JOHN P. KOTTER, Harvard Business School professor and author of Leading Change, suggests that culture is “a residue” that clings to organizations long after attempts to twist them into new shapes have finished. Creating understanding and appropriate behaviors are starting points, and culture is what is left over—often as a “drag” on change initiatives. Organizations invest great effort in restructuring (project offices), process (methodology), tools (software products), and training. They believe these interventions will fix the problems and create the correct culture. While it may be true that some problems can be fixed, experience shows that culture is too complex and intangible for the problem-solving approach many firms use to create project management capability. And often, when project management “crusaders” press their cause they only limit their success, and possibly fail. Understanding paradox helps us appreciate the value and limitations of the cultural residue, and better select appropriate strategies.
Cynthia Berg of pacemaker developer Medtronic/Micro-Rel has been striving to have project management accepted as a core organizational competency. As part of her work, she has analyzed the change efforts in a number of other organizations. She says, “I have seen companies do terrible damage by initiating a poorly thought out project management imperative program. The worst seems to be from fragmented deployment of various strategies, tools, or enablers without an integrating framework. Frustration and cynicism result.” Commenting on the notion of culture as a residue, she says, “People will tend to change only when the pain of maintaining the status quo is greater than the fear of change. Bottom-line performance is important only if the appropriate behaviors are measured.”
Greg Githens, PMP, of Catalyst Management Consulting, is a frequent contributor to PM Network. Additional information on paradox and the effective project management culture can be found at www.CatalystPM.com.
Exhibit 1. This shows project versus functional organization perspectives. The process for developing a polarity map is first to identify a polarized situation or paradox. Use this template to identify the upsides (+) and downsides (−) of each position's mental model. A holistic view of the situation emerges. People find there are situations to manage, not problems to solve.
Exhibit 2. Is this a picture of two faces or a vase? Paradoxically, it is both.
Is Your Culture in a Groove or in a Rut?
In creating the shared learned behavior we call “culture” individuals and organizations learn what works and make it an efficient “groove.” The practice becomes habit and enters the collective unconscious through language and social norms.
Some cultures take their groove to excess and get trapped in a rut. (Culture also can solidify around what does not work.) Cultural rigidity is my own term for culture that has learned behaviors that result in blind dogma, extreme command-and-control regulation, groupthink, measuring unimportant things in great detail, sterile procedures that add little value, and conflict avoidance. Individuals lock in cultural rigidity with closed-mindedness, personal opportunism, and laziness.
Rigidity stems from normally valid and productive ideas and behavior. For example, control is a necessary management function for uncertainty and threats from the environment. But when taken to extremes, it produces a host of unwanted side effects. When control is rewarded organizations get more control. Rigidity results when the organization is unable to encourage flexibility.
I am not saying all functional management is culturally rigid; but the assumptions that lead to functional management excess, if taken to excess, can lead to rigidity—just as project management, if taken to excess, can lead to the opposite of rigidity— chaos.
Polarization is a state of organizational conflict where individuals or small groups inflexibly maintain their positions on a “pole.” Polarization is characterized by failing to understand legitimate differences, and by adopting adversarial behaviors. Typically, each position vigorously defends the rightness of its position and criticizes the wrongness of the other position. Turf battles and silos are symptoms of polarization.
Many people work in polarized environments where there are sides (“us versus them”) and zero sum transactions (win-lose), undermined trust, practices of fire-fighting and crisis management. Polarization leads to and is an aspect of cultural rigidity.
The following two cases, of companies spending large sums of money to develop project management capability, illustrate polarization, its development, and how to reduce it.
Case 1: Why are Functional Managers Slow to Adopt Project Management? SmartTech is a fictional name for a global technology company that has made a visible and expensive commitment to project management. SmartTech invested considerable effort in telling project managers about a new strong matrix structure for projects and training them in contemporary project management concepts and methods. Top-down support was present, and the organization's reengineering project group was executing its plan with vigor.
Yet, change was slow in coming. The prospect of managing the business by projects was foreign to all and even threatening to some. SmartTech functional managers traditionally held power and authority in the company. They tended to become functional managers because of technical and personal skills rather than team skills. It was through the functional chairs that one rose to the executive chambers. To get there, you competed with other silos for funds, prestige, and head count.
Projects at SmartTech were vehicles for applying advanced technology. Good managers, in the traditional SmartTech view, were technical experts. Project management was not seen as a discipline, but as a tool for administrative coordinating. Project management was seen as secondary to the organization's “real” work.
Shifting power and authority to cross-functional project teams just didn't make sense for the functional managers. The cynical ignored and scoffed; they had seen it all before. In part, they were threatened by not knowing whether they would have jobs when all was said and done. No one at SmartTech had specifically drawn a picture of what functional managers had to do differently to support project management as a core organizational capability, so why not just keep doing what they had been?
To clarify and show support for the project management vision, the general manager of one SmartTech division called a meeting to examine the unacceptably slow adoption of the project management vision.
Exhibit 1 was the output of the meeting. It maps the concerns of the functional managers and the ideas of the project managers. Functional managers saw the proposed change by focusing on the upper left and lower right quadrants. Their perspective was polarized, as was the perspective of the project-oriented people, who tended to see the upper right and lower left quadrants.
SmartTech managers initially lacked a balanced picture of their organization's performance model. As participants developed the polarity map, they began to understand the nature of the conflict, and their opposition and skepticism diminished. Too, they discovered the value of the project management capabilities to organizational performance and the organization's strategy for blending it with the existing strengths of the functional organization. They realized they were expending unnecessary energy worrying about turf battles.
Next, the functional and project managers collectively focused on the need for SmartTech to maintain and extend competitive advantages. Both project managers and functional managers began to agree on specific actions, roles, and responsibilities. SmartTech's managers could now start to institutionalize the behaviors and thinking needed to engage the contributions of project management, leverage functional expertise, and improve organizational performance.
You can draw several lessons from the SmartTech case:
Individuals need to recognize that behaviors reflect underlying assumptions of “the way things work” and that these assumptions need to be surfaced.
People are rational, but they may make decisions based on flawed assumptions.
Most people tend to see issues fairly simply, and generally, the way they do things is the right way.
Stressing problem solving and efficient use of resources can cause polarization and suboptimization.
Senior managers generally see the merits of project-based work. But, senior management dictates, by themselves, are not a sufficient condition for change.
Senior managers have to work through changes with managers to help each person understand the specific strategies and behaviors the organization needs. It is middle managers who struggle most with the transition from functional-oriented practices to project-oriented practices. The senior manager's job is to keep the initiatives visible and provide the time to deal with the hard work of “getting it to make sense.”
Reader Service Number 090
It is trite to say—and probably inaccurate—that people “resist change.” My experience is that the influence of senior managers in sponsoring change is overstated. Both the SmartTech case and the Coperni-Corp case that follows suggest that everyone can build a balanced understanding of the contribution of project management and functional management to organization performance.
Case 2: What is Ineffective Crusading? Coperni-Corp, a fictitious name for a global firm that has made an extensive commitment to project management education, has a long-standing and strongly ingrained functional management culture. Its project management initiative attained considerable visibility from its large and influential corporate university, which had gained prestige from developing a large cadre of PMPs. Individuals had heard that “project management was the place to be” and were eager to gain recognition for their knowledge and to apply the principles and techniques of modern project management.
Here is what happened as one group considered how it could build project management discipline in its divisions of the organization. Group members became crusaders; crusaders who saw the downside of the present culture and provided vision and energy for change.
Pragmatists in the crusaders’ group found ideas about modern project management as good “in theory,” but they worried that their managers would never let them apply the knowledge. (An interesting point: Labeling something as theory is a frequent ploy to avoid dealing with a new idea.)
“Why should functional managers change?” Using the same mapping technique used to generate Exhibit 1, the workshop members began listing organizational design issues. It quickly became apparent to me that participants could easily identify the upside of the project management perspective and the downside of the functional management position (but not the opposite polarity).
Most of us regard ourselves as problem solvers, and see inadequacies in the other pole's downside as a problem to solve. Naturally, the Coperni-Corp crusaders developed strategies to fix the functional manager's shortcomings with the project management solution. I counseled them that this confrontation would likely backfire because they did not understand the tradition-bearers.
Tradition-bearers emphasize the positive things that have been built into the organization and need preserving. They bring a legacy of accomplishment and institutional memory. Coperni-Corp functional management contributed a number of positive organizational values, including technical development, supplier relations, customer relations, market knowledge, regulatory knowledge and business rules, and they maintained business-vital systems. In short, they understood the environment of the business and took responsibility for keeping the organization running.
Most tradition-bearers have seen things come and go and many choose to adopt a patient, defiant posture. Tradition-bearers can and will ignore the upside of the crusaders’ position and be insulted by having the downside of their position explored—the downside is just a problem they will have to address after they attend to more pressing issues. The crusaders’ righteousness causes more polarization, and thus more rigidity.
Labeling project management as a tool is another way to discount a change effort. In a multiyear study of management tools, Darryl Rigby of Bain & Company found that 77 percent of surveyed executives agree with the statement, “Most management tools promise more than they can deliver,” and 30 percent agree with “Most tools we've used have not been successful.” As logical as it might be to sell or advocate the benefits of project management, crusaders need to realize that their tactics may be counterproductive. They need to recognize their own and others’ entrenched assumptions, opinions, and biases.
How should the crusaders persuade the tradition-bearers? To crusade effectively, they must:
1. Recognize the upside of the tradition-bearer's position.
2. Admit the downside of their own position. Summarize and suggest some preliminary conclusions.
3. Introduce the upside of their position.
Reader Service Number 091
4. Cautiously reveal the downside of the polarized position. Extend conclusions and search for collaborative approaches to adding organizational value.
When individuals crusade effectively, they create understanding and foster adoption of new behaviors. As these behaviors and learnings settle in, the organization's culture acquires new characteristics.
Both the SmartTech and Coperni-Corp cases explain by example the need for balanced understanding of the project-centric and functional-centric perspectives and the presence of cultural residue. To improve organizational performance, organizations need to learn to synthesize the strengths and weaknesses of each polarized perspective.
Paradox is an Integrated Picture of Polarized Perspectives
Take a look at Exhibit 2. Do you see a pair of faces, or a vase? Which is the positive and which the negative background image? In this optical illusion, the “truth” depends where you focus your attention. As you synthesize positive and negative images, you recognize the illustration includes both a vase and two faces. This is paradox.
Paradox is a condition in which seeming contradictions are true and coexist. Paradox often involves notions of meaning and truth, and conclusions can clash strongly with intuition or common sense. The famous Liar's Paradox is, “What I am now saying is false.” Another example of paradox is Pablo Picasso's statement, “Art is a lie that exposes a truth.”
Organizational culture is full of paradox, a number of them specific to project management:
Paradox 1: Functional management is a vital organizational capability that will diminish organizational performance. Functional management provides expertise and stability. If it were not for functional managers, organizations would practice as small craft shops. Functions are permanent work systems and are quite good at preserving knowledge. Organizational decline occurs when core functional competencies (the purpose of functional management) become core rigidities.
Paradox 2: Project management is a vital organizational capability that will diminish organizational performance. Project management applies, integrates, customizes and synchronizes organizational assets toward project goals. Projects extract knowledge and resources and often fragment the critical mass of technical expertise. Further, projects tend not to transfer knowledge back into the performing organization. This leads to loss of organizational competency, which in turn leads to decline of organizational performance.
Either of these paradoxes, if inadequately understood, cause polarization. For many, realizing that a paradox has two poles is an “aha” experience. As you get comfortable with the concept, you will see that you have situations to manage rather than problems to solve. Situations-versus-problems is the reason why trying to engineer or fix culture is likely to fail; only part of the problem is fixed and new downsides are introduced.
So, culture is learned, polarization is incomplete understanding that expresses itself in rigid cultures, and paradox is present and often unrealized. Can we use this to describe something important about project management culture?
The Effective Project Management Culture
High-performing organizations find a balance between specialization and generalization, between technology and customer, between stability and flexibility. Whether they acknowledge it or not, these organizations have a culture that accepts paradox and avoids the downside of either pole. Thus, an effective project management culture should satisfy these conditions:
An effective project management culture enhances the creation and delivery of value to the customer. It does so by activating functional competencies and processes, without appreciably diminishing the roles, knowledge, skills, or power of functional managers. It allows the functions to continuously improve expertise and knowledge in a way that contributes to present and future project offerings.
Ultimately, the emergence of a project management culture derives from a holistic understanding of the purposes, traditions, and value creation abilities of project management and functional management. By recognizing paradox, the organization can recognize which parts of the culture align with its strategies. Let's look at a few thoughts on putting it into practice:
Reader Service Number 092
In examining these characteristics, Medtronic Micro/Rel's Cynthia Berg offers a practical approach: “First, we need to break down the us-versus-them culture, and restate ‘As an organization, we have a problem; what is the best solution for all involved?' Getting each side (functional and project management) to acknowledge they have valid concerns that is often the springboard for collaboration.”
Reader Service Number 049
Project management should not be a “victor” over functional management competencies. For project management to work effectively, we must include functional managers as key elements of project-based performance. Ken Delcol is the manager of project management for MDS SCIEX, of Concord, Ontario, a manufacturer of mass spectrometers. He says, “We have squeezed our product development process hard, and a key element of our success is having project managers realize that functional managers are not the enemy. Functional managers provide an important role in keeping their areas of expertise on the leading edge while providing a flexible resource pool that supports the demands of projects.”
Jerry Groen of Abbott Hospital Products Division says, “Culture is a learned phenomena and a stabilizing force. We have to make changes in the context of the functional culture. For example, as an R&D-focused organization we value experimentation. We find we get our best adoption of project management principles through piloting and proving the benefits. Thus the functional organization feels validated in that changes are made in the context of their existing cultural values.”
Mark Flieger is leading the project management effort at Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, a large HMO. “Following our successful use of PM in Y2K, we are looking for ways to expand its application while preserving our operational excellence. The effect of recognizing paradox is a more profound understanding of competing priorities and assumptions. Paradox is an abstract concept, and we need to encourage open-mindedness and patience as we develop balancing strategies for issues and relationships. I'm excited about the insights that paradox offers us in gaining the kind of culture we need to effectively compete in our market.”
I OFFER THIS CHALLENGE to leaders interested in shaping their cultures to leverage the value provided by both project management and functional management: Make your organizations intelligent, according to F. Scott Fitzgerald's criterion: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”