Archive for the ‘Wicked Problems’ Category
Projects as networks of commitments – a paper preview
Mainstream project management standards and texts tend to focus on the tools, techniques and processes needed to manage projects. They largely ignore the fact that projects are conceived, planned, carried out and monitored by people. In a paper entitled, Towards a holding environment: building shared understanding and commitment in projects, Paul Culmsee and I present a viewpoint that puts people and their project-relevant concerns at the center of projects. This post is a summary of the main ideas of the paper which is published in the May 2012 issue of the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business.
Conventional approaches to project management tend to give short shrift to the social aspects of projects – issues such as stakeholders with differing viewpoints regarding the rationale and goals of a project. Our contention is that problems arising from stakeholder diversity are best resolved by helping stakeholders achieve a shared (or common) understanding of project goals and, based on that, a shared commitment to working towards them. Indeed, we believe this is a crucial but often overlooked facet of managing the early stages of a project.
One of the prerequisites to achieving shared understanding is open dialogue –dialogue that is free from politics, strategic behaviours and power games that are common in organisations. Details of what constitutes such dialogue and the conditions necessary for it are described by the philosopher Juergen Habermas in his theory of communicative rationality. Our paper draws extensively on Habermas’ work and also presents a succinct summary of the main ideas of communicative rationality.
The conditions required for open dialogue in the sense described by Habermas are:
- Inclusion: all affected stakeholders should be included in the dialogue.
- Autonomy: all participants should be able to present their viewpoints and debate those of others independently.
- Empathy: participants must be willing to listen to viewpoints that may be different from theirs and make the effort to understand them.
- Power neutrality: differences in status or authority levels should not affect the discussion:
- Transparency: participants must be completely honest when presenting their views or discussing those of others.
We call an environment which fosters open dialogue a holding environment. Although a holding environment as characterised above may seem impossible to create, it turns out that an alliance-based approach to projects can approximate the conditions necessary for one. In brief, alliancing is an approach to projects in which different stakeholders agree, by contract, to work collaboratively to achieve mutually agreed goals while sharing risks and rewards in an equitable manner. There are a fair number of large projects that have been successfully delivered using such an approach (see the case studies on the Center for Collaborative Contracting web site).
Once such an approach is endorsed by all project stakeholders, most of the impediments to open dialogue are removed. In the paper we use a case study to illustrate how stakeholder differences can be resolved in such an environment. In particular we show how project-relevant issues and the diverse viewpoints on them can be captured and reconciled using the IBIS (Issue-based information system) notation (see this post for a quick introduction to IBIS). It should be noted that our concept of a holding environment does not require the use of IBIS; any means to capture issues, ideas and arguments raised in a debate will work just as well. The aim is to reach a shared understanding, and once stakeholders do this – using IBIS or any other means – they are able to make mutual commitments to action.
It should be emphasised that an alliance-based approach to projects takes a fair bit of effort and commitment from all parties to implement successfully. In general such effort is justifiable only for very large projects, typically public infrastructure projects (which is why many government agencies are interested in it). It is interesting to speculate how such an approach can be “scaled down” to smaller projects like the ones undertaken by corporate IT departments. Unfortunately such speculations are not permitted in research papers. However, we discuss some of these at length in our book, The Heretic’s Guide to Best Practices.
In their ground-breaking book on design Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores describe organisations as networks of commitments. We believe this metaphor is appropriate for projects too. As we state in the paper, “Organisations and projects are made up of people, and it is the commitments that people make (to carry out certain actions) that make organisations or projects tick. This metaphor – that projects are networks of commitments – lies at the heart of the perspective we propose in this paper. The focus of project management ought to be on how commitments are made and maintained through the life of a project.
Four organisational myths
One of the ways we make sense of the world is by organising our experiences into stories. More often than not our narratives gloss over complexities, emphasising only those aspects or events that we want to. For example, I might tell a tale of my involvement in a successful project, talking up things I did that worked well while ignoring those that didn’t. The message implicitly conveyed by such a story is that my actions were responsible for the success of the project. Many stories in organisations are built on a similar theme: that success is a consequence of reasoned actions. This is an example of the myth of rationality.
In this post I look at a few myths that are common in organisations, highlighting how they mislead because they overlook other important factors. My discussion draws upon a brilliant (and short!) book by James March entitled, The Ambiguities of Experience.
According to March, organisational stories frequently contain one or more of the following mythic themes:
Rationality: This is theme described earlier, that successes are consequences of reasoned actions. Most folks who work in organisations tacitly subscribe to this myth. One can see this myth at work when people are asked to justify why they took certain actions. Their answers are usually framed in terms of rational expectations of the consequences – i.e. that they rationally expected certain outcomes to follow from their actions. This is true regardless of whether the actions were actually thought through or not. Think about it: what was the answer you gave your manager the last time he or she questioned an action you took?
Hierarchy: This refers to the way in which problems and challenges are analysed. Typically problems are assumed to be decomposable into constituent sub-problems. Solving a problem is thus reduced to tackling the sub-problems. In organisations, this scientific-rational approach is more or less taken for granted as being the only way to solve problems. In reality, however, many organizational issues are wicked – they are difficult to define unambiguously, let alone solve. As an example, see this paper by John Camillus which discusses how the formulation of an organisation’s strategy has elements of wickedness. In our recently published book, The Heretic’s Guide to Best Practices, Paul Culmsee and I discuss how such issues can be tackled using a range of collaborative techniques.
Leadership: Another persistent theme in organizational lore is that of the significance of leaders. One indicator of this is the number of hagiographies of successful CEOs in the management section of bookshops. Another is the number of management school case studies that attempt to link the successes of organisations to the actions of their leaders. In truth, although the actions of a CEO may set the overall direction for an organisation, success or failure depends on a host of other factors that executives have no control over, including the actions of many other people internal and external to the organisation.
Historical efficiency: This is the idea that organisations and ideas compete with each other, and those that come out on top are the best. This myth is commonly seen in the literature of vendors who peddle “good” or “best” organisational practices. In many cases, however, the popularity of these practices has more to do with relentless marketing than inherent quality. Other, possibly better practices may not succeed in gaining mindshare simply because they lack the means to get the message out. Similar myths are common in official histories of organisations: those that do well generally tell their stories in terms of their “unique characteristics” that enabled them to do well in the competitive marketplace. This myth also gets a fair bit of airtime in our book.
These myths are so pervasive in management and marketing literature that we accept them unquestioningly. Now that you know them, you will see them crop up in all kinds of places: marketing brochures, management case studies, biographies of business leaders and even on company web sites (the “About us” page is a good place to start). The point is that the stories we tell about ourselves are only a facet of the truth. Reality is always more nuanced and messier than can ever be captured in stories based on myths.
Models and messes in management – from best practices to appropriate practices
Scientific models and management
Physicists build mathematical models that represent selected aspects of reality. These models are based on a mix of existing knowledge, observations, intuition and mathematical virtuosity. A good example of such a model is Newton’s law of gravity according to which the gravitational force between two objects (planets, apples or whatever) varies in inverse proportion to the square of the distance between them. The model was a brilliant generalization based on observations made by Newton and others (Johannes Kepler, in particular), supplemented by Newton’s insight that the force that keeps the planets revolving round the sun is the same as the one that made that mythical apple fall to earth. In essence Newton’s law tells us that planetary motions are caused by gravity and it tells us – very precisely – the effects of the cause. In short: it embodies a cause-effect relationship.
[Aside: The validity of a physical model depends on how well it stands up to the test of reality. Newton’s law of gravitation is remarkably successful in this regard: among many other things, it is the basis of orbital calculations for all space missions. The mathematical model expressed by Newton’s law is thus an established scientific principle. That said, it should be noted that models of the physical world are always subject to revision in the light of new information. For example, Newton’s law of gravity has been superseded by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Nevertheless for most practical applications it remains perfectly adequate.]
Given the spectacular success of modeling in the physical and natural sciences, it is perhaps unsurprising that early management theorists attempted to follow the same approach. Fredrick Taylor stated this point of view quite clearly in the introduction to his classic monograph, The Principles of Scientific Management. Here are the relevant lines:
This paper has been written…to prove that the best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules and principles, as a foundation. And further to show that the fundamental principles of scientific management are applicable to all human activities, from our simplest individual activities to the work of great corporations, which call for the most elaborate cooperation. And briefly, through a series of illustrations, to convince the reader that whenever these principles are correctly applied, results must follow which are truly astounding…
From this it appears that Taylor’s intent was to prove that management could be reduced to a set of principles that govern all aspects of work in organizations.
The question is: how well did it work?
The origin of best practices
Over time, Taylor’s words were used to justify the imposition of one-size-fits-all management practices that ignored human individuality and uniqueness of organisations. Although, Taylor was aware of these factors, he believed commonalities were more important than differences. This thinking is well and alive to this day: although Taylor’s principles are no longer treated as gospel, their spirit lives on in the notion of standardized best practices.
There are now a plethora of standards or best practices for just about any area of management. They are often sold using scientific language, terms such as principles and proof. Consider the following passage taken from from the Official PRINCE2 site:
Because PRINCE2 is generic and based on proven principles, organisations adopting the method as a standard can substantially improve their organisational capability and maturity across multiple areas of business activity – business change, construction, IT, mergers and acquisitions, research, product development and so on.
There are a couple of other things worth noting in the above passage. First, there is an implied cause-effect relationship between the “proven principles” and improvements in “organizational capability and maturity across multiple areas of business activity.” Second, as alluded to above, the human factor is all but factored out – there is an implication that this generic standard can be implemented by anyone anywhere and the results will inevitably be as “truly astounding” as Taylor claimed.
Why best practices are not the best
There are a number of problems with the notion of a best practice. I discuss these briefly below.
First, every organisation is unique. Yes, much is made of commonalities between organisations, but it is the differences that make them unique. Arguably, it is also the differences that give organisations their edge. As Stanley Deetz mentioned in his 2003 Becker lecture:
In today’s world unless you have exceptionally low labor costs, competitive advantage comes from high creativity, highly committed employees and the ability to customize products. All require a highly involved, participating workforce. Creativity requires letting differences make a difference. Most high-end companies are more dependent on the social and intellectual capital possessed by employees than financial investment.
Thoughtless standardization through the use of best practices is a sure way to lose those differences that could make a difference.
Second, in their paper entitled, De-Contextualising Competence: Can Business Best Practice be Bundled and Sold, Jonathan Wareham and Han Gerrits pointed out that organisations operate in vastly varying cultural and social environments. It is difficult to see how best practice approaches with their one-and-a-half-size –fits-all approach would work.
Third , Wareham and Gerrits also pointed out that best practice is often tacit and socially embedded. This invalidates the notion that it can be transferred from an organization in which it works and to another without substantial change. Context is all important.
Lastly, best practices are generally implemented in response to a perceived problem. However, they often address the symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem. For example, a project management process may attempt to improve delivery by better estimation and planning. However, the underlying cause – which may be poor communication or a dysfunctional relationship between users and the IT department –remains unaddressed.
In his 2003 Becker lecture, Stanley Deetz illustrated this point via the following fable:
… about a company formed by very short people. Since they were all short and they wanted to be highly efficient and cut costs, they chose to build their ceiling short and the doorways shorter so that they could have more work space in the same building. And, they were in fact very successful. As they became more and more successful, however, it became necessary for them to start hiring taller people. And, as they hired more and more tall people, they came to realize that tall people were at a disadvantage at this company because they had to walk around stooped over. They had to duck to go through the doorways and so forth. Of course, they hired organizational consultants to help them with the problem.
Initially they had time-and-motion experts come in. These experts taught teams of people how to walk carefully. Tall members learned to duck in stride so that going through the short doors was minimally inconvenient. And they became more efficient by learning how to walk more properly for their environment. Later, because this wasn’t working so well, they hired psychological consultants. These experts taught greater sensitivity to the difficulties of tall members of the organization. Long-term short members learned tolerance knowing that the tall people would come later to meetings, would be somewhat less able to perform their work well. They provided for tall people networks for support…
The parable is an excellent illustration of how best practices can end up addressing symptoms rather than causes.
Ambiguity + the human factor = a mess
Many organisational problems are ambiguous in that cause-effect relationships are unclear. Consequently, different stakeholders can have wildly different opinions as to what the root cause of a problem is. Moreover, there is no way to conclusively establish the validity of a particular point of view. For example, executives may see a delay in a project as being due to poor project management whereas the project manager might see it as being a consequence of poor scope definition or unreasonable timelines. The cause depends on who you ask and there is no way to establish who is right! Unlike problems in physics, organisational problems have a social dimension.
The visionary Horst Rittel coined the evocative term wicked problem to describe problems that involve many stakeholder groups with diverse and often conflicting perspectives. This makes such problems messy. Indeed, Russell Ackoff referred to wicked problems as messes. In his words, “every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems…. I choose to call such a system a mess”
Consider an example that is quite common in organisations: the question of how to improve efficiency. Management may frame this issue in terms of tighter managerial control and launch a solution that involves greater oversight. In contrast, a workgroup within the organisation may see their efficiency being impeded by bureaucratic control that results from increased oversight, and thus may believe that the road to efficiency lies in giving workgroups greater autonomy. In this case there is a clear difference between the aims of management (to exert greater control) and those of workgroups (to work autonomously). Ideally, the two ought to talk it over and come up with a commonly agreed approach. Unfortunately they seldom do. The power structure in organisations being what it is, management’s solution usually prevails and, as a consequence, workgroup morale plummets. See this post for an interesting case study on one such situation.
Summing up: a need for appropriate practice, not best practice
The great attraction of best practices, and one of the key reasons for their popularity, is that they offer apparently straightforward solutions to complex problems. However, such problems typically have a social dimension because they affect different stakeholders in different ways. They are messes whose definition depends on who you ask. So there is no agreement on what the problem is, let alone its solution. This fact by itself limits the utility of the best practice approach to organisational problem solving. Purveyors of best practices may use terms like “proven”, “established”, “measurable” etc. to lend an air of scientific respectability to their wares, but the truth is that unless all stakeholders have a shared understanding of the problem and a shared commitment to solving it, the practice will fail.
In our recently published book entitled, The Heretic’s Guide to Best Practices, Paul Culmsee and I describe in detail the issues with the best practice approach to organisational problem-solving. More important, we provide a practical approach that can help you work with stakeholders to achieve a shared understanding of a problem and a shared commitment to a commonly agreed course of action. The methods we discuss can be used in small settings or larger one, so you will find the book useful regardless of where you sit in your organisation’s hierarchy. In essence our book is a manifesto for replacing the concept of best practice with that of appropriate practice – practice with a human face that is appropriate for you in your organisation and particular situation.
Eight to Late 