intervention to convince him to do so. Finally, I can understand why PMI® might be reluctant to award an honorary Project Management Professional® certification to a quasi-fantasy/literary character, being a serious professional society and all. But compare and contrast what Santa does with the 2023 PMI Project of the Year Award Winner, Caterpillar: Prototype Battery Electric Large Mining Truck. This was, of course, a very impressive project. But I must point out that the Cat 793 XE Early Learner does not fly, nor is it known for bringing joy to millions of boys and girls around the globe by delivering toys. Consider also that, while there are over one million PMPs® across all of the continents, there are none hailing from the North Pole. For geographic diversity’s sake, Santa should qualify. For these reasons, I think PMI® should grant Santa Claus an honorary PMP®. Also, it will frustrate those who push that whole maximize shareholder wealth nonsense. [i] Retrieved from https://www.fi-magazine.com/311147/the-90s-called-they-want-their-presentations-back on December 8, 2025, at 18:23 MST. [ii] Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/topics/1108/toy-industry/ on December 8, 2025, at 18:46 MST). |
Posted on: December 10, 2025 10:10 PM
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The PMO Attitude Litmus Test
| I think I’ve mentioned a couple of times in this blog about the time that I interviewed with a fairly young, mid-sized company with an opening for the lead of their Project Management Office (PMO), and how that interview went. A quick recap: I was already in a great position, but agreed to the interview because a friend of mine from a previous gig had begun working for this company, and thought I would be able to fix many of the problems they were facing. The interview was scheduled for the evening, after normal business hours, and I walked into a conference room occupied by around six or seven managers and engineers, and the head of their Human Resources department. The managers and engineers had some really good questions for me, and I answered to the best of my ability, but towards the end of the session the HR director took over. “Why do you want to work here?” she asked, rather sternly. “I’m not sure that I do. What about this organization makes it attractive, would you say?” I answered. While the managers and engineers appeared to be mildly surprised by my answer, the HR director looked to be positively furious. And so ended the interview. This wasn’t the first time I had encountered this kind of vibe from an organization that was interviewing me for a job. One time – again, at the behest of a good friend who had gone to work for a new company, and wanted me to join him – I flew out to the east coast for a job interview that took place over a weekend. As with the previous example, the first couple of rounds were with technical and managerial staff, but the last interaction was with their Human Resources manager. The technical and managerial staff posed some challenging questions, and I did my best to answer, but it was kind of different with the HR director. She spent much of our time together discussing the advantages of living in the area of that company’s branch office, and wrapped up that part of the discussion by saying “And, if you drive just one hour that way, you’ll see an actual mountain!” I smiled to myself, and she saw it. “What, they have mountains in New Mexico?” she demanded, incredulously. “Actually, my house sits one mile above sea level, and right out my back door is a mountain that stands another mile above sea level.” I never heard from that company again, not even to say they had selected another candidate. I probably shouldn’t have copped an attitude. Then again, I’m not sure that I would want somebody who doesn’t know eighth grade U.S. geography being in a position to influence my career trajectory. These two episodes (and several more besides) led me to the conclusion that organizations tend to view their existing employees (as well a prospective ones) in one of two ways. At one extreme is the notion that the employee/candidate is lucky to be working or considered for employment there, and at the other end of the scale, that the organization is lucky to have that employee/candidate as part of their team. Depending on where on this spectrum the organization in question lands, it can either drive or point to other characteristics of the current business culture. The first such manifestation has to do with the encouragement or discouragement of innovation. In organizations where the zeitgeist is that of you’re-lucky-to-be-here, innovation is not just discouraged, I’ve actually seen it punished. Loyalty to the existing management structure is the coin of the realm here, and any challenge to their stated (or even unstated) technical agenda, no matter how insightful or sincerely brought, is typically seen as disloyal. Conversely, in organizations that view their employees as true assets, the tendency is to be more willing to listen to the outlandish, the fanciful, or even bordering on unbelievable, because often times the brilliant is hiding in there, somewhere, and those generating such ideas will only continue to do so if they are comfortable doing so. Alert GTIM Nation members probably caught the reference to employees being a “true asset.” The whole our-employees-are-our-greatest-asset sub-narrative is so ubiquitously present in official mission statements and other corporate self-referencing documents that it may as well have its own keystroke on the public affairs team’s keyboards. But if the organization is of the mind that its employees are lucky to be there, then those same employees will recognize that any such assertion is patently false, no matter how often or forcefully repeated. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, as they say, and before you can say “our employees are our greatest asset,” nobody believes anything coming from these people’s mouths or keyboards. The free flow of information is the life blood of the organization, it’s been said, but now that life blood is tainted, and there’s no going back. For these (and many other) reasons, any organization – PMOs included – that manifests an attitude towards its employees that they are lucky to be there, is likely to fail, sooner or later. If you happen to be in such a PMO, well, I’m sorry. If you direct such a PMO, check the beliefs that drive attitude. Before it’s too late. |
Posted on: November 28, 2025 10:12 PM
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PMI® Saves The World!
| This blog’s title is preposterous, you say? PMI® is simply a professional organization devoted to advancing Project Management within the realm of management science, you believe? Well, have I got news for you: our beloved Project Management Institute is front and center in the fight for saving the World (from bad management, at the very least), and I’ll show you why. As a point of comparison, let’s look at another entity known for consistently saving the World (or Western Civilization, anyway): James Bond. As he saves the World, whom does Bond overcome? Well, usually it’s SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion.[i] While SPECTRE is depicted as vast, it’s actually controlled by only 21 people.[ii] What are these 21 people after? Wealth, basically, expressed either in power, political influence, destructive weapons assets, or currency. Consider the following table[iii] (warning! Spoilers ahead!):
As alert members of GTIM Nation have no doubt noticed, a common theme among Bond villains is that they are trying to maximize various forms of wealth. Now, where have we seen this motive before? Oh, I know! It’s from the assertion maintained by many business schools that the point of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth.” I have often mocked this concept, but it’s still prevalent throughout much of the business world. And it’s not just James Bond films pointing to the ubiquitousness of this goal – other examples abound. Michael Keaton was in a film entitled Mr. Mom, where he is forced into the role of housekeeper due to a layoff from his automotive engineer job, because his organization is perceived to not be cost-effective. If only there were an internationally-recognized institution that offered an alternative to this whole notion that maximize-shareholder-wealth is the exclusive goal of management. Wait! There is! Compare and contrast that narrative with Project Management’s, that the point of our management is to fulfill the customers’ scope requirements, on-time, and on-budget. Maximizing our service to others is a common component of many highly-regarded philosophical works, and its monetized derivative doesn’t fall far from those decent roots. Of course, if the customer seeks to do something illegal or immoral, then we’re talking something completely different. But that’s on the person defining the illegal or immoral scope – not on those who strive to perfect delivering on (legal, ethical) project objectives in the most efficient and effective ways possible. While James Bond (and his many derivatives) may be turning back the villains attempting to maximize their wealth by using fisticuffs, guns, tanks, exotic cars (including ones that can turn into submarines), and even space shuttles, PMI® uses the furtherance of superior business models and techniques to advance our epistemological goals. To be sure, I am not recommending any over-the-top direct action against those who appear to be opposed to the things your PMO is attempting to accomplish, even if you have some really cool gadgets by which you could do so. But I would like to suggest this: if the executive who seems to be anti-PM in his words and decisions just happens to bring a hairless cat into the conference room during the Project Reviews, while the director of your PMO just happens to be wearing an Omega Seamaster wristwatch, you may indeed be involved in a higher-level management science conflict than you had realized. [i] Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECTRE on November 18, 2025, 16:15 MST. [ii] Ibid. [iii] Ibid. |
Posted on: November 21, 2025 08:38 PM
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Change Management Is Really Conflict Management
| Let’s admit it: change (ProjectManagement.com’s theme for October) only really comes about within a Project Management Office (ProjectManagement.com’s theme for November) when ideas and agendas collide, or are mis-aligned in some fashion. If everyone within the PMO was in complete agreement with both the technical agenda and its implementation approach, along with the rest of the macro-organization, then nothing would need to be changed. The Nash Equilibrium would be in perfect, well, equilibrium – no advancement in capability maturity would be made. Barring trajectory-altering events from outside the organization, that ship will sail on its current course indefinitely. Alas, such business environs never exist, at least not for long (and, by “for long,” I mean intervals measurable in microseconds). There will always be mis-alignments in agendas and ideas, not to mention those outside the PMO but within the macro-organization, as well as outside event intrusions. In a sense, the whole point of management, contrary to the asset managers’ notion that it is to “maximize shareholder wealth,” is to handle these agenda mis-alignments in such a way as to maximize the benefit the organization, or, at the very least, to minimize their negative impacts. S o, if we assume that conflict, or shall we say competition between ideas and agendas, are inherent in the formulation of business models and management approaches, it stands to reason that some attention needs to be focused on exactly how PMO directors handle such collisions, since that approach can (and will) have a direct bearing on PMO success or failure. I have observed, broadly speaking, two modes of dealing with competing/conflicting agendas and ideas within organizations, and their impacts on the macro-organization and the PMO specifically. One of these modes I hold to be the most beneficial, both towards resolving problems faced by the PMO and its owning org; and the other, which I view as rather toxic, leading to unnecessary strife, poor problem resolution performance, and, ultimately, PMO decline, if not collapse. I’ll address the beneficial one first. I believe that the optimal method of managing competition and conflicting agendas in a business environment is (ironically) what I will call the Adversarial Approach. This is where any notions of how a given problem’s solution should be formulated is challenge-able by any member of the Project Team, given that such challenges are offered on a good-faith basis and grounded in legitimate management science theory, valid premises, and supported by verifiable (or, at least agreed-to) facts. My favorite Niels Bohr quote is one delivered to a young physicist, “Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.” In the quest to solve a problem, no one should be afraid of suffering repercussions for putting forth an idea that they genuinely believe might provide a solution. In this sense, what I’m calling the Adversarial Approach is similar to what happens in courts of law, where strict rules of evidence and law are enforced in order to maximize the odds of arriving at the truth and, subsequently (and hopefully), justice. In the PMO version of this approach, elements of the technical agenda and implementation approach are fielded, scrutinized, and eliminated or resolved, until what remains is a foundation for formulating the business model and management approach to the issues being addressed. Compare and contrast this approach with the other, one that I will name the Isolate-and-Diminish style. This version is marked by assigning validity, not to the superior idea or agenda, but to the person making the case for any given decision (a sure-fire way to determine if the PMO is engaged in this mode of problem solving can be observed when the Subject Matter Experts get into a conference room to discuss the technical agenda. If any of them recite their credentials prior to discussing the problem’s particulars, it’s almost certainly an Isolate-and-Diminish-tainted org). If the PMO Director is incapable of accepting criticisms or challenges, no matter how well-intentioned or relevant, then those with the best ideas will be quickly cowed into silence, lest they suffer repercussions for daring to disagree with their “superiors.” Such organizational environs turn toxic quickly, since perks are usually given to those who make their managers feel good, and those who don’t tend to become isolated from the rest of the Team. Once isolated, their status often experiences degradations and diminishments, as their reputations suffer at the hands of their more cooperative colleagues. I believe that it’s notable that this corporate culture is a perfect environment for the Jungle Fighter[i] archetype, who heavily depend on ex parte conversations to advance their careers, while the Craftsman and Gamesman archetypes are repelled by this manner of resolving competing ideas. Look, I’m not naïve (at least I try not to be): I’m fully aware that in many PMOs (and organizations in general), the coin of the realm isn’t talent or merit, but displayed loyalty to the executive’s agenda. Even so, organizations in general, and PMOs in particular, that use the Isolate-and-Diminish model for conflict resolution are on a toxic path to dysfunction. If you are in a position to set, or even influence, the manner of evaluating competing notions within your PMO, avoid Isolate-and-Diminish. And, if you find yourself in such an org, you might want to find a way out. Poorly-managed idea competitions and conflicts will simply make things harder all the way around. |
Posted on: November 08, 2025 10:15 PM
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