The Red Pill Executive. Tony Gruebl
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that make it into the success column don’t add Business Value to the company.
In Edge of Tomorrow, Cage had the most intricate weaponized armor imaginable. He had machine guns strapped to both arms and two rocket launchers on his back. He had state-of-the-art sensors, and a computerized voice feeding him instructions. His armor gave him superhuman strength, including the ability to jump out of an aircraft and land on his feet unharmed. He could push cars out of the way with his hands. Millions went into every high-tech suit, but he still died in the sand.
Like Cage, we also continue to die on the beach. We might reach further inland, but we still fall to cunning Mimics hidden in the sand 70% of the time.
Despite these horrific odds, we knew in our souls that we could win at this game of Project Management. Failure wasn’t an option. For Cage, the Alpha Mimic’s blood brought him into a special awareness and the time loop. For us, we returned to the Matrix metaphor. We summoned all of our courage to step out of the herd and open our eyes.
We took the red pill.
Who’s in Charge Here?
The science is good. The tools are great. So, what are the common factors across all operations, in all disciplines, using all tools and development processes? First, it’s people. For all their tremendous advances, people are, after all, still human with very specific behaviors dating back to the beginning of humanity. We became curious about psychology and behaviors that could make highly trained and capable professionals a part of the problem.
“You control the power now.”102
~Sergeant Rita Vrtaski in Edge of Tomorrow
We looked at The CHAOS Ten27, the top 10 reasons projects fail, but—to be honest—they read like a list of poor excuses, like “The dog ate my homework.”
•It’s not our fault.
•It must be the fault of Operations and PMOs.
•The team is incompetent or the project manager doesn’t have the right experience.
As a leader, if that’s the case, should an initiative go forward at all?
Pointing Fingers
In January 2014, several large Affordable Care Act health exchanges failed. Shortly afterward, writer Kyle Dowling interviewed Dr. Harold Kerzner for a Huffington Post blog entitled, “Surviving Disasters in Project Management.”28
Harold Kerzner, Ph.D., M.S., M.B.A., is Senior Executive Director with International Institute for Learning, Inc. Dr. Kerzner is globally recognized as an expert on project, program, and portfolio management, as well as total quality management. He is a strategic planning expert and the author of over 140 books on engineering and project management, some of them bestsellers.29 Clearly, Dr. Kerzner is an expert. His experience in all types of endeavors have given him the title, Godfather of Project Management.
In the interview, Kyle Dowling asked Dr. Kerzner the following question: “In your opinion, why has project management been so controversial over the years in terms of its validity as a profession?”
10 Reasons for Project Management Failure from CHAOS:30
•Executive support
•User involvement
•Experienced project manager
•Clear business objectives
•Minimized scope
•Standard software infrastructure
•Firm basic requirements
•Formal methodology
•Reliable estimates
Other criteria: small milestones, proper planning, competent staff, and ownership
Dr. Kerzner replied, “My personal belief is that the resistance sits at the senior-most level of management.”
That’s Number 1 on The CHAOS Ten list: Executive Support.
Dr. Kerzner continued, “They’re afraid if they make project management a career path they will have to give the project managers authority and the right to make decisions. They’ll essentially have to empower them.”
That’s Ownership, last in the list under Number 10: Other Criteria.
He further added, “What they’re afraid of is that project managers will make decisions that should have been made at the executive level. They resist making it a career path and believe PM can be managed on a part-time basis, which doesn’t work.”
That one didn’t make The CHAOS Ten. Perhaps it is included in “Other” or perhaps it ties to Number 3 related to the experience of the project manager.
Dr. Kerzner went on, “What I’m really saying is that information is power. Those who have control of that information are hesitant about sharing it with project managers, and those who have authority do not want to share that with project managers as well. It has been the stumbling block all along.”
Furthermore, Dr. Kerzner attributes the failure of the health insurance exchanges under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to this fundamental problem in project management. It’s almost as if he said, “Dear fellow project managers, we brought down Obama Care. I’m sorry to say.”
Is the average Operations Executive really that protective? Do they withhold information and authority from their managers to protect their own executive power… even at the expense of project success? If that’s truly the case, withholding information would certainly have significant impact on the 70% failure rate.
Did Dr. Kerzner put his finger on the problem, though? Do Operations Executives truly refuse to empower project managers? Or did Dr. Kerzner examine the symptoms perfectly, yet misdiagnose the problem?
We would say if an initiative has merit, none of these above reasons should exist long enough to derail it. Taking it one step further, the root of the issue lies hidden under Number 10: Other Criteria. Isn’t it interesting that the core problem didn’t even make The CHAOS Ten list? Instead, it’s last in the tacked-on string under Other Criteria: Ownership.
Taking Ownership
One of our authors, Tony Gruebl, started out in Business Intelligence, a difficult field since data always bring up more questions. Even after the best delivery, the customer always wanted more information and was never completely satisfied. The quest for information is unending.
Using the most applauded project management training available, Tony climbed the ranks in the industry. Years later, he did a long-term review of his customers, businesses he had served in good faith with the best intentions and thousands of hours of hard work. What he found was a field of carnage. Many of his customers didn’t use their software at all. Many were so frustrated with implementation, they wouldn’t use the firm again. One was suing the company.
Dismayed, Tony realized he had been dying on the beach again and again and didn’t know it. If he hadn’t looked back, he would have never known it.
When Tony launched Think Systems, Inc. (simply called “Think”), he tried a different tactic and went into intensive training to learn another ideology about project management. He learned 5/9 improvement, root cause analysis, and how to make a difference. He mastered important concepts, but at the end of the day that approach still didn’t move the needle.
Our greatest asset at that time was putting away our own assumptions and opening our mindset. That was tough, but we could not settle for mediocrity. We took the red pill and opened to a new perspective—taking 100% ownership, no matter what the obstacles or circumstances. That meant brutal