The Beatings Will Continue until Morale Improves—the PMO conundrum

Previously I've written about Enterprise-wide Program and Project Management Offices (EPMOs). As I'm sure you know, these corporate entities promote and enforce project methodologies, and provide program and project reporting to C-level management.

Motivating project managers to use best practices and honest reporting represents a huge challenge for most EPMOs. Management often unwittingly sets EPMOs up to fail by fostering an “us versus them” mentality. This unfortunate and unnecessary situation comes from management's need to control a lot of scary stuff: budget/resources, scope, and schedules. Add in the feared “million dollar surprise” and it's no wonder management is running scared.

The challenges compound when the fearful management team then aims scare tactics at the organization's lower echelons to get them to cooperate and conform. The reaction of these lower levels of personnel—the project managers—then becomes counter-productive to what the management team really wants.

I always ask, “what's in it for them?” when those project managers actually have to implement all of the methodology and reporting that the EPMO enforces.

“They get to keep their jobs,” I recently overheard an executive say. That may be true, but if you're going to take that approach to management, it's time to revisit Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Above I've shown one of the many representations of Maslow's famous hierarchical triangle. You remember how it goes. People have to fulfill the requirements of the lower levels of the triangle before they can move toward the top. If they're concerned about air, water and food, they certainly aren't going to be trying to reach “self-actualization.” Their needs are too basic at that point.

Back to the “you get to keep your job” comment. When you say that to project managers, they will immediately adopt a fear posture. Believe me, if you threaten someone with their livelihood, their first reaction is to hide mistakes, problems, issues and risks. They instinctively want to protect any shred of security they think they have left. In order to overcome the instinctive fears that drag them to the bottom of the triangle, your managers will have to expend a tremendous amount of personal energy and exercise a lot of self-discipline. Wouldn't it be better if all that energy went into managing projects and dealing with life's normal ups and downs?

Where do you want people's heads to be? For my money, I want my people up in the white-zone of self-actualization: solving problems, collaborating with peers and superiors. To achieve that result, they have to be secure in the knowledge that everyone is there to assess the dangers, share the decisions, make adjustments, and help to keep projects from failing.

So how do you motivate project managers to cooperate with an EPMO? You work to convince them that the benefit is mutual to the company and the project manager.

When a project manager hides their project status and risks from their bosses, they're simply saying “trust me. ” Management will hold that same project manager completely responsible if the project fails.

If, however, the project manager complies with the typical methodologies of an EPMO, everything is out in the open. Upper-level management stays aware of what occurs inside the project, and helps make the go/no go decisions. It's hard to blame just the project manager when things go wrong in this kind of environment. Since everyone up to the C-level helps make the decisions and manage the risks, they share in the blame when things go wrong. At this point, the project manager knows there is “safety in numbers.” We can all expend our energies on removing roadblocks, problem solving, and collaborating instead of hiding all of the problems and hoping they go away.

We have even more reasons to seek a collaborative atmosphere in our organizations. We're quickly approaching a period when, once again, there won't be enough people to do the work—including project managers. This time, however, it's serious. Baby-boomers are already going into various stages of retirement, and we will soon have a very small labor pool. It's already happening in Europe, where experts say there is a worker shortage of 10%. We'll have no option other than to adopt a kinder, gentler approach.

In the short run, if the “beatings continue,” morale won't improve; it will crater and we'll get the worst out of everyone. If the job market behaves as expected, people will ultimately have the option to leave. “We're in this together” works better on so many levels. Maybe we can stop the beatings all together.

© 2003 M. A. “Ryan” Yuhas
InterDimension Strategies Inc.