It is said that a prophet is never recognised in his/her own land.
Let me hypothesise a case in point. Two professionally-qualified project managers working for an organisation (“Company B” in the representational Model #1 below), with turnover in the billions, write a paper detailing why its major projects keep failing and what needs to be done to address the problem.
The main thrust of their proposal is that project management should be taken out of the hands of enthusiastic amateurs and vested in professional project managers under the control of a function specifically designed for that purpose – a PMO. It will be of no surprise to any reader familiar with the management approach typical of a “Company B” type organisation to learn that the report will be sidelined. Some while (and several more failed projects) later, the organisation will pay a six-figure sum to a top external consultancy to write the same report! Indeed the consultant’s report will make recommendations which go far beyond those of the two “prophets” who understood the cultural limitations of their highly-functionalised and very political organisation.
In effect, the consultant’s report will recommend the establishment of a “Centre of Excellence” PMO along the lines of ESI’s Competency Continuum model (Model #2 below). This includes Director-level leadership (a direct report to a Managing Director – VP equivalent) and a core of senior management level “Business Project Managers” whose primary role would be to lead the management of all major, transformational projects and programmes across the business.
It will be clearly and quite rightly perceived within the organisation that if the proposals were to be implemented, there would be a considerable power-shift within the business, with control of projects and resources (human, financial and technical) passing to the PMO along with the mandate to prioritise the use of those resources. Such radical proposals are inevitably doomed from the start. One strategic-level manager may be overheard to say, “What if there isn’t enough work to occupy the Business Project Managers? We’ll end up paying them senior salary rates to sit on their hands!” – this in a highly-complex multi-billion organisation.
You may feel that in this scenario the consultants appear a little naive but in fairness to them, their brief might not be as clear as we would hope. They might have been told that the people to speak to regarding project management were the so-called “Project Controllers”. This role is in fact that of “span-breaker” between project manager and sponsor. Project Controllers in this company are always generalists in the functional line and it would come as no surprise if the consultants were to conclude that the company had no professional project managers running its major projects. Project Controllers often also perform the role of programme or portfolio managers as well as their business-as-usual functional roles. It might be that no-one with the job title “Project Manager” would even be consulted, so it is hardly surprising that the consultants might reach certain erroneous conclusions, for example, that Company B does not employ any professional project managers.
And so the debate might continue with no action forthcoming until a major disaster in the implementation of an organisation-wide programme brings matters to a head and “something” has to be done. The particular function concerned would have to be re-organised; let us suppose that it is “property management”. The following Model #3 illustrates what might be adopted by the organisation as an interim solution.
