Author: George Pitagorsky

A colleague who is interested in how best to bring attention to trouble and problems in projects raised these good questions:  “Who is responsible for declaring that a project is in trouble?  Does the organizational culture support open communication or are PM’s being fired or penalized when they bring bad news?”  He added “I am still amazed to this day to hear the stories about PMs being scapegoats on troubled projects even when they are not to blame.”

The easy answer is that it is the PM’s responsibility to make sure that trouble is declared when it exists. The PM is responsible for stakeholder communication in general and project status is one of the most important parts of that communication.   But PMs are only human after all and it is quite common for humans to go into denial when faced with circumstances that are unpleasant or threatening.  There are far too many instances of managers, project managers and even regulators hiding the truth, deluding themselves and others into thinking that no one will find out or that things will somehow get better so there is no reason to alarm anyone with the bleak reality of the moment.

Don’t shoot the messenger

Then there is the blame game.  In Antigone, Sophocles wrote ”No one loves the messenger who brings bad news”.

When a messenger is “shot” because the recipient doesn’t like the message, there is a systemic problem in the organization. Over time, PMs will learn to not give bad news and effective management will suffer.  With people afraid to be the bearer of bad news the bad news gets hidden and trouble festers until it becomes too great to contain and too great to do anything about besides stopping the project.

What to do?

Take a long term, process improvement view.  It is best to create a dialog across the management chain to bring out the issue of blame, fear and the lack of candor they create.  Seek to change management attitudes and policies and to establish a reporting/project monitoring and control approach that “automatically” brings attention to trouble. This is easy to say but not so easy to do in a dysfunctional environment.

Rather than thinking that it is the PMs job to always break the bad news, hopefully we can agree that it is the responsibility of the PM to set up and use a system that delivers the news, good or bad, regularly and objectively.  With a reporting system that is rationally structured with clear criteria for setting red, yellow and green indictors at activity and project  levels there is no need for the news bearer to be brave or suicidal.  The system bears the news and the people who receive it (who hopefully have bought into the system and its criteria) are faced with the responsibility of responding to it.

Responding to bad news is easier than announcing it.  But, that is a topic for another time.  For now, assess the way you and your organization accepts bad news.  Is news of trouble seen as “bad” or is it seen as useful information that can then be used for effective analysis, decision making and corrective action?  If it is seen as bad, then you would do well to change that perception.  If it is seen as useful, congratulate yourselves and get on with figuring out how to manage the situation and how to avoid trouble in the future.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

There have been some interesting comments regarding bad PMs.  One senior project manager asked “Should the project manager be held responsible for the results of a project or should the entire team be accountable, after all credit for success usually goes to the team?”  Of course, whether the credit for success goes to the team or not, really depends on the organization culture and the wisdom and ethics of the PM and upper levels of management.  But, that is a topic for another article.

First, let’s address the idea that there is a difference between the project team and the PM.   The PM is part of the project team.  Hierarchies and divisions based on roles are one of the common causes of dysfunction in projects and organizations.  So, credit for the success or failure of a project does belong to the project team, unless it is hamstrung by cultural and organizational barriers to success.

When projects fail they fail for any number of reasons ranging from irrational, unclear or changing objectives to poor performance.  Poor performance is the responsibility of individual performers, including project managers.  But, responsibility doesn’t end there; it is shared.  General management is responsible for making sure that the right resources (ones who have the capacity to perform their roles) are assigned to the project.  General management and project management process owners are responsible for making sure that there is a continuously improving process, supported by effective tools and policies that enable performers to do their jobs.  Remember, the best performers can be brought down by a poor process.

Individual performers (including project managers) are responsible for making the right level of effort and for making sure they have the skills that they need to perform.  They cannot rely on their organizations to give them the competencies they need.  It is a personal responsibility.  Individual performers are also responsible for following the process and for speaking up when they realize the process is broken.  They are responsible for acknowledging their errors, omissions, and weakness and doing what is needed to remediate them.

Project success is a shared responsibility among the project team which consists of all the performers, project managers, team leads, etc. from across internal organization units and partnering organizations.  It is also the responsibility of sponsors, functional managers, clients, executives and senior managers, who are part of the “outer team” and who set objectives, provide resources and establish and maintain an environment that supports effective performance.

Together these stakeholders perform individual projects, assess their performance, identify the causes of both success and failure and do the ongoing work of changing the conditions that address the causes.  When the concept of team is limited to what might be called the core team of performers the probability of success goes way down because those who perceive themselves as outside the team are less likely to be motivated to put out the effort to succeed and those who perceive themselves to be on the team view the others as outsiders who mostly get in the way.

Inclusivity and identification with the team promotes collaborative effort and accountability.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

There is power in making sure everyone on a project sees the big picture. When performers know how what they are doing fits into the overall project plan and where the project fits in the overall strategy of an organization they can better perform their parts.

The Power of Seeing the Whole

Many of the projects we work on and manage are complicated. They combine multiple technologies and disciplines and occur in environments characterized by multiple organizations and organization units. Add to that the likelihood of cultural and other forms of diversity, personality differences and varying degrees of cultural intelligence, and the complicated becomes complex.

Over the past few decades, enlightened organizations have realized that this view is detrimental to quality and organizational effectiveness. For example, the automobile industry and other manufacturing industries realized that line workers who have a sense of what they are contributing to will more likely perform effectively and identify opportunities for improvement than people who are focused on one small set of tasks to create a widget and “throw it over the wall”. Paradoxically, the more complicated and complex the project, the greater the need for a statement that makes the big picture accessible to as many stakeholders as possible.

Why Managers Don’t Communicate the Big Picture

Yet the tendency to parse the project and reserve the big picture for senior people in a project office or leadership group persists.

Some managers think that all individuals and small teams need to know is their own piece of the project. They think “The big picture is too big and complex and it would only confuse the performers.” This view is also shared by many specialists and functional managers – “just tell me what you want and when you want it and I’ll deliver.” But, paradoxically, the more complicated and complex the project the greater the need for a big picture perspective because without it there is a greater likelihood of miscommunication, conflict and suboptimal performance.

This persistence may be caused by

A distorted desire for control. A manager may feel that if only he or she knows the whole it is easier to direct performance and protect his/her job. A distorted sense of the capacity of the performers to understand the big picture. In project work it is likely that if the whole is described well everyone can understand it. This leads to the third cause. A lack of ability to articulate the big picture in a way that makes it accessible to different types of stake holders. A project of any complexity can be synthesized into a concise statement that provides a picture that is accessible to just about anyone with an interest. Too much work and not enough time to pick up one’s head long enough to understand the whole well enough to articulate it for oneself or others.

“Symphony” is the ability to see the big picture not only in terms of analysis, but also to integrate and synthesize to see that the whole is greater than the sum of all the parts. It is a capacity that each person has to a degree. The more this symphony is cultivated the easier it becomes to communicate and understand the project as a whole, the significance of each part to success, and the subtle interrelationships among the parts. The understanding makes for stronger morale and a higher likelihood of performance that goes beyond simply complying with ones small task requirements to contribute in a more effective way.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

As in any profession, there are the great, the good, the bad and the ugly.  When we have PMs who in the bad and ugly category, we can often find the cause of their deficiencies in the “system of operations.”  The quality gurus tell us that 15% of defects are caused by personal error and 85% are caused by systemic deficiencies.  In the case of the deficient PM or BA the most prevalent causes seem to be unclear role and responsibility understandings and lack of training and support. This is exacerbated by ego issues – people not owning up to the fact that their skills are deficient or that they have a different understanding of their role than those around them.

Once there was a PM who was convinced that her job was to direct the players on the project team. She required that each of them run their daily plan by her and that she approve it. She regularly told them to do things her way, rather than the way they had planned to do it. In short she was a Theory X manager.  Unfortunately, she had a team of highly competent and motivated players. They hated her and were becoming increasingly de-motivated. 

The team members had been together on previous projects with another PM. They viewed the PM role as one that consisted of assigning and prioritizing the work, keeping track of progress, communicating with outside stakeholders, breaking down barriers to progress and keeping the team safe from interference and irrational expectations. They expected their PM to be a competent player and considered him to be a peer, not a boss.

What were the systemic and personal performance causes in this case? 

On the systemic side, the senior managers who assigned the PM did not take the time and effort to explore and define the role. They did not appreciate the relationship dynamics between members of the team. To them people were interchangeable pieces that were being paid to make things happen, no matter what.  In addition, the PM role definition was non-existent and there was no formal mechanism for performance review. Further, people were made PMs based on a formal credential (PMP or equivalent) and a history of being really good project team performers. 

On the personal side, the PM was without much in the way of emotional and social intelligence. Her ability to read the needs of the other team members was more than deficient; it was non-existent. She was so closed minded that she could not conceive of another way to do things than her own. The thought of letting the team figure things out for themselves was threatening.

The combination was deadly. After two projects, the team fell apart. Two members left the company and the other two asked to be transferred. There were no exit interviews (another systemic issue) so the firm never found out about the real reasons for the turn over. The PM surrounded herself with team members who liked or at least accepted taking orders and went on to be relatively successful in getting projects done on time and budget. After ten years or so, she began to burn out and ultimately was let go in a downsizing.

 Don’t forget to leave your comments below.