Towards an antifragile IT strategy
Introduction
In his thought-provoking book on antifragility, Nassim Taleb makes the point that the opposite of fragility is not robustness or resilience, rather it is the ability to thrive on or benefit from uncertainty. There is no word in the English language to describe such behavior, and that is what led him to coin the term antifragile.
Nature is an excellent example of an antifragile system: whenever subjected to a cataclysmic event (like this one that occurred ~66 million years ago), nature manages not only to recover, but does so in novel and arguably better ways. Unlike nature, however, most human-made systems tend to be fragile. An example that Taleb highlights is the global financial system , not just prior to the 2008 financial crisis but even now.
The broader lesson to be learnt from the financial crisis is that it is impossible to predict the future in any detail. Systems should therefore be designed to cope with (if not take advantage of) the irreducible uncertainty associated with this lack of predictability. Human-made systems that overlook this inescapable fact tend to be brittle by design.
The above is true not only of systems, but also of future-directed activities such as strategic planning. Overlooking the role of irreducible uncertainty in planning invariably locks an organization into an inflexible course of action. Unfortunately, this is not always appreciated by those who run organisations. As Taleb puts it:
Corporations are in love with the idea of the strategic plan. They need to pay to figure out where they are going. Yet there is no evidence that strategic planning works —we even seem to have evidence against it. A management scholar, William Starbuck, has published a few papers debunking the effectiveness of planning [see this paper, for example]—it makes the corporation option-blind, as it gets locked into a non-opportunistic course of action.
The trick, as Taleb hints in the above passage (and elaborates on in his book), is to plan in such a way as to take advantage of options that we are unaware of now, but might emerge in the future.
That, of course, is easier said than done.
In this post, I draw on Taleb’s book and my own experiences to discuss how one can formulate an IT strategy that thrives on uncertainty. Although my focus is primarily on IT, the points discussed have a wider applicability to strategic planning in general.
Towards an antifragile IT strategy
Before we get into antifragility, it is useful to take a brief look at how IT strategy is usually formulated.
Although some IT leaders will contest this point, a good majority of organisations tend to view IT as a cost rather than a strategic focus area. As a consequence, the objectives of an IT strategy are generally geared towards cost reduction and increased efficiency. The obvious ways in which to do this are through strict governance, standardization and/or outsourcing. Unfortunately, these actions tend to make organisations less flexible and hence more susceptible to uncertainty…and thus more fragile.
So, the key to an antifragile strategy is flexibility…but what exactly is flexibility?
The best definition of flexibility I have come across is the one proposed by Gregory Bateson who defined it as uncommitted potential for change (see this post for more on Bateson’s definition of flexibility). Only if one is flexible in this sense can one take advantage of unexpected events when they occur. The problem of formulating an antifragile IT (or any other!) strategy thus boils down to finding ways in which one can increase one’s flexibility. With that in mind, here are some suggestions.
Decentralisation
This one is going to raise some eyebrows because the general trend in the world of corporate IT is to move in exactly the opposite direction – i.e. towards greater centralisation. The drive to centralisation manifests itself in many different ways: from top-down decision-making to the deployment of standardized processes and pan-organisational “enterprise” applications (single instance ERP systems being an extreme example).
The justification offered by advocates of centralisation is that it increases efficiency and reduces cost by using a one-size-fits-all approach. In reality, however, such an approach almost always has undesirable features. For example:
- It overlooks the unique features of different structural units of the organization (subsidiaries in different countries, for example). Indeed, this is precisely at platform standardization fail – see my post entitled, The ERP paradox for more on this point.
- It increases coupling between different structural units. Since systems and processes have a global reach, an unexpected glitch in any of these will affect all structural units within the organization.
Decentralisation basically amounts to giving structural units the autonomy they need in order to make decisions and choices that affect them. To be sure, this must be balanced with some oversight and direction from a central authority, but the overall aim should be a federal structure rather than a centralized one. A few examples of things that can be controlled centrally include network infrastructure, security…and possibly even things such as preferred vendors, especially from the perspective of getting volume discounts on pricing. There is no black and white here: choices need to be made judiciously and revisited if they don’t work.
Agility
I use the term agile here in the sense of adaptability rather than as a reference to the slew of methodologies that go under the banner of Agile. Indeed, agility in the sense I use it here is more about a mindset than a methodology: if you are adapting to a shifting environment by changing your approach and priorities appropriately, then you are being agile in the sense of adaptability.
So, what does agility entail? Here are some things I see as being important:
- Responding to changes within and outside the organization…but only after determining that they need to be responded to. The qualifier is important: one must be able to distinguish between changes that merit a response and those that don’t. Moreover, any change should be instituted in a gradual or incremental fashion so that one can adjust one’s approach and take corrective actions if needed. Agility does not imply rapid, large-scale change.
- Sensing (or even creating!) new opportunities and taking advantage of them. The term intrapreneurial is often used to describe such a mindset. Many IT leaders are aware of the need to do this, but don’t always know how. In my experience, instituting a dedicated innovation group isn’t the best way to go about it. Instead, it may be better to focus on creating an environment in which people feel inspired to try new things. One of the ways to do this is to actively encourage staff to learn by experimenting on company time – say, one Friday afternoon per month – with no expectation of useful outcomes.
- Building flexibility into your external contracts so that you can respond to changes that weren’t foreseen when the contract was drawn up. Essentially this amounts to building a trust-based relationship with your vendors (see the last point in the present post for more on this) and factoring in transaction costs in your outsourcing deals.
An agile mindset is unlikely to thrive in an IT department that is bogged down by overly onerous rules and procedures. To be sure, rules and processes are necessary, but not at the expense of flexibility.
Diversification
One of the keys to being antifragile in financial investing is to spread one’s investments over a range of different products. In analogy, one of the best ways towards developing an antifragile IT strategy is to diversify elements of your IT environment, especially those things that are likely to be negatively affected by uncertainty.
Here are some examples:
- For coverage in times of trouble, ensure that your team consists of people with overlapping sets of skills. This should be reinforced by periodic cross-training of staff in all key technologies that are used within your organisation.
- Hire people with different thinking styles. Your teams should contain a mix of people with analytic and synthetic approaches to problem solving. Most uncertain situations require both types of approaches.
- Diversify your vendor base. Among other things this means do not…and I repeat, do not…tie yourself to a single vendor by signing a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract!
- Set up small, low-cost skunkworks projects to explore technologies and ideas that have the potential to provide your business an edge.
- Seek to understand diverse viewpoints. Any important decision should be made only after soliciting and understanding viewpoints that are different from yours. Such an understanding will lead to better decisions than those made by relying on gut instinct or advice from a single source.
…and I’m sure there are many other possibilities.
Creating an environment of trust
I kept this for the last because it is possibly the hardest to put into practice. An antifragile IT strategy will only work if there is a mutual trust between all parties involved in a business relationship – be they managers and employees or IT folks and the businesses they serve. Although much has been written and spoken about trust, the fact is that it is conspicuous by its absence in the present day corporate world. Indeed, use of the word in corporate circles tends to evoke cynical reactions from the rank and file; it is seen as platitude rather than a word of significance.
Why is trust important?
Elinor Ostrom’s prize winning work established that trust is one of the core relationships that promote cooperation (see this post for more on this point). In situations of uncertainty, those who work in a high-trust environment would generally be willing to step outside their regular roles and work with others to fix the problem. In contrast those in a low-trust environment are likely to switch off or worse, start apportioning blame. On another note, people are more likely to share their ideas in a high-trust environment rather than in one that is riven by mistrust and unhealthy competition. I’m pretty sure that most readers would have experience of low-trust environments and would know from experience that such work environments are fragile in that they simply fall apart under stress.
It should be noted that that trust is also important in external relationships, such as those with vendors. Although purchasing and legal departments are quick to advise us about the importance of rock-solid contracts, in my experience it is far better to rely on trust. Indeed, it has been suggested that contracts can destroy trust!
Finally, just in case it is not clear: the onus for creating an environment of trust lies with management rather than the rank and file.
Summing up
I offer the above as some suggestions aimed at making your IT environment less susceptible, even responsive, to unexpected external or internal events. Indeed, I believe that in times of uncertainty, they are likely to work much better than some of the well-worn but discredited command and control approaches that are inexplicably popular.
To sum up: IT strategies are invariably focused on improving efficiency and reducing cost. Typical measures to achieve this tend to reduce flexibility (tighter governance and outsourcing, for example). As a result most IT strategies are unable to deal with, let alone benefit from uncertainty. In this post I have outlined key elements of an antifragile IT strategy that can correct this oversight.
When I reviewed this piece just prior to posting it, I was struck by the fact that the points I have mentioned have more to do with social or ethical matters than technology. This reminded me of Heinz von Foerster’s ethical imperative:
“Act always so as to increase the number of choices.”
And that, quite possibly, is the perfect one-line summary of an antifragile strategy.
Making sense of project management – a conversation with Jon Whitty
I’ve long been thinking about initiating an ongoing series of conversations with sensemakers – a term I define, very broadly, as people who help us make sense of the things we do at work. So I’m absolutely delighted to kick-off the series with Dr. Jon Whitty, who teaches project management at the University of Southern Queensland.
In an hour-long conversation, Jon shared his unique perspective on project management, seasoning his insights with anecdotes ranging from the Simpsons to medieval rituals and fairs.
Intrigued? Then read on…
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KA: Good morning, Jon! It’s great to have you as the first guest on my sensemakers series. To get things going, please tell us a bit about yourself.
JW: Thanks for that – I’m always glad to be a guinea pig [laughs]
Actually, I see myself as being a little selfish because much of what I do is about explaining stuff to myself. Then I realise that if I write it down, other people might find it useful too. But largely it’s about me trying to solve problems and explain stuff to myself.
Specifically, one of the things I find myself doing is looking at topics like project or program management using an evolutionary approach, which is a Darwinian framework in which one looks at things through the lens of competition, adaptation and selection, and see how they play out in the real world.
KA: Your paper on the memetic paradigm of project management exemplifies this approach. Incidentally, that was the first work of yours that I read and it completely blew me away. Among other things, one of the things that struck me when I read it is that a project should be treated as a system – you can’t treat parts of it in isolation. (Editor’s note: see this article for a summary of Jon’s paper)
JW: Yeah, that’s very much in my way of thinking. One of the things about taking an evolutionary view is that you can’t “half swallow the pill” – you’ve got to swallow the whole thing. And when you look at the whole thing, what strikes you is that it is actually rather meaningless; meaning is something we impose on it.
This might sound somewhat radical so let me elaborate by drawing on the great philosopher Homer…I mean Homer Simpson, of course…
I think it’s in the episode in which he donates blood for Mr. Burns. Towards the end of the show Mr. Burns gives him a gift, and it’s this big carved stone head (something like an Easter Island statue). So you have this head is sitting in the Simpsons’ lounge, and they’re all trying to make sense out of it. Marge goes through all the possible morals that one can get out of the episode – may be it is this and may be it’s that and so on. So, there is much debate but no consensus. Finally, Homer interrupts and says, “Marge, there is no purpose to any of this…it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.”
(Editor’s note: The Simpson episode is The Blood Feud)
That really goes to the heart of the evolutionary framework – which is, to see things as they actually happen, without any presumption of purpose. As soon as you start putting purpose in there, you start clouding your perception of what is going on. What you have to look at instead is the notion of selection. Some people criticize the evolutionary framework because they see it as randomness. Although there is an element of randomness to it, it is selection that is the key.
So you have this system, as you put it, and there are all these people caught up in it – project managers, teams, sponsors etc. –interacting with each other and also with various artefacts (Gantt charts, status reports, plans etc.). The point is, stakeholders and artefacts all have different purposes: artefacts aren’t there because they work, and neither are people there because they are committed to the objective. Purposes and meanings differ. The utility of the evolutionary framework is that it exposes the system for what it really is, without being clouded by the meanings that are imposed upon projects by standards and frameworks.
(Editor’s note: for example, a project manager may craft a status report in such a way as to reassure a sponsor (actual purpose) rather than reveal the real status of a project (espoused purpose). As another, a team member may be in a project because she wants to improve her skills (actual purpose), not because she’s interested in the objective of the project (espoused purpose)).
As another example, take the iron triangle – you know, the time, cost, quality triple constraint. It’s been around for a long time, so people say, “if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t still be around, would it?”
The answer to that is, “That depends on what you mean by, ‘it works’!”
In reality, the triple constraint is a good answer to a very specific question, which is: “what are the major variables or drivers of a project?” As an answer, you can even draw a really simple diagram to explain what it’s about. It survives because of its simplicity, rather than its correctness or utility.
KA: This challenges basic, taken-for-granted concepts in project management, and I think it is why your work resonates with practitioners. However, I’m curious about the kind of reaction you get from standards bodies and institutions when you talk about things such as these.
JW: Hate mail…no, not that [laughs]. Look, they have trouble inviting me to events. I’m not on their list of mainstream invitees. However, I still manage to get invited to PMI-run conferences because people I know often coordinate these events and invite me to them.
Going back to what you said– that some of what I said resonates with practitioners. I think it resonates because some people find it hard to figure out how something that they are reading in a textbook or learning in the classroom can be relevant in real projects.
KA: That’s true…it’s the issue of the practical utility of concepts. For example, what use is the iron triangle, apart from being a pat answer to a question? Many of the things found in texts are formulaic concepts that are trotted out in class or in training courses, but are not so useful in the day-to-day running of projects.
In my experience, the day-to-day work of a project manager is largely about reacting to stuff that happens on the ground. It’s about improvisation rather than planning. I see it all the time in real-life projects – all this stuff you do at the start, scoping planning etc. is useful, but when you are thrust into the nitty-gritty of a project, you have to make decisions on the fly, react to things that you hadn’t anticipated and so on. To me, that’s an equally real, and perhaps more fascinating part of project management…but nobody ever talks about it. No textbook does at any rate. Philosophers do delve into this kind of stuff, but definitely not project management academics or professionals!
JW: Well, this is where books like yours, The Heretic’s Guide to Best Practices, help. They help people look behind the façade – the false shells of ideas about things. You know, people really beat themselves up about this kind of stuff.
One of the things I do is I run postgrad workshops where I bring in high flier PMs from industry – the kind of people who build big hospitals, infrastructure etc. Many of them are from the construction industry, but not all. So these people come in and tell us their war stories, and often I notice that they say things like, “We got a quality control system in place” or “We have a change management system in place” and so on. Then they add, almost apologetically, “It’s not like it is in the books, but we are trying…” And I’m always thinking to myself, “Why do they feel like they have to apologize for that?”
What they do not understand is that the things described in the PMBOK and other guides are “stick man-like” idealisations. Someone probably looked at 20 different ways to do something, found a common theme and then made up a model. The problem is that the model is just a high-level abstraction; you won’t actually find it anywhere because it doesn’t exist. So all these poor guys are working towards something that doesn’t exist and probably doesn’t work!
KA: Yes, that is definitely the case. I like to use the map versus territory metaphor when talking about this with practicing PMs. Textbook knowledge of PM is a bit like the knowledge that a map conveys. When you’re working on a project, however, you’re actually in the territory. When I explain it to people in this way, they often go, “Yeah, that makes sense: so the PMBOK is actually a map.” Then I warn them, “It is, but beware for it may not be as accurate as you think, so you’ve got to be careful”
JW: Yeah, that’s the point: you’re helping people I suppose. Most project managers simply do not have the time to think about these kinds of things. What they end up doing instead, is joining some kind of PM institution – the APM or PMI or whatever. They then keep getting this information that is pushed out to them through these bodies, and the hidden theme running through all of it is that they (the PMs) somehow aren’t “doing it right.”
I wrote a paper on this a while ago, talking about the almost Puritan influence that these institutions have on their members. There is this Jeremiad type story telling that goes on in professional PM circles. The message is: you shouldn’t do this and you shouldn’t do that; and if you strive, one day you may be as good as us. This sort of talk doesn’t make people feel good about themselves at all.
I see this in another context, when people talk to me as an academic, they sometimes feel like they have to apologize for not doing things “by the book.” As if I’ve got this Golden Book that has all the “right answers”…
KA: I’d like to change tack here a bit, if I may. Over the last few years, PMI and other standards bodies have sort of embraced Agile methodologies and have attempted to bring them into their fold. What are your thoughts on this?
JW: Well, I like to think of it as domestication – they’ve domesticated Agile. Indeed, the PMI and other bodies have no choice; they have to embrace Agile. The Agile community is big and is more cooperative and will continue to adapt and change with the times. They frankly couldn’t care less about the PMI and what it thinks. The standards bodies can’t just stand by and do nothing, they have to grab on to this movement somehow, and that’s what they’ve done. And I say, watch out; as the Agile folks move up the PMI hierarchy, there could be further disruptions on the way.
KA: So, the institutes have to adapt too, in order to survive…
JW: Indeed, and they do it in many ways. Let me tell you about something else that is going on: the lead project management body in UK, the APM, is trying to get chartered status. If that happens, it would mean that a PM could work towards a Chartered Project Manager qualification. In my opinion that would be a dangerous development because it would, in effect, force people to go for the APM qualification. Any freedom for a practitioner to get any other certification would be lost.
KA: That’s true, but someone might counter that by saying, “We have Chartered Engineers and Chartered Accountants, so why not Chartered Project Managers?” I think I know the answer to that, but I’d like to hear your view on it [laughs]
JW: [laughs]…and I think my answer would be the same as yours. The engineering and accountancy “body of knowledge,” if one can call it that, is evidence-based. The same is true of medicine. In comparison, project management (and management in general) is stuck in the medieval era.
For instance, I could claim that a success factor for a project is this bag of lavender – you know, you sort twirl it around three times, lay it on the floor and jump over it. It’s almost at the level that people were at when they cooked up rituals to stave off the Black Death. If the project succeeds, I attribute success to the bag of lavender ritual, if it fails, well… I can always attribute the failure to something else.
KA: [laughs] I’ve got to use that bag of lavender for my next kickoff meeting…
JW: Seriously, this is where we are…all those things that are in various bodies of knowledge are like that. One person actually said to me, “Ah well, wait a minute Jon, the APM’s body of knowledge isn’t a body of knowledge at all – it is a glossary of terms.”
So I said, “Why on earth didn’t you call it that!”
Well, I suppose they couldn’t because you can’t well ask people to get a certification on a glossary of terms now, can you? For crying out loud, this is ridiculous isn’t it?? I guess my point is that these are all good reasons why the profession shouldn’t be chartered.
What we really need to do is start looking at how projects are managed across different domains instead of looking for a lowest common denominator. This is far more than research based on a survey of a small bunch of people, written up for publication in an academic journal.
Most academic articles are written in impenetrable academic language for a small bunch of people to read. And to be honest, most people don’t even read them. In most cases, if you read them carefully and take them apart, however, you realize that they are based on not very much at all.
KA: Yes, I’ve noticed…
JW: …and you know, it is actually worse than that. I started teaching a good number of years ago, and I started out as an electronics instructor. It’s a very practical domain where physics and maths come together in a physical device.
One of the things I used to teach was TV repair – in the days when you could actually repair TVs yourself. The thing about TV repair is that you can’t sit around and discuss whether a TV’s been repaired, it isn’t a matter of opinion; you simply switch it on and see if it works. You can see where I’m going with this…
You were talking about how the map’s an abstraction of the territory. The dangerous thing is that one can get caught up in abstractions that never make contact with reality. This happens in maths quite a bit: mathematicians invent new concepts – multidimensional spaces etc. – and spend their entire working lives in these abstractions. That may be OK for maths, but it’s not OK for management.
The problem is, many management academics are actually specialists in abstractions. Moreover, this is what they teach in their courses because it is all they know. So now you have all these senior managers who’ve been through an MBA; they have a wealth of abstract knowledge, but they can’t actually do anything. They have no practical skills at all. This is why there is a gap between strategy development and strategy implementation.
KA: Yeah, I’ve read some interesting work by William Starbuck on the gap between strategy formulation and implementation (Editor’s note: see this paper for example). So I think this issue is recognized in academia. The problem is that strategy is usually in terms of causal models: if we do this, then that will happen. The real world is complicated and isn’t straightforward to figure out what causes what. Instead, managers need to develop certain sensibilities – like being attuned to what’s actually happening in their organisations. To use a term I’ve used before, it is about developing a systemic view. But how do you teach that?
JW: I could actually think of some practical ways in which one could teach that. Every university ought to have a couple of corner shops or even blacksmithing shops, say. Students should be asked to run these. If you reckon you can run a multi-million dollar business then surely you can run a corner shop, right? We don’t do that because it costs and it’s difficult to do. But more important, you can’t sell an MBA based on corner shops, although I think students would learn a lot more from it.
As a result people walk out with MBAs they can’t use. And academia becomes more and more detached. We’ve made a commodity out of education, particularly in management because we can get away with it. You can’t get away with this kind of thing in engineering schools.
KA: I think you’re absolutely right. There’s this big con trick pulled by business schools over the last so many years about selling model-based learning.
I think a lot of influential management academics have lamented this over the last decade or so – Warren Bennis, for example – but nothing seems to have changed.
JW: Changing this would destroy the business model of all these schools, so nobody’s going to volunteer to be the first to do this. They’d be wiped out.
Let me give you an example. The PMI accredits universities. Effectively, this amounts to you paying them to advertise your courses in their literature. They’re not really accrediting you; all they check is whether you’re using their name and materials in your courses. Once they are satisfied that you are doing that, you pay the fee and you are accredited. Schools have to go along because if they don’t, their competitors will, and they’ll get all the students.
So we all end up playing this ridiculous education “arms” race. You can’t opt out even if you want to.
KA: Yes, you can’t opt out. However, the one thing I’ve realized is that the best way to challenge the system is from within…and you certainly do that through your writing.
JW: Yeah, and I’m sure you must’ve got some feedback on your work as well. I think your book would have resonated well with practitioners because it speaks to the kinds of things that people actually do. There is a sort of “self-help” aspect to it.
KA: It’s interesting you put it that way, because that’s exactly what a few people have said to me after reading it…although I should add that I don’t particularly like the term “self- help” [laughs]
Seriously, though, the feedback has been the most gratifying part of the whole thing. We really had no idea what kind of reception we’d get so it’s been absolutely fantastic to hear from some folks that the book has made a difference to the way they look at things.
JW: I don’t know if there’s anything more in the pipeline, but I would suggest that a continuation in that sort of light would be useful. That is what I mean by self-help – in that it is helpful. Even if it is not helpful in actual practice, it might be helpful in the way they think and feel about their practice.
KA: Yes, well it’s been a couple of years now. Over the last year or so Paul and I have been talking and thinking about what comes next. The ideas and material are there, and there’s at least a couple of directions in which we can take them. Paul has developed a bunch of practical techniques through his consultancy work, and I’ve gained some insights through experience and my somewhat random reading on topics from management to philosophy. It’s really a question of finding the time to put it all together in a book that people will find interesting and useful.
JW: That reminds me of what you said before: that many of these things aren’t dealt with in management texts, but philosophers do have something useful to say about them. That is why I spend some of my time looking back to those works, because they are incredibly insightful about human practice. I also get some of my postgrads to read these works, so as to challenge the way they look at things.
There’s a book chapter I wrote entitled, “Thinking in slow motion about project management.” It deals with thinking about thinking about project management. That is, to question the way we actually think about the discipline. It is about questioning the the [tacit] assumptions we make when we think about projects.
Here’s an example: one of my students wrote to me the other day saying that he’d sketched out a couple of papers on thinking critically (see note below) about project management – the kind of work done by Damian Hodgson and others. One of the major themes underlying critical work in project management is project failure – you know, why projects fail etc. If one “thinks about this thinking” one realizes that there is a tacit assumption here that failure is a bad thing. However, from an evolutionary point of view, failure occurs more often than success does!
(Editor’s note: Jon uses the word critical in a technical sense here. As per my understanding, critical studies are aimed at critiquing a practice (project management, in this case) with the aim of changing it in such a way that it benefits the largest number of people possible. See this paper review for an example of a critical study in project management.)
KA: Yes, that’s true. However, one can also see the rationale for focusing on failure. There is an economic driver here; one can’t go to a project sponsor and say, “this project failed because of evolution.” I can’t see that going down too well [laughs]
JW: True, but then again it’s about selecting the stories we tell. When you look at the personal development literature, it’s not put together to describe success stories, but to describe strategies that people have used to overcome failure. So, if we were to try and put together a set of stories about how failures or potential failures were overcome by evidence based means – that is, not by using rituals such as bags of lavender [laughs] – then people would be more comfortable about talking about failure.
Indeed, if you look at the great stories of management, they are all about how adversity was overcome or how innovations arose from failures. People say, “Yes we failed, but we learnt something from it. We now know how to do it better.” And that’s a lesson that won’t be forgotten.
KA: That’s absolutely right, and it brings to mind a related point. The fortunate thing for those who work in information technology is that it is relatively easy to fail quickly and learn something from it. Indeed that’s what Agile is largely about – flushing out the difficulties early in the game. And even if one does not use the full machinery of an Agile methodology, it is easy enough to work in an incremental way: you know, do a quick prototype and run it past the business to flush out hidden requirements.
JW: Yes, but it’s not just in IT; one can do it in customer service or even construction – things like role-playing, building a façade, these kinds of things are in fact agile approaches relevant to those domains. One doesn’t have to wait for feedback from real customers or commission an architect to do these kinds of things. So the idea of mistaking-making and overcoming mistakes is actually a process of building new knowledge about how things work in that domain. These are the sorts of stories we should be sharing more and telling more.
KA: Yes, you’re right…and one could even get people to think about what could go wrong by asking questions like, “what could come back to bite us if we did this?” The advantage is that this can be done by simply thinking through scenarios with a group of people, prior to problems actually occurring.
JW: Yes, but the trouble is that it is difficult capture any intellectual property around this kind of thinking. If you want to build a critical mass around these sorts of ideas, you have to be able write them down and market them. The problem is, they change from domain to domain and they are difficult to write down into something like a BOK. The PMI, on the other hand, have a well-defined product which they can build branding around. . They have the stories to tell as to why you should become a member- all the great benefits you would enjoy and so forth.
It’s a bit like the atheists versus the church: one side has the full machinery of religion the other has nothing. You know, I’m an atheist, but I could go into Notre Dame cathedral on a late afternoon when the sun is shining through that massive window, and lighting up all those dust particles in that spectacular way, with the guy playing the organ the background. I take all that in and think to myself, “You know, there might be something in this.”
KA: [laughs] Yes, that’s an excellent point.
JW: Yeah, the whole structure around you can make you feel as though, “Hey, I can for a moment entertain the thought of being a part of this.” Now, when you’re at a PMI meeting, with all those people in suits and ties and those badges with their names and titles on, you could well think that there is something in it. But when I’m in a supermarket, pushing a trolley around, I simply can’t entertain such a thought.
KA: You know, I think it is more of a security blanket than anything else. One thinks that by joining a professional organization and getting a certification, one somehow becomes more professional. There is this myth (or idea) floating around that certifications are good because employers like them. I don’t know how true that is, I haven’t really tested that; but right now, in this tight job market, people will do whatever they think will give them an edge.
JW: Yes, and the evolutionary framework would see this as a device to get selected – to keep your job (or get a new one)…and also to feel good about yourself.
There is this wonderful medieval fete that takes place in Queensland every year. It’s an event that takes place in this huge field. People come from all over; they descend for a week and set up this medieval camp. It’s like a scene out of a Harry Potter film or a camp in King Alfred’s time – and with all those tents, smoky ambience from fires, people walking around in armour and costumes etc, one can really get immersed in the scene and feel that one is actually there.
Now, just towards the end of the camp there’s a set of stalls – trading stalls – there’s the blacksmith, for example and others. Then there is a stall that sells replica medieval weapons and costumes. When I was there, I was thinking to myself that if I were really in a medieval setting, I would actually have to buy a weapon to protect myself. And then I realized that this is precisely what the exhibition hall in the PMI Global Congress is like, right?
KA: [laughs]
JW: Seriously, that’s exactly what is going on. On the one side you have people selling certifications, university degrees or books like “55 Ways to get Certified in 35 Seconds”, and on the other you have practitioners who feel they must choose a certification, university or a book. All the vendors and universities claim that their “weapons” are better than the other ones on the market.
However, these vendors will never show you how to actually use their “weapons.” If they were to show you how to use them, you’d probably find out that they don’t work… and that won’t do at all, would it? Nevertheless, you are made to feel that you must have these “weapons” because you know you will be up against others who have them.
KA: [laughs] That’s brilliant!
JW: When I go to these chapter and branch meetings, I’m always amazed at how oblivious some project managers are about what’s going on here (and I don’t mean this in an unkind way at all). They see themselves as active participants in this group that they have joined, whereas really what they are is simply a market for the standards and the institutions. They are somebody to sell to.
KA: Yes, they’re somebody to sell to, and somebody to propagate the message.
JW: You know what I would really like to do? Well, one of the ways of undermining what the standards bodies are doing is through humour. One way to do this is through cartooning scenarios that highlight some of the ludicrous things that happen in the project management workplace. Dilbert is an excellent example. I’d really like to explore this way of getting people to look at project management through an evolutionary lens because I think it would be much more effective and useful than writing for an academic audience.
KA: Yes, a “Dilbert for PM.” I like that!
JW: I think this would help engage project managers. Actually, in some ways it is a bit like what you’re doing with your blog.
KA: Yes, but humour and satire are so much better; there’s no better way to undermine over-seriousness and pompousness.
JW: Yeah, there’s a long history to that kind of stuff – Voltaire for instance. But you’ve written a bit along those lines, haven’t you?
KA: Yes, I’ve written a few satirical pieces (Editor’s note: see this piece, for example). Unfortunately, that kind of writing doesn’t come naturally to me. It is a surprise even for me when I come up with something like that.
JW: One of the things I’m going to try and do is to push this “bag of lavender” metaphor further; I haven’t exercised it fully as yet. I think I’ll do a short blog post on it soon. (Editor’s note: This conversation was recorded a few days before Jon published his brilliant post on medieval management balms. Don’t miss it!)
KA: Ah, that idea’s got great potential. I look forward to reading it, Jon.
Well, I think I’d better let you go back to your work now…we’ve been talking for over an hour. Thanks so much Jon, it’s been wonderful talking to you.
JW: It was good, and I hope there’s something useful in there.
KA: There’s plenty, all I have to do now is transcribe it! I look forward to chatting with you again sometime in the near future. Thanks again.
JW: No worries; always good to chat.
Professionals or politicians? A client’s guide to management consultants
Introduction
The general image of management consultants in contemporary society is somewhat ambiguous. To take two rather extreme views: high achievers in universities may see management consulting as a challenging (and well paying!) profession that offers opportunities to make a positive difference to organisations, whereas those on the receiving end of a consultant-inspired restructure may see the profession as an embodiment of much that is wrong with the present-day corporate world.
The truth, as always, is not quite so black and white. In this post I explore this question by taking a look at the different types of consultants one may encounter in the wilds of the corporate jungle. My discussion is based on a typology of management consultants proposed by Mats Alvesson and Anders Johansson in a paper published in this book (see citation at the end of this post for the full reference).
Background
There is a considerable body of research on management consulting, most of which is tucked away in the pages of management journals and academic texts that are rarely read by professionals. It would take me too far afield to do even a cursory review of this literature so I’ll not go there, except to point out that much of the work can be classified as either strongly pro- or anti-consultant. This in itself is revealing: academics are just as divided in their opinions about consultants as professionals are. Indeed, to see just how strong the opinions are, here’s a small list of paper / book titles from the pro and anti-consultant camps
Pro
“Management Consulting as a Developer of SMEs”
“Process Consultation, Vol 1: Its Role in Organization Development”
Anti
“The Management Guru as an Organizational Witch Doctor”
“The Violent Rhetoric of Re-engineering: Management Consultancy on the Offensive”
These titles have been taken from the reference list in Alvesson and Johansson’s paper. A quick search on Amazon will reveal many more.
The pro camp depicts consultants as rational, selfless experts who solve complex problems for their clients, sometimes at considerable personal cost. The anti camp portrays them as politically-motivated, self-interested individuals whose main aim is to build relationships that ensure future work. The classification proposed by Alvesson and Johansson puts these extreme views in perspective.
A classification of management consultants
Alvesson and Johansson classify consultants into the following categories based on consultants’ claims to professionalism and their preferred approaches to dealing with political issues:
Esoteric experts
These consultants typically offer high expertise in some specialized area. Some examples of these include IT consultants specializing in complex products (such as ERP systems) and tax experts who have specialized knowledge typically not possessed by those who work within business organisations. As one might expect, esoteric experts have strong claims to professionalism.
One might think that such consultants have little need to play political games as their skill/knowledge does not threaten anyone within organizations. However, this is not always so because esoteric experts may portray themselves as being experts when they actually aren’t. In such cases they would have to use their social and political skills to cover up for their shortcomings. Perhaps more important, esoteric experts may also play politics to secure future gigs.
Typical clients of esoteric experts are purchasers of large IT systems, small organisations in occasional need of specialized skills (lawyers, accountants etc.) and so on.
Brokers of meaning
Brokers of meaning are sense makers: they help clients make sense of difficult or ambiguous situations. Typically brokers of meaning act as facilitators, teachers or idea-generators, who work together with clients to produce meaning. They often do not have deep technical knowledge like esoteric experts, but instead have a good understanding of human nature and the socio-political forces within organizations.
Brokers of meaning typically do not indulge in overt politics as the success of their engagements depends largely on their ability to gain the trust of a wide spectrum of stakeholders within the organization. That said, such consultants, once they have gained trust of a large number of people within an organization, are often able to influence key stakeholders in particular directions. Another way in which brokers of meaning influence decisions is through the skillful use of language – for example, depending on how one wants to portray it, an employee taking the initiative can be called gung-ho (negative) or proactive (positive).
Typical clients of brokers of meaning are managers who are faced with complex decisions.
Traders in trouble
The archetypal trader in trouble is the hatchet-man who is employed by a senior executive who wants to reduce costs. Since the work of these consultants typically involves a great deal of organizational suffering, they are careful to cast their aims in neutral or objective language. Indeed, much of the corporate doublespeak around layoffs (e.g. rightsizing) and cost reduction initiatives (e.g. productivity improvements) originated from traders in trouble. Typical outcomes of such consulting engagements involve massive restructuring on an organization-wide scale, often resulting in a lot of pain for minimal gain.
The work of such consultants is necessarily political – they must support senior management at all costs. Indeed this is another reason that they go to great lengths to portray their proposed solutions as being rational. On the other hand, their claim to professional knowledge is ambiguous as they often have to (knowingly) forgo actions that may be more logical and (more important!) ethical.
Alvesson and Johansson summarise this by quoting from Robert Jackall’s brilliant ethnographical study of managers, Moral Mazes:
The further the consultant moves away from strictly technical issues – that is from being an expert in the ideal sense, a virtuoso of some institutionalized and valued skill – the more anomalous his status becomes. He becomes an expert who trades in others’ troubles. In managerial hierarchies, of course, troubles, like everything else, are socially defined. Consultants have to depend on some authority ‘s definition of what is troublesome in an organization and, in most cases, have to work on the problem as defined. As it happens, it is extremely rare that an executive declares himself or his own circle to be the problem; rather, other groups in the corporation are targeted to be ‘worked on.
A terrific summary of the typical trader in trouble!
Clients of such consultants tend to be senior managers who have been tasked with increasing “efficiency” or “productivity.”
Agents of anxiety (suppliers of security)
The agent of anxiety is a messiah who sells a “best practice” solution to his clients’ problems. This type of consultant can therefore also be described as a supplier of security who assures his clients that their troubles will vanish if they just follow his prescribed process. Common examples of agents of anxiety are purveyors of project management methodologies and frameworks (such as PRINCE2 or IPMA) or process improvement techniques (such as Six Sigma).
Although such consultants may seem to have a high claim to professional expertise, they actually aren’t experts. A good number of them are blind followers of the methods they sell; rarely, if ever, do they develop a critical perspective on those practices. Also, agents of anxiety do not have to be overtly political: once they are hired by senior managers in an organization, employees have no choice but to follow the “best practice” techniques that are promoted.
Clients of such consultants tend to be senior managers in organisations that are having trouble with specific aspects of their work – projects, for example. What such managers do not realize is that they would be better served by creating and fostering the right work environment rather than attempting to impose silver bullet solutions sold by suppliers of security.
A comment
Now that we are done with the classification, I should mention that most of the consultants I have come across cannot be boxed into a single category. This is no surprise: consultants, like the rest of humanity, display behaviours that vary from situation to situation. Many consultants will display characteristics from all four categories within a single engagement or, at the very least, exhibit both professional and political behaviours. As Alvesson and Johansson state:
Management consultancy work probably typically means some blending of these four types. Sometimes one or two of the types dominates in the same assignment. But few management consultants presumably operate without appealing to the management fashions signalling the needs for consultancy services; few altogether avoid trouble-shooting tasks; few can solely rely on a technocratic approach, and few can simply work with cooperative meaning making processes. The complexity and diversity of consultancy assignments requires that the consultant move back and forth between a professional area and a non-professional area, i.e. areas viewed as coherent with claims of professionalism, recognizing the highly floating boundaries between these areas and the constructed character also of technical and professional work. Professional work is mingled with, but can’t be reduced to, political or symbolic work.
Finally, I should also add that consultants sometimes hide their real objectives because they are required to: their duplicity simply reflects the duplicity of those who hire them. Whether consultants should choose to do such work is another matter altogether. As I have argued elsewhere, the hardest questions we have to deal with in our professional lives are ethical ones.
Closing remarks
In this post I have described a typology of consultants. For sure, the four categories of consultants described are stereotypes. That said, although consultants may slip on different personas within a single engagement, most would fit into a single category based on the nature of their work and their overall approach. A knowledge of this classification is therefore helpful, not just for clients, but also for front-line employees who have to deal with consultants and those who hire them.
References
Alvesson, M. & Johansson, A.W. (2002). Professionalism and politics in management consultancy work. In R. Fincham & T. Clark (Eds), Critical consulting: New perspectives on the management advice industry. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 228–246.
Eight to Late 