There is something missing from the list above – can the project manager act in the best interests of his project even if that brings him into conflict with the goals or policies of the company? Can he act in the best interests of the project even if that brings him into conflict with his own career goals? Given the devil’s choice or doing the right thing for the project and keeping his job, what does he do?

Once upon a time, a project manager was confronted by his own middle management and the functional managers at a keg party. He was told, gently at first, then more forcefully, to delay his project. The job had been sold at a great profit, making senior management quite pleased, on the condition that it be brought to completion in record time, cutting 10% out of the schedule. With a fat budget, the PM knew that there was money to accelerate the schedule to meet the terms of the contract and therefore making senior management even more happy. The acceleration could be achieved with bonuses to vendors for early delivery, overtime in the shop, cut-throat bidding to contractors for bottom dollar field costs (instead of the usual cronies being hired), and other well-laid plans. But as middle management pointed out, to do these things would damage other projects. Offering bonuses to vendors for long lead parts would spoil the vendors, and soon they’d expect that level of payment for normally delivered components. There were ulterior motives as well – middle management had categorically told senior management that there was no way a schedule could be cut any more than it already was, despite any money to accelerate schedule. The PM was a recent hire from a competitor, and thought that the current “standard” schedule could be improved.

It became a dangerous decision. Should the PM slow down the project per the pressure of middle and functional management, aligning it with the “reality” of the minimum possible schedule sold to senior management, which would violate the terms of the contract to the customer? Or should he keep up his fast track work, making middle management’s representations to senior management seem false, thereby meeting his contract to the customer? Or something in between, such as confiding in senior management what was going on? It came down to: should the PM be a team player by shaving points, or do his best knowing he’d outshine the team? Or tattle on the middle managers who hadn’t interviewed or hired him? Where did the PM’s loyalty lie? With senior management in their remote corner offices? With the customer whom he’d sold the accelerated schedule project to, and with whom he’d contracted? With the middle managers he reported to, who wrote his performance review, who set his bonus recommendation and controlled his vacation? Or to himself, to the integrity of his own career and resume? Or to his wife, who would have preferred to have the PM remain employed?

What would you do?

The project manager, after a few sleepless nights, made a decision. A year later, the project was built in record time, having shaved not 10% from the previous record schedule, but a whopping 15%. Further, the money to accelerate the schedule was much less than expected, adding to the budget underrun, earning the project over 30% profit in a company in which most projects overran or collected a few single-digit percentage points of profit. The project started up without issues, and the customer was so pleased, they ordered three more plants and asked for this particular project manager to be on their jobs, inserting his name into the sales contracts.

And the day after the magnificent project’s startup, the project manager read his resignation letter on company human resources letterhead just before being walked to the parking lot. His princely bonus went to a lower tier project manager who had little going for him other than loyalty to middle management. Without a parking pass or company identification, the PM drove dejectedly out of the parking lot past the gleaming new Mercedes of the less competent team-player project manager. But the fired PM had one thing no one else in the company had – a true success story for his resume. This was a project manager who would always fight for his project, consequences be damned. But he was also a broke one with a furious wife.

Knowing the end result, think again – what would YOU do?

Returning to the beginning question, how can a project fail due to poor project management if it has a “perfect” project manager?

A few years ago, a “pioneer technology” flagship project was built by a chemical company. At the point that the estimating phase ended and the project got a green light for detailed design, fabrication, procurement, and field construction, the company changed its mind about the selection of the project manager. Since this would be the most complicated project in company history, senior management wanted their best man on the job. So “Tough-Guy Tommy” was sent in to replace “Nice-Guy Ned.” The thing is, Ned had shepherded the project from the cocktail napkin phase to the fully ready submission to the board of directors phase. The project got approved for production, and as a “reward,” Nice-Guy got replaced. The project team – the keystone members of it remaining for the entire project – were stunned to see Nice-Guy Ned taken off the job. In the year since the project had been born into the think tank atmosphere of conceptual design, the project team had grown into a close family, led competently by gentle Ned, who knew each member’s strengths and weaknesses, and had built his share of tough projects. But Tough-Guy Tommy was a project manager’s project manager. He’d had a distinguished combat record as a fighter pilot, limped with old football injuries despite having gone to one of the nation’s leading engineering universities. There was no employee at the company who knew more about construction and project management than Tough-Guy Tommy, or who had built more “impossible” projects. Tough-Guy Tommy’s critical path was something to avoid at all costs – to delay Tommy was like trying to slow down a speeding locomotive. No obstacle could stop Tommy – he was a force of nature. His nickname was apt – Tough-Guy Tommy had no patience for any failure, delay, excuse or incompetence. Up to this point, Tommy’s projects had run like expensive Swiss watches. And Tommy might have been clairvoyant for all his mind-reading abilities of his team members – from Tommy’s inquiring mind, there was no hiding place. Tommy knew exactly when to call senior management and when to leave them be, and what to say to management when he did address them. Never a project detail escaped Tommy’s gaze.

But Tough-Guy Tommy was missing one essential quality – he simply wasn’t Nice-Guy Ned. For the duration of the project, the project team mis-performed. The project became so fouled up that it later needed an absurdly complicated and expensive enhancement just to run, and was soon after mothballed. Years of work, all to no good purpose. The post-startup review of the project was conducted, and no ostensible fault was found with any technical aspect of the project or its management. Yet the project would likely have been entirely different under the more benevolent and enlightened leadership of Nice-Guy Ned. We can’t know whether the startup problems would have been averted, but the mass demotivation of the entire project team HAD to have been a major factor in the project’s titanic failure. Senior management would have done better to simply train Nice-Guy Ned and learn to live with him at the helm of the “flagship” project than dethrone him for Tough-Guy Tommy. Perhaps there would have been more discomfort for senior management in learning to trust Nice-Guy Ned, but the project might have been a winner instead of a loser.

Perhaps, though, the culture clash of Tommy as opposed to Ned was not so much a project management failure. Perhaps it was the failure of senior management. But how were they supposed to know?

There is an answer to that question. We will will save that for a later blog.

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