Take a Number

"Our #1 priority is YOU!" This is the slogan of a trucking company here in the Western United States. Of course the slogan only makes sense if the company has only one customer. While the irony of the slogan seems intuitive, many project managers fail to comprehend the importance of the truism when dealing with their vendors, and they deceive themselves by imagining that they really are #1.

Underperforming vendors are a frequent source of trouble for project managers. When repeated phone calls fail to remedy the situation, more drastic measures are called for. Of the many management books available, a number have specific advice for improving results. Most recommend planning a visit to the vendor's site. The visit should be led by a higher level manager to let the vendor know how critical his performance is. The visiting group will impress upon the vendor his importance as a member of the team, and the vital need for him to improve.
Does this technique work? The answer to this question requires us to understand three things. First, the vendor does not want to be on any one's team. He wants to get paid. Second, he is resource locked. Either he doesn't have enough equipment, enough capital, or enough people to get the job done on time. Third, the vendor does have other customers. Game theory teaches us that your opponent gets to make a countermove. We can extend this tenet to our current situation and posit that the vendor's other customers get to make a countermove.

So let's get back to the question, does the Big Meeting yield results? Maybe the meeting causes the vendor to speed up work on the manager's project. But to do this, he must move resources away from other customer's projects. Now we see the countermove. Perhaps this causes the other customers to plan their own Big Meetings. So they use a similar technique with the high level manager, the team speech, and appeal for better performance. But remember, the vendor only wants to get paid. And the only thing he really hears during these meetings is the implicit threat that the business will be pulled from him. If he can make short term changes to keep all of his customers hanging by a thread, that will likely seem to him the best choice. He can't be on every one's team. He acts in his self-interest.

In the end, we have the classic squeaky wheel and grease story. The vendor shuffles resources to balance the threat of losing the business of each of his customers. His customers think they are managing, when all they are really doing is competing with other customers based on a cold calculation made by the vendor of the minimum resources that must be committed to keep an individual customer's business.

The Siren Song

Rapid prototyping is a fairly recent innovation used in the product development process. By starting with a 3D CAD (Computer Aided Design) model, a rapid prototyping machine can quickly create a plastic-like part. The various parts of a product can be assembled. This assembly can then be evaluated by project stakeholders in engineering, marketing, and sales. And this is where the ship of product development is lured onto the rocks, just as the mythical Sirens called sailors to their deaths.

There is nothing inherently evil about rapid prototype parts. The fault lies with the tendency of decision makers to self-deceive. They feel as if they have seen the product with their own eyes. They have held it in their hands. But it isn't a product. It is an illusion of a product. The rapid prototype machine creates an accurate representation of the shape of the product. But long lists of questions remain unanswered. Can injection molding machines actually make the parts? Will the product break if dropped? Can we assemble it? Will it meet the cost targets? But the Siren's song drowns out these questions. The questions will return, but not during the scheduled phases of the project. As the evidence of failure mounts, the illusion will recede. In firefighting mode, the stakeholders are compelled to face the uncertainties which had been present all along.

This post is not a plea to abandon the use of rapid prototype parts, or of any other technology which allows us to glimpse the future we seek. It is, however; a warning of the seductiveness of these modern Sirens. Used properly, these technologies can aid us in our efforts. But sailors beware, for they tempt us to abandon our pragmatic natures and plunge forward.

Honor or Deceit

Imagine you've been working as a member of a project. And one day you realize that in your past project work, you had made a mistake. A big mistake. If your manager knew about this mistake, he would halt the project immediately, and reassign tasks to remedy various problems caused by your mistake. For the good of the company, you should tell your manager immediately. That would be the honorable thing to do. And you are an honorable person, except for situations where there are extenuating circumstances. And this is certainly one of those situations. Let's list your options, and discuss the consequences of each alternative.

1) Tell your manager about the mistake. Your admission will have immediate and untoward consequences. You will likely be seen as incompetent by your peers. They will find the extra work required to remedy your mistake quite annoying. This alternative will require great courage of you. Perhaps a bit too much courage.

2) Never tell anyone about the mistake. Wait until the mistake is revealed by someone else. If you are asked, simply shrug your shoulders and claim that you never saw this coming. This alternative works well in companies where managers say things like "We don't want to blame anyone, we just want to identify the problem and keep going." But there is a deeper logic that can be applied. There is a chance that the project will change in a way that makes your mistake irrelevant. Perhaps another mistake will be found, or the parameters will change. Your mistake might slip under the radar, never to be discovered. In companies where projects are chaotic, this can actually be a fairly likely outcome. And here is one final point. By not telling anyone about the mistake, you have increased the likelihood that the mistake will be revealed at the end of the project. It will now have to be remedied in firefighting mode. Some people really shine in a crisis. You may feel that you can redeem yourself by working long hours to remedy your own mistake. And be both the villain and the hero.

3) Never tell anyone about the mistake, but involve them in it unwittingly. Find a way to shift blame to someone else, preferably a vendor or outside contractor. Create an email chain where you hint at the periphery of the problem, but never come right out and acknowledge it. When the mistake is revealed, you can claim that you had almost seen it, but others did not provide enough support for you. This is an attractive option in many ways, and some of the benefits from choice 2) also apply. You do run the risk of having your mistake revealed prematurely by the hints you drop.

We generally act in our self interest. Management plans that requires subordinates to be altruistic will fail. The problem with predicting outcomes is that individuals define their self interest differently. While one person might reason that getting the truth out in the open as soon as possible was in her best interest, another person might decide that a very painful experience in the future is preferable to a somewhat painful experience today. Motivational techniques have little to do with the way people determine their self interest. Aligning the interests of the company with the self interests of the employees is a difficult and necessary challenge.