Archive for the ‘Management’ Category
The consultant’s dilemma – a business fable
It felt like a homecoming. That characteristic university smell (books, spearmint gum and a hint of cologne) permeated the hallway. It brought back memories of his student days: the cut and thrust of classroom debates, all-nighters before exams and near-all-nighters at Harry’s Bar on the weekends. He was amazed at how evocative that smell was.
Rich checked the directory near the noticeboard and found that the prof was still in the same shoe-box office that he was ten years ago. He headed down the hallway wondering why the best teachers seemed to get the least desirable offices. Perhaps it was inevitable in a university system that rated grantsmanship over teaching.
It was good of the prof to see him at short notice. He had taken a chance really, calling on impulse because he had a few hours to kill before his flight home. There was too much travel in this job, but he couldn’t complain: he knew what he was getting into when he signed up. No, his problem was deeper. He no longer believed in what he did. The advice he gave and the impressive, highly polished reports he wrote for clients were useless…no, worse, they were dangerous.
He knew he was at a crossroad. Maybe, just maybe, the prof would be able to point him in the right direction.
Nevertheless, he was assailed by doubt as he approached the prof’s office. He didn’t have any right to burden the prof with his problems …he could still call and make an excuse for not showing up. Should he leave?
He shook his head. No, now that he was here he might as well at least say hello. He knocked on the door.
“Come in,” said the familiar voice.
He went in.
“Ah, Rich, it is good to see you after all these years. You’re looking well,” said the prof, getting up and shaking his hand warmly.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, he asked Rich to take a seat.
“Just give me a minute, I’m down to the last paper in this pile,” said the prof, gesturing at a heap of term papers in front of him. “If I don’t do it now, I never will.”
“Take your time prof,” said Rich, as he sat down.
Rich cast his eye over the bookshelf behind the prof’s desk. The titles on the shelf reflected the prof’s main interest: twentieth century philosophy. A title by Habermas caught his eye.
Habermas!
Rich recalled a class in which the prof had talked about Habermas’ work on communicative rationality and its utility in making sense of ambiguous issues in management. It was in that lecture that the prof had introduced them to the evocative term that captured ambiguity in management (and other fields) so well, wicked problems.
There were many things the prof spoke of, but ambiguity and uncertainty were his overarching themes. His lectures stood in stark contrast to those of his more illustrious peers: the prof dealt with reality in all its messiness, the other guys lived in a fantasy world in which their neat models worked and things went according to plan.
Rich had learnt from the prof that philosophy was not an arcane subject, but one that held important lessons for everyone (including hotshot managers!). Much of what he learnt in that single term of philosophy had stayed with him. Indeed, it was what had brought him back to the prof’s door after all these years.
“All done,” said the prof, putting his pen down and flicking the marked paper into the pile in front of him. He looked up at Rich: “Tell you what, let’s go to the café. The air-conditioning there is so much better,” he added, somewhat apologetically.
As they walked out of the prof’s office, Rich couldn’t help but wonder why the prof stuck around in a place where he remained unrecognized and unappreciated.
—
The café was busy. Though it was only mid-afternoon, the crowd was already in Friday evening mode. Rich and the prof ordered their coffees and found a spot at the quieter end of the cafe.
After some small talk, the prof looked him and said, “Pardon my saying so, Rich, but you seem preoccupied. Is there something you want to talk about?”
“Yes, there is…well, there was, but I’m not so sure now.”
“You might as well ask,” said the prof. “My time is not billable….unlike yours.” His face crinkled into a smile that said, no offence intended.
“Well, as I mentioned when I called you this morning, I’m a management consultant with Big Consulting. By all measures, I’m doing quite well: excellent pay, good ratings from my managers and clients, promotions etc. The problem is, over the last month or so I’ve been feeling like a faker who plays on clients’ insecurities, selling them advice and solutions that are simplistic and cause more problems than they solve,” said Rich.
“Hmmm,” said the prof, “I’m curious. What triggered these thoughts after a decade in the game?”
“Well, I reckon it was an engagement that I completed a couple of months ago. I was the principal consultant for a big change management initiative at a multinational. It was my first gig as a lead consultant for a change program this size. I was responsible for managing all aspects of the engagement – right from the initial discussions with the client, to advising them on the change process and finally implementing it.” He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair as he continued, “In theory I’m supposed to offer independent advice. In reality, though, there is considerable pressure to use our standard, trademarked solutions. Have you heard of our 5 X Model of Change Management?”
“Yes, I have,” nodded the prof.
“Well, I could see that the prescriptions of 5 X would not work for that organization. But, as I said, I had no choice in the matter.”
“Uh-huh, and then?”
“As I had foreseen,” said Rich, “the change was a painful, messy one for the organization. It even hit their bottom line significantly. They are trying to cover it up, but everyone in the organization knows that the change is the real reason for the drop in earnings. Despite this, Big Consulting has emerged unscathed. A bunch of middle managers on the client’s side have taken the rap.” He shook his head ruefully. “They were asked to leave,” he said.
“That’s terrible,” said the prof, “I can well understand how you feel.”
“Yes, I should not have prescribed 5 X. It is a lemon. The question is: what should I do now?” queried Rich.
“That’s for you to decide. You can’t change the past, but you might be able to influence the future,” said the prof with a smile.
“I was hoping you could advise me.”
“I have no doubt that you have reflected on the experience. What did you conclude?”
“That I should get out of this line of work,” said Rich vehemently.
“What would that achieve?” asked the prof gently.
“Well, at least I won’t be put into such situations again. I’m not worried about finding work, I’m sure I can find a job with the Big Consulting name on my resume,” said Rich.
“That’s true,” said the prof, “but is that all there is to it? There are other things to consider. For instance, Big Consulting will continue selling snake oil. How would you feel about that?”
“Yeah, that is a problem – damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” replied Rich. “You know, when I was sitting in your office, I recalled that you had spoken about such dilemmas in one of your classes. You said that the difficulty with such wicked issues is that they cannot be decided based on facts alone, because the facts themselves are either scarce or contested…or both!”
“That’s right,” said the prof, “and this is a wicked problem of a kind that is very common, not just in professional work but also in life. Even relatively mundane issues such as whether or not to switch jobs have wicked elements. What we forget sometimes, though, is that our decisions on such matters or rather, our consequent actions, might also affect others.”
“So you’re saying I’m not the only stakeholder (if I can use that term) in my problem. Is that right?”
“That’s right, there are other people to consider,” said the prof, “but the problem is you don’t know who they are .They are all the people who will be affected in the future by the decision you make now. If you quit, Big Consulting will go on selling this solution and many more people might be adversely affected. On the other hand, if you stay, you could try to influence the future direction of Big Consulting, but that might involve some discomfort for yourself. This makes your wicked problem an ethical one. I suspect this is why you’re having a hard time going with the “quit” option.”
There was a brief silence. The prof could see that Rich was thinking things through.
“Prof, I’ve got to hand it to you,” said Rich shaking his head with a smile, “I was so absorbed by the quit/don’t quit dilemma from my personal perspective that I didn’t realize there are other angles to consider. Thanks, you’ve helped immensely. I’m not sure what I will do, but I do know that what you have just said will help me make a more considered choice. Thank you!”
“You’re welcome, Rich”
…And as he boarded his flight later that evening, Rich finally understood why the prof continued to teach at a place where he remained unrecognized and unappreciated
On the inherent ambiguities of managing projects
Much of mainstream project management is technique-based – i.e. it is based on processes that are aimed at achieving well-defined ends. Indeed, the best-known guide in the PM world, the PMBOK, is structured as a collection of processes and associated “tools and techniques” that are categorised into various “knowledge areas.”
Yet, as experienced project managers know, there is more to project management than processes and techniques: success often depends on a project manager’s ability to figure out what to do in unique situations. Dealing with such situations is more an art rather than science. This process (if one can call it that) is difficult to formalize and even harder to teach. As Donald Schon wrote in a paper on the crisis of professional knowledge :
…the artistic processes by which practitioners sometimes make sense of unique cases, and the art they sometimes bring to everyday practice, do not meet the prevailing criteria of rigorous practice. Often, when a competent practitioner recognizes in a maze of symptoms the pattern of a disease, constructs a basis for coherent design in the peculiarities of a building site, or discerns an understandable structure in a jumble of materials, he does something for which he cannot give a complete or even a reasonably accurate description. Practitioners make judgments of quality for which they cannot state adequate criteria, display skills for which they cannot describe procedures or rules.
Unfortunately this kind of ambiguity is given virtually no consideration in standard courses on project management. Instead, like most technically-oriented professions such as engineering, project management treats problems as being well-defined and amenable to standard techniques and solutions. Yet, as Schon tells us:
…the most urgent and intractable issues of professional practice are those of problem-finding. “Our interest”, as one participant put it, “is not only how to pour concrete for the highway, but what highway to build? When it comes to designing a ship, the question we have to ask is, which ship makes sense in terms of the problems of transportation?
Indeed, the difficulty in messy project management scenarios often lies in figuring out what to do rather than how to do it. Consider the following situations:
- You have to make an important project-related decision, but don’t have enough information to make it.
- Your team is overworked and your manager has already turned down a request for more people.
- A key consultant on your project has resigned.
Each of the above is a not-uncommon scenario in the world of projects. The problem in each of these cases lies in figuring out what to do given the unique context of the project. Mainstream project management offers little advice on how to deal with such situations, but their ubiquity suggests that they are worthy of attention.
In reality, most project managers deal with such situations using a mix of common sense, experience and instinct, together with a deep appreciation of the specifics of the environment (i.e. the context). Often times their actions may be in complete contradiction to textbook techniques. For example, in the first case described above, the rational thing to do is to gather more data before making a decision. However, when faced with such a situation, a project manager might make a snap decision based on his or her knowledge of the politics of the situation. Often times the project manager will not be able to adequately explain the rationale for the decision beyond knowing that “it felt like the right thing to do.” It is more an improvisation than a plan.
Schon used the term reflection-in-action to describe how practitioners deal with such situations, and used the following example to illustrate how it works in practice:
Recently, for example, I built a wooden gate. The gate was made of wooden pickets and strapping. I had made a drawing of it, and figured out the dimensions I wanted, but I had not reckoned with the problem of keeping the structure square. I noticed, as I began to nail the strapping to the pickets that the whole thing wobbled. I knew that when I nailed in a diagonal piece, the structure would become rigid. But how would I be sure that, at that moment, the structure would be square? I stopped to think. There came to mind a vague memory about diagonals-that in a square, the diagonals are equal. I took a yard stick, intending to measure the diagonals, but I found it difficult to make these measurements without disturbing the structure. It occurred to me to use a piece of string. Then it became apparent that I needed precise locations from which to measure the diagonal from corner to corner. After several frustrating trials, I decided to locate the center point at each of the corners (by crossing diagonals at each corner), hammered in a nail at each of the four center points, and used the nails as anchors for the measurement string. It took several moments to figure out how to adjust the structure so as to correct the errors I found by measuring, and when I had the diagonal equal, I nailed in the piece of strapping that made the structure rigid…
Such encounters with improvisation are often followed by a retrospective analysis of why the actions taken worked (or didn’t). Schoen called this latter process reflection-on-action. I think it isn’t a stretch to say that project managers hone their craft through reflection in and on ambiguous situations. This knowledge cannot be easily codified into techniques or practices but is worthy of study in its own right. To this end, Schon advocated an epistemology of (artistic) practice – a study of what such knowledge is and how it is acquired. In his words:
…the study of professional artistry is of critical importance. We should be turning the puzzle of professional knowledge on its head, not seeking only to build up a science applicable to practice but also to reflect on the reflection-in-action already embedded in competent practice. We should be exploring, for example, how the on-the-spot experimentation carried out by practicing architects, physicians, engineers and managers is like, and unlike, the controlled experimentation of laboratory scientists. We should be analyzing the ways in which skilled practitioners build up repertoires of exemplars, images and strategies of description in terms of which they learn to see novel, one-of-a-kind phenomena. We should be attentive to differences in the framing of problematic situations and to the rare episodes of frame-reflective discourse in which practitioners sometimes coordinate and transform their conflicting ways of making sense of confusing predicaments. We should investigate the conventions and notations through which practitioners create virtual worlds-as diverse as sketch-pads, simulations, role-plays and rehearsals-in which they are able to slow down the pace of action, go back and try again, and reduce the cost and risk of experimentation. In such explorations as these, grounded in collaborative reflection on everyday artistry, we will be pursuing the description of a new epistemology of practice.
It isn’t hard to see that similar considerations hold for project management and related disciplines.
In closing, project management as laid out in books and BOKs does not equip a project manager to deal with ambiguity. As a start towards redressing this, formal frameworks need to acknowledge the limitations of the techniques and procedures they espouse. Although there is no simple, one-size-fits-all way to deal with ambiguity in projects, lumping it into a bucket called “risk” (or worse, pretending it does not exist) is not the answer.
Objectivity and the ethical dimension of organisational decision-making
When making decisions, some people follow a structured process that involves gathering data, identifying options and analysing them to arrive at a decision. Others prefer an approach in which they seek to understand the diversity of perspectives on the issue and then attempt to synthesise a decision based on their understanding. To be sure these are stereotypes and, like all stereotypes, are somewhat exaggerated. Nevertheless, most decision-makers in organisations fall into one of these categories, at least as far as their preferred decision-making mode is concerned. Of course, people may change from one mode to another, depending on the situation. For example, a person who is predominantly an objective decision maker in his or her professional life might not be so objective when it comes to making personal decisions.
The differences between the two approaches roughly mirrors the divide between those who believe in an objective reality and those who believe that reality, or at least our perception of it, is a subjective matter. This is akin to the difference between CP Snow’s Two Cultures: the scientists and the artists. At the risk of making a gross generalisation, those who have a scientific or technical background tend to fall into the first category whereas those who lean towards the arts or humanities tend to fall into the other. Like all generalisations this one is, again, not strictly correct, but I think it is fair to say that a person’s training does have an influence on what they deem as the right way to make decisions.
The physicist and polymath Heinz von Foerster summed this up nicely when he noted that the difference between the two types of decision-makers is akin to the differences between discoverers and inventors. The objective decision-maker (the discoverer) attempts to discover the objectively correct decision based on what he or she believes to be true. On the other hand, the subjective decision-maker (the inventor) constructs or creates the decision based on facts and opinion (or even emotion) rather than facts alone.
The conventional view of decision making in organisations – that decisions should be made on the basis of facts – does not recognize this difference. To be sure, matters that can be decided based on facts should be made on the basis of facts. For example, a decision regarding the purchase of equipment can (often) be made based on predetermined criteria.The problem, however, is that most important decisions in organisations do not fall into this category – they have wicked elements that cannot be resolved by facts because the “facts” themselves are ambiguous. Unfortunately, decision-makers often do not understand the difference between the two types of decision problems. A common symptom of this lack of understanding is that when confronted with a wicked decision problem, many decision-makers feel compelled to clothe their reasoning and choices in a garb of (false) objectivity.
The above is not news to observers and scholars of organisational life – see this post, for example. However, a not-so-well-appreciated dimension to the objective/subjective debate on decision-making is that wicked decision problems invariably have an ethical dimension. I elaborate on this briefly below.
In a paper on ethics and cybernetics, von Foerster noted that the objective approach to decision making is but a means of avoiding responsibility. In his words:
…objectivity requires that the properties of an observer be left out of any descriptions of his (sic) observations. With the essence of observing (namely the processes of cognition) having been removed, the observer is reduced to a copying machine with the notion of responsibility successfully juggled away.
Objectivity…and other devices [such as rules and processes] are all derivations of a choice between a pair of in-principle undecidable questions [See Note 1] which are:
“Am I apart from the universe?”
or
“Am I a part of the universe?”
Although von Foerster may be accused overblown rhetoric in the quote, he raises a critical question that we all ought to ask ourselves when confronted with an undecidable issue:
When making this decision, am I going to avoid involvement (and responsibility) by hiding behind rules or processes, or am I going to take full responsibility for it regardless of the outcome?
An honest answer will reveal that such decisions are invariably made on ethical grounds rather than objective ones. Indeed, the decisions we make in our professional lives tell us more about ourselves than we might be willing to admit.
An undecidable question is one that cannot be decided on logical grounds alone – a wicked problem by another name. See my post on wickedness, undecidability and the metaphysics of organizational decision making for more on this point.
Eight to Late 