{"id":1473,"date":"2009-02-12T06:44:21","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T13:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=1473"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:32:23","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:32:23","slug":"no-oxygen-at-the-top-ae-project-management-challenges-at-the-everest-of-organizations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=1473","title":{"rendered":"No Oxygen at the Top: Project Management Challenges at the Everest of Organizations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bth_everest.jpg\"If you’ve ever been inside of a tin of sardines you will have a pretty good idea of what it’s like to ride the subways of Tokyo during rush hour – only in the subway the sardines are still alive.\u00a0 Even though we are packed together with greater intimacy than most sexual encounters, my inscrutable Japanese companions manage to wear a mask of serenity and composure.\u00a0 Most of my fellow riders have their eyes fixed on their mobile phones, looking up train schedules, checking email, texting their pals, or doing a little shopping on-line.\u00a0 These 21st century urban dwellers use their phones for everything!\u00a0 (I’m told that the average mobile phone purchase in Japan is over $50!)\u00a0 My phone works there, but it costs a bundle per minute, something approaching the cost of a college education, so I tend not to use it much.\u00a0 Instead, I’m looking around to see if anyone else notices that those of us fortunate enough to have a seat have our faces at crotch-level with the people standing.<\/p>\n

Nope!\u00a0 No one seems to notice, so I go back to gazing at the digital display of our progress from station to station, learning to read Kanji by comparing the English version to the Japanese version of the names of the towns that we are hurtling through.\u00a0 (I was surprised to find out that, much like the San Francisco Bay Area, Tokyo is not one city, but a whole bunch, all grown together like dandelions overtaking the grass on an unkempt lawn.)\u00a0 Sweat pouring down my body, my mind soon wanders to anyplace but this train.\u00a0 Ah, a smile overtakes my face as I look anticipate a languid soak in the tub back at the hotel, followed by a massage by a miniscule elderly woman resembling my grandmother, only about half her size.\u00a0 (In this case size does NOT matter.\u00a0 You couldn’t get a deeper, more thorough massage from a wrestler named Boris.)\u00a0 I just finished the toughest consulting engagement of my life.\u00a0 It was one of those experiences that you look back on and say “Gosh, I learned a lot!”, which is code for “Holy crap, that was painful as hell!”\u00a0 Here are some of the lessons that I hope never to learn the hard way again.<\/p>\n

Bring on the Stress Fest!\u00a0 Rewind to about 2 years ago.\u00a0 When we finally closed the deal after well over a year of excruciating meetings, nit-picky proposal revision and seemingly endless negotiations, we celebrated!\u00a0 Now the challenge was to deliver.\u00a0 Wahoo!\u00a0 Over the next 12 months we worked intensely with nearly twenty senior leaders drawn from 4 continents.\u00a0 These were business managers with substantial regional responsibilities in this huge multi-national Japanese corporation.\u00a0 Because participants were dispersed throughout the world, we bunched our face-to-face work into six action-packed weeks of workshops and several real-world breakthrough projects scattered throughout the year.\u00a0 The projects tackled enormous business challenges, all of which had been festering for a decade or more, and every one of them secretly considered intractable, if not impossible, even to some of the executives who dreamed up the projects.\u00a0 In the gaps between each workshop there was a blizzard of planning, project work, preparation and status reports, not to mention the totally fruitless anxiety, worry and internal strife generated by this kind of global stress fest.<\/p>\n

Once More Into the Breach!\u00a0 Enduring, and ultimately succeeding, in a tough project has always taught me more than gliding effortlessly to success in an easy project.\u00a0\u00a0 This one was the former.\u00a0 Ouch!\u00a0 An excessive quantity of sake should eliminate the most agonizing memories, but before I indulge, let me share a few things that my team and I learned in between savoring the soba, sushi and seaweed of the Land of the Rising Sun.\u00a0 As I share these lessons learned a common theme emerges from the voice in my head saying “You shoulda known better!”\u00a0 Should, should, should . . . I feel “should” upon!\u00a0 Of the dozens of “shoulds” that are swirling through my brain, here are my top three:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We should have found out who really hired us.\u00a0 I still don’t know!\u00a0 Even though we were meeting with Human Resources (HR) people to set priorities, clarify goals and make detailed plans for our project, it soon became clear that they were not the decision-makers.\u00a0 Perhaps we were distracted because the HR people said something like “We’re a world famous company, and we’d like to hire you to do this really cool project for many weeks over the next year, paying you oodles of money, to help our people become global leaders.”\u00a0 I began to suspect that something was amiss when the same person who was telling us this was also setting up the chairs in the meeting room, hanging flip chart paper on the wall, and taking out the trash at night.\u00a0 Another clue was their inability to respond to any questions about the business purpose of the program or measurable success criteria without a week or two delay: in retrospect they were obviously consulting the real decision-makers.\u00a0 The person pulling the levers could have been the Wizard of Oz for all I know, or some other mysterious man behind some flimsy curtain.\u00a0 Who knows!\u00a0 There are a few prime suspects, but my best guess is that the person who originally hired us transferred to another department, leaving the rest of the organization to figure out how to make best use of the torrent of organizational change that our team unleashed on them.\u00a0 “All for one and one for all!”, I shouted.\u00a0 Our team and the HR gang clung together and staggered onward toward our goals.<\/p>\n

In spite of my most tenacious efforts, HR insisted that our 3 primary goals were all equally important, so I did what any Scrappy Project Manager would do – I guessed.\u00a0 Then we repeated these invented priorities at every opportunity, with every stakeholder, so that only a totally comatose person could have been oblivious to them.\u00a0 For a while we steadfastly navigated by them, making good progress towards what we suspected was the most important goal.\u00a0 But, halfway through the project we had a somber meeting with “the person most likely to have made the decision to hire us”, where we were given a hard reset – the #3 priority had become the #1 priority.\u00a0 (To be fair, this was the first time that this company had conducted such a program and, like many project “customers”, they were discovering what they REALLY wanted as things progressed.)\u00a0 As flexible as a Cirque du Soleil gymnast, we veered strongly in the new direction for the rest of the engagement.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We should have made sure that the executives getting “help” wanted that help.\u00a0 The breakthrough projects that were tackled were chosen by the most senior executives of the company.\u00a0 “Terrific!”, I thought.\u00a0 “At least we can be sure that we will be working on challenges that the top dogs really care about!”\u00a0 What actually happened, however, is what usually happens when I ask executives how to dramatically improve their business.\u00a0 The sales guy tells me how the product development guy needs to change.\u00a0 The product development guy bemoans the ills of the manufacturing guy, who rolls his eyes as he gestures helplessly towards the R&D guy.\u00a0 The head office blames the regions, and the regions react with bewilderment to the strategies and tactics of the head office.\u00a0 It’s always “the others.”<\/p>\n

Everyone can easily spot ways for the other executives’ areas to substantially improve business results.\u00a0 Unfortunately that is how some of the breakthrough projects were chosen.\u00a0 A brainstormed list of impossible breakthroughs made its way to the CEO, who decided which ones were most worthy.\u00a0 The executive who suggested the idea was not necessarily the same executive who was the lucky beneficiary of this year-long campaign to improve their area of responsibility.\u00a0 Let the politically volatile, territorially defensive, status and ego-protecting games begin!\u00a0 The executive whose area was deemed to need help was then assigned as the project sponsor: kind of like being put in charge of planning your own funeral.\u00a0 Which brings me to my next point . . .<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We should have insisted that we coach the project sponsors on their role.\u00a0 In retrospect, the executive sponsors of these projects didn’t have a clue of what it meant to be a project sponsor, and desperately needed to be coached on how to carry out their duties.\u00a0 But, quite frankly, I was hesitant to suggest that these extremely accomplished “senior executive vice muckity-mucks needed this kind of help.\u00a0 A pox upon me for being cowed by position and title!\u00a0 (. . . and at my age!\u00a0 Shocking, really.)\u00a0 Deferring to the numerous intermediaries between myself and these execs, we allowed ourselves to be lulled into the belief that they knew what to do, and we stayed out of their interactions with the teams.\u00a0 After all, by the time someone has 30 or more years of experience in the corporate world, and is at the helm of an organization of thousands of people responsible for billions of dollars a year in revenue, we figured that they ought to know how to sponsor a project.\u00a0 Well, it just ain’t so.<\/p>\n

One sponsor lobbed grenades into the team bunker just hours before their final presentation, another publicly declared his lack of support for his team’s findings in front of the entire executive team, and another dismissed his team’s ground-breaking work as a validation of well know information already contained in their strategic plan.\u00a0 The worst thing is that this was unfair to the teams, who worked slavishly on these projects for a year only to be hung out to dry like this.\u00a0 One saintly executive did make the climb from “good to great” sponsor by learning along the way, and that was some comfort as we dug our way out of the rubble left by the others.<\/p>\n

But, of course, we should have seen this coming.\u00a0 As mentioned above, some of the sponsors were hostages to “skeleton-in-the-closet” projects that they would rather not have had going on at all.\u00a0 Even if they knew what to do, it was just asking too much for them to heartily encourage and support the very people who were rummaging through their dirty laundry and waving it in front of their boss, CEO.<\/p>\n

Done Twice, Done Right!\u00a0 I’m sure there are plenty of readers out there smiling smugly and congratulating themselves that they would never fall into such predictable and avoidable traps.\u00a0 We should have seen this coming.\u00a0 We should have prevented it.\u00a0\u00a0 And we should never fall into these predictable and avoidable traps again.\u00a0 But before you knock the wind out of yourself patting yourself on your back, keep in mind what happens to human beings under stress.\u00a0 The first time we encounter a new stressful challenge all of the blood rushes to our arms and legs where it is useful for hitting, kicking and running, leaving damn little behind to nourish the brain.\u00a0 As has been pointed out in many a psychology book, we face new stressful situations with little more going for us than a chimpanzee.\u00a0 But, with experience, we humans manage to figure out how to handle these situations with our wits about us.\u00a0 I feel certain that, having once passed through the Valley of Death, next time we’ll be able to avoid these familiar quagmires, and even perhaps qualified to lead guided tours!<\/p>\n

(Originally published on Project@Work<\/a> in 2008)<\/p>\n

– Kimberly Wiefling is the author of Scrappy Project Management: The 12 Predictable and Avoidable Pitfalls Every Project Faces<\/a>, hovering among the top project management books in the USA since launch in 2007. She is the founder of Wiefling Consulting<\/a>, a scrappy global business leadership consultancy committed to enabling her clients to successfully tackle seemingly impossible goals. For the past 3 years she has\u00a0 collaborated with ALC Education, Inc.<\/a>, in Tokyo, working primarily with Japanese companies committed to becoming truly global through transformational leadership and execution with excellence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve ever been inside of a tin of sardines you will have a pretty good idea of what it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,542,541,543],"class_list":["post-1473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","tag-lessons-learned","tag-politics","tag-project-sponsor","tag-roles-and-resonsibilities"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14170,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions\/14170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}