The Red Pill Executive. Tony Gruebl
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Brody were a typical blue-pill operator, the shark would have a 70% chance of winning. Our question: Why?
Why does the average Operations Executive shrug off these horrific stats when their own performance ratings are also in question?
Why do talented, capable Project Management professionals and even Project Management Organizations (PMOs) fail so often?
“Why isn’t someone asking the right questions and coming up with better answers?”
Why isn’t someone asking the right questions and coming up with better answers?
A Different Playbook
On April 26, 1986, the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded, releasing more than 50 tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere. It was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. Always concerned about negative press, the Soviets attempted a cover up. Two days later, Swedish radiation monitoring stations more than 800 miles away reported radiation levels 40% higher than normal. After a string of denials, the Soviet news agency finally acknowledged that a major nuclear accident had indeed occurred at Chernobyl.12
To the Soviets, damage control with the media was their first priority. Our safety-conscious Western minds saw this as beyond ludicrous. So did the writers at Saturday Night Live. In a classic SNL skit a few weeks later, actor Gilda Radner played a Russian news reporter in Chernobyl saying, “Nothing is wrong here. Especially near the nuclear reactor.”13
“The Soviets saw their actions as perfectly logical. They just had a different playbook.”
Whether we understand them or not, the Soviets saw their actions as perfectly logical. They just had a different playbook.
Could the blue-pill Project Management model have its own playbook? Why else would such an inefficient system continue for decades without a major overhaul?
This is business where numbers rule. We started to wonder if we were looking at the wrong numbers.
Failure is Baked In14
Most executives claim their Operations run fairly well. Always room for improvement, mind you, but overall their projects deliver what they need to keep their company running and profitable.
That’s right. Everything’s fine with projects.
Except it isn’t.
Imagine taking your car to a repair shop who gives you a quote and a timeframe. When you arrive to pick it up, the car isn’t ready and won’t be ready for a while. The repair takes twice as long and costs three times as much as your quote. You drive off the lot with the engine clanging and smoke trailing from the exhaust pipe. When your friend asks how you like your repair shop, you nonchalantly reply, “They do fairly well.”
“You knew there was a shark out there! You knew it was dangerous! But you let people go swimming anyway?”
~Mrs. Kintner in Jaws100
Really?
Perceptions are tricky. Human beings have a natural inclination to make offhanded statements with little evidence to back them up. For blue-pill managers, it’s often easier to say, “Nothing is wrong here. Especially near the nuclear reactor.”
While an expectation of failure might seem absurd, it does make sense when you consider project success rates stayed at 32% for about 10 years, then dipped to 29% in 201515 and improved by a meager 1% more by 2018. And this despite new support organizations, new tools and processes, and the new concept of the Project Management Organization [PMO].
When failure is the norm, leaders naturally end up thinking: Sure, projects fail. They always have, and they always will. Maybe we just need to deal with it. They repeat truisms like, “Take your worst estimate and double it.”16
With the odds so heavily in the shark’s favor. Sooner or later, every blue-pill operative will fall into the 38% or the 33% range. Count on it. If you’re the one in charge, those numbers also affect you.
We of the red-pill persuasion maintain that consistent success is not only possible, it’s practical and attainable. Our 95% success rate backs us up.
“Everything hinges on leaders who have the cojones to take the red pill and open their eyes.”
When Red Pill executives know how to develop and lead a Red Pill team, their success will draw attention, and others will want in on the action. That’s when things go viral.
Everything hinges on leaders who have the cojones to take the red pill and open their eyes.
Scaling the Project Management Model
A PMO is a living organism made up of people, processes, and projects. PMO members represent a collective treasury of wisdom, skill, knowledge, and experience. They work in many disciplines within a single department or across the entire company. Many mid-size companies see a PMO as a necessary part of doing business. Smaller companies and startups have ad hoc teams to execute their change initiatives without organizing an official PMO. When we use the term PMO, we refer to both groups.
How well do PMOs perform?
According to the self-reporting model in “The State of the PMO 2016”17, current PMOs are doing just fine. In this survey, 226 respondents report that 85% of corporations have a PMO, and most PMOs report directly to a C-level executive inside the company. The study cites numerous statistics to show a direct correlation between the maturity of a company’s PMO and the value it provides. According to them, mature PMOs are far more likely to meet critical success factors. They also show improvements in cost savings per project, better schedule and budget performance, and greater productivity, with fewer failed projects.18
Maturity does make a difference. Consider the performance gap between a fledgling salesperson vs. a seasoned pro. The rookie memorizes scripts, practices gestures, and beefs up on body language. The pro leads an instinctive sales dance that comes from the core. That’s what maturity does. However, if the pro has a faulty foundation—a.k.a. blue-pill perspective—no amount of experience will take him to real success.
“Self-reporting has this fallacy built in. Imagine what Chernobyl experts would say when self-reporting on their performance.”
Comparing himself with his rookie coworker, the pro sees himself as stellar. However, in the broader scope of things he’s still stuck at the 70% fail rate like other blue pill sales pros.
Self-reporting has this fallacy built in. Imagine what Chernobyl experts would say when self-reporting on their performance.
Statistics show blue-pill PMOs might excel at completing processes, such as writing project plans and filling out reports, but they still have a 70% overall failure rate.19 Despite these numbers, the “State of the PMO” survey makes it clear that PMOs and Operations Executives value their company’s PMO and are generally very satisfied with the results.20
Even scaled up, the attitude remains the same: “Nothing is wrong here. Especially near the nuclear reactor.”
The Missing Element
Consider the Sydney Opera House which took 15 years to build and ended up 14 times over budget. That structure has a global reputation as an engineering masterpiece. Can we call it a failure? The Opera House is a great example to show that the triple constraints of time, cost, and scope are not the only criteria to determine success. Other criteria come into play.21
After years of research, we found a hidden marker in every project. Whether or not the Operations Executive or project manager is aware of them, each initiative has an additional objective besides completing the task: adding value to the business.
Yet,