Addendum to pathological projects |
||
WHAT ABOUT EUROPE...?In the previous chapter, we tried to explain the reasons for delays and failures encountered in project management, as reported in anglo-saxon studies. Let us now analyse the situation in Europe and the reasons for which no equivalent study to the Chaos Report of the Standish Group has been undertaken on this side of the pond. EUROPEAN PROJECT STATISTICSDesperately seeking statistics...We looked for European statistics on the Internet. Whereas a rather simple combination of keywords make you get an abundant documentation concerning the United States, you seldom get documentation on European sites relating to the local European experience, even after re-working the key search words. For example, the Italian sites provided us with a lot of information relating to the problems of football, the difficulties of prisoners in Italian prisons, the shortcomings of environmental policy, and a certain number of failed projects launched by politicians of various parties, all this mixed in the middle of ideological and bombastic political debates. On a more humorous note, it came as a great surprise to ourselves to find that “project management” can be linked to adult entertainment sites ! It is true that sometimes we obtained results in line with the search criteria : they were translations of articles, published in English, of reports written by Anglo-Saxon firms or commentaries of studies... made in the United States of course ! In one case, the result of the search did appear interesting, but alas, the site was protected by a password. While being better, the situation of the French-speaking sites really does not allow us to conclude that Europe has any good project statistics. In short, we are in a situation where the absence of information is in itself an invaluable information: it is impossible to find on this side of the Atlantic statistical studies or any serious analyses on the results of projects, based on surveys carried out on European firms or organisations. In Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, one celebrates the “no-birthday day”, in our journey to realityland, we must look further into this remarkable state of “NO INFORMATION”. Is the situation better in Europe than in the United States?There was a time, albeit two centuries ago, when Europe was ahead of America in all fields. The absence of any in-depth survey in Europe could lead us to conclude that today things are definitely better in Europe, on the assumption that there is no fire if there is no smoke. However it has to be admitted that the descendants of pilgrims, peasants and cowboys have created in the United States an industrial civilisation on which in a very large measure Europe depends today. One can legitimately think that if there are problems, failures and delays in the United States, they can only be more numerous on this side of the pond. “Error” as seen on both sides of the AtlanticNorth Americans have pioneering tradition. Failure and defeat, as well as achievement and success are part of their cultural inheritance. “How the West was won” is a succession of attempts, failures and... success. A failure in the United States is neither a crime nor a shame as long as it contributes to progress. An employee who discusses failures or waste in his company is not necessarily regarded as a traitor and he generally speaks with the approval of his boss. All live with the idea that they are part of a collective effort and that each individual, as well as the company, will benefit. When you go from New York to Boston by train, you are struck by cemeteries in the middle of nowhere, with no sign of the towns and villages that once accompanied them...when a local economy is no longer profitable the people simply head elsewhere.. and the town disappears. Things are different in Europe. First of all, we regard failure and waste as illogical phenomena, impossible to admit in a rational environment. Secondly, error has with it an uncomfortable feeling of guilt which we prefer to blame on any convenient scape-goat. Under these conditions, we cannot experience a failure, nor can we be responsible for a failure; only “others” make errors. In Europe when a project goes badly, nine times out of ten, people are conditioned to prompt it upright on crutches as if it were alive, even if the corpse is already in an advanced state of decomposition. This is not unlike those primitive tribes who continue to honour and feed the corpse of dead monarchs. Data processing software is one of those fields where covering-up and dissimulation is easiest. It is less easy with “hardware”, it is difficult to pretend that the Titanic actually made it to New York ! In Europe, delays, waste and failures are politically incorrect phenomena. These things don't happen, therefore: No statistics! And if ever a missionary came from the New World and succeeded in extracting local European data, we would straight away question its validity. We are by no means saying that Europe is lagging behind in all the fields: in Space for example, Europe has had a great deal of successes thanks to, among other things, a group of pioneers, scientists, engineers working away in the Algerian desert. And yet... before these successes there had been other remarkably unsuccessful attempts at sending rockets into space. Under the auspices of an organisation named ELDO, and which the collective memory of a people has conveniently forgotten. ELDO was financed by the taxpayer. Has not the tax payer therefore a right to know how his money had been used...or misused ? Especially in a field which prides itself in its later day successes ? Knowing and diagnosing the errors, wouldn't that help avoid reproducing them ? We can ask similar questions about the French “case of the sniffer planes”. The parliamentary committee set up in 1985 worked in secrecy... which is still enforced today. The money is public, the reports are very private. It is not a question here of the politico-business-legal implications for which one can understand the recourse to the use of the secrecy by the State. It is a question of understanding the processes which led experienced people to misplace their confidence and explain why such a delay in the untangling of the case. Should we be deprived from the possibility of benefiting from the past experience for the sole purpose of maintaining intact the principle of the infallibility of the men in power ? What is rotten in the state of Denmark ? One is astonished of course by the silence which weighs on affairs of this importance. But the surprise is even greater when one notes that the denouncers of these facts, while maintaining they are acting on behalf of the “common good”, often pursue in fact sensationalistic or ideological objectives. These of course are in reality far removed and quite irrelevant to the common good, and justify those who, instead of speaking as they should, become experts in saying nothing. That is how specialists, in the absence of local data, are reduced to use foreign statistics to analyse the situation in their own countries... as if the American data could be universally applicable to other contexts... Globalisation we love you! WHAT ARE THE SPECIALISTS UP TO ?The disinterest of the academic worldThese problems affect a great many people and should legitimately be the subject of thorough and multi-field studies, especially in institutions financed by the taxpayer, e.g. universities. The contacts we have had lead us to believe that the contrary is the case and that such a study is the last thing that European based researchers are worried about. One professor pointed out that the term “pathology” was etymologically inappropriate when talking organisation. Another reconsidered our definition of “genius”. A third was more discerning, he simply said nothing. Finally a fourth was astonished that we had not read what he considered to be a major work. This major work is only available in the post doctorate research section of French National Library, reserved for the elite. Needless to say he never helped us to enter this high security Holy of Holies. After lengthy negotiations with the National Library and after a thorough cross examination of our good selves, we finally were authorised to read “the book” (published in 1984). We were given three hours. We discovered that the book was of little use for what concerns us. Should neophytes like ourselves delve into these subjects ? Perhaps not. But then who is going to do it ? To the best of our knowledge, nobody. The subject we're interested in is of a hybrid nature, of limited interest when taken individually, case by case, and of general interest when taken together and examined statistically. Caught between the individual and the general it ends up by being considered non-existent. In the novel The Fiancés by Alessandro Manzoni (see bibliography of “pathological projects”), a pedantic and scholarly character, name of Don Ferrante, examines the problem of the plague in Milan. Based on the fact that the disease was neither a “substance” nor “an accident”, he decided therefore that it could not exist, and having taken no precaution, he ended up dying “while blaming the stars”. The fact is that there is little chance that a greater interest for these problems would really accelerate the academic career of a researcher. Nothing in Europe really encourages this kind of initiative and applicants for careerist suicide are less and less numerous. Of course, if American researchers started to study the subject and it became trendy, we would see battalions of European researchers falling over themselves in the rush. But this is not yet the case. We will just have to wait till something comes over from the other side of the Atlantic. In the meantime, researchers and academics spend all their energy on the usual subjects and the traditional panoply of project management: methods, methodology, procedures, monitoring and bargain price quality management... all that you need to know to manage your projects. Well done, those highly skilled professors who calmly turn a blind eye to what should be in fact a bottomless pit of academic fun and games, being as it is a wonderful coming together of management science and workplace psychopathology !... Well done ! Those brilliant researchers, dedicated as they are to polishing project management algorithms and analysing the impact of Taylorism on the labour movement of the Thirties. They pass by a whole range of pathologies and human sufferings, the result of projects that have imploded, exploded and have gone out of control. Amen. The consultants' contribution.As we already said, consultancy firms and specialists already know very well the American statistics; they know full well that under normal conditions the projects they work on have a 74 % probability of going wrong. 46% will over run on costs and deadlines, another 28% will simply never be finished (Standish Group statistics of 1998). If they work in a “pathological environment”, the probabilities of drift and failure are obviously much higher. One could naively think they would rush out and alert everyone, but no, these boyos are not in the business of virtue and commercial martyrdom, they too have bills to pay. They do what anybody would do with their customers : they talk the talk and they sell their wares, the very best, top of the range methods, methodology, monitoring tools and bargain price quality management... all that you need to know to manage your projects. “Love of Money is the root of all Evil”, as Saint Paul once remarked to Timothy. POWER IS SACREDIn the past, the religious world was big into the idea of unquestioning and blind obedience. Times have changed and now we have the Catholic Church, admitting, in a manner both edifying and humble, the human errors She committed. Oddly enough, unquestioning and blind obedience has now become part of the material world. Once he has a certain level of power, a leader is automatically “incapable of error and in all things irreproachable”. The cases in which a powerful man was proved to be incompetent or corrupt are very rare in our European countries and for good reason. Those who have tried have mostly found themselves bogged down in indifference or thwarted by hostility. A good example from the French experience : “During these six years of work in the fraud squad, I often had the impression that the architecture of the Justice system had been designed around an unwritten Article to the penal code: the law is applicable to all, except to those who hold political or economic power.” Notre affaire à tous (Our common affair) — Eva Joly — Editions Les arènes. June 2000. Paris. (unofficial translation). TWO MODELS OF COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIPLet's go further into the reasons why we don't have any real statistics in Europe, you'll think that we are digressing from the main subject..., but fret not, as we have already said, any project whatever it is about, ends up nowhere without team work and co-operation. In the United States, the national anthem is largely known by the citizens and any John Doe will sing it standing up, hand on heart. Though not always the case, the police is generally respected and firemen are considered real heroes (re September 11). The United States is not just knee jerk acceptance of everything: the most severe criticisms against the system do not come from outside but from inside the country itself and yet, in the majority of the cases, those who criticise their country, love it, adhere to it and think or hope to contribute to its improvement. “Death of a salesman” was not written by a European but by an American and depicts the grim reality of a man crushed and outcast by society as a prelude to his own physical death. “The never ending wrong” was not written by a European but by an American and defends the right to justice for all, even for the most unspeakable of crimes. It was not a purely ideological or theoretical argument; the author (Anne Katherine Porter), from a well off family, gave her heart and soul to the defence of Sacco and Vanzetti. And so it is that it's in the United States that we actually have impressive statistics on the failures and shortcomings in the field of project management. When you are firmly convinced that progress is possible, then and only then, will you find the courage to denounce objectively the deviations of the system. Here in Europe, things are different. The national anthem is seldom known and it is even sometimes whistled (the official line is that this is by isolated individuals...). The police is discredited and practically prohibited from accessing many districts and firemen are welcomed occasionally by stones thrown at them (again, the official line is that this is by isolated individuals...) with as bonus a visit to the hospital for their trouble, just for the fun of it. Mind you, this is also a well known phenomenon in the United States, but there is a significant difference : on this side of the Atlantic, far from being shocked by it, our “intellectuals” often find “concerned” and “enlightened” justifications for it. And it is here in Europe that we can also hear people declare with pride and pompousness that they are “ashamed of their country”. However, at the same time, we commemorate with solemnity and celebrate with pomp centenaries, bi-centenaries, millenniums and bi-milleniums with a big deal of flags, speeches and impressive parades. We celebrate also the victories at home with pride... but discretion, because they are often to do with the defeats of who are today our neighbour countries. Ceremonies and fraternity in abundance... and all this given out to tender to PR professionals! Strange the country where the people are proud to be resourceful yet disillusioned, and at the same time are ready to kill each other in the name of antediluvian concepts and archaic ideologies fossilised in time like the remains of dinosaurs petrified in the rock. Strange the kingdom where deep felt but un-admitted “individualism” mixes with a popular but lip service notion of “community spirit”. But they can live with this contradiction, because where the substance of a common interest is missing, verbosity, fancy talk and simple nonsense can fill the void and everyone is happy. We invented almost everything and we are so perfect - or so we think - that the simple fact of highlighting the problems is regarded as a threat to law and order, or as a dangerous step backwards. Of course, we practise criticism in our own countries, but generally it is of an ideological nature and it is used mainly - not to make things progress - but to attack the opposition, for the benefit of a particular ideology. Europe, resplendent in an infinity of centuries old cultural links, united today by wonderfully worded treaties...but is she really united in the spirits and the hearts of the citizens and the bureaucrats who govern them ? Or is she like some kind of sieve leaking from all sides, pouring out outdated ideologies and finally having nothing left to offer ? The last few centuries in Europe have seen fratricidal wars and endless conflicts that have demolished the idea of national identity ; but the loss of this idea has not been replaced by any strong feeling of membership to this new identity that we call Europe. “Europe” seems rather to be the domain of bureaucrats and racketeers ; and when it is considered favourably, it is only for utilitarian and practical objectives, not as the fatherland of her citizens. Many European civil servant sacrifice time and energy for the construction of this community but all their efforts encounter one basic problem: what kind of Europe do we want ? Do we want a well organised and heartless functional structure? Do we fear that the concept of fatherland applied to Europe would provoke old rivalries to re-appear, and along with them the fratricidal disasters which tore apart the old nation state model of Europe ? No doubt that an individual with no backbone and no strong identity will never be able to start a conflict. Avoiding war was part of the thinking of the founding fathers of the European Union. But would not the same individual, deprived of backbone and identity, be as much at risk to die ? And the opponents to Europe, do they not reason more negatively that positively ? They are against the Union but oppose to it only on the grounds of outdated and debatable objectives. They are against globalisation, but what exactly does “non-globalisation” mean ? It seems that our Europe, this imposing, regulated and programmed machine, is missing a heart and a soul, this passion and this feeling of membership, without which she cannot have any vitality or envisage any progress. CONCLUSIONIn this chapter, we apparently moved away from our central subject which is the absence of European statistics as regards projects. However, while looking further into the problem and seeking the reasons for it, including the cultural ones, we are brought back to the conclusion that runs through the chapter entitled Exeunt Omnes of the site “pathological projects” : in European countries, nothing forces the Establishment to call itself into question. Our analysis may appear very simplistic to some. It is often the case when problems are tackled globally. Besides, we mentioned what kind of help we got when we went looking for information. However, there remains a basic and indisputable fact : the absence of European statistics on projects. If anyone out there is able to enlighten us on the subject and explain this situation, we would be very happy to hear from them...and even happier to be wrong! Despite everything, if we did not think and did not hope that the situation can be improved, we would never have created these two sites, even if — let's admit it — there are some good reasons to be pessimistic. Pessimistic based on the current situation; but optimistic because there are indications that all is not as bad as it seems : Europe counts millions of individuals, in all the branches of knowledge and work, qualified, active, able to progress...as long as they are given the opportunity. |