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In “The Fiefdom Syndrome”, former Microsoft and Procter & Gamble executive, Robert Herbold, relates a fascinating story:
Back in 1987, when I was the chief information officer at Procter & Gamble, Sam Walton invited a Procter & Gamble executive team to Bentonville, Arkansas. He told them that he had heard so much about their tremendous effort behind “total quality” that he wanted the executive team to be exposed to their wisdom. Sam went on and on about how much he admired Procter & Gamble’s knowledge on this subject and how he hoped that Wal-Mart would be able to benefit from their experience.
Naturally, this made the Procter & Gamble people proud of their total quality effort. They jumped at the opportunity to go to Bentonville to present a one-day training program to Sam’s executive team. This was the same one-day training effort that Procter & Gamble had been implementing internally with its own people. Upon hearing that the training required a full eight-hour day, Sam was a little bewildered. But he continued to move forward with the plans to have the Procter & Gamble crew come to Bentonville.
The Procter & Gamble team walked into the meeting room in Bentonville with a stack of transparencies to be used with an overhead projector. Sam looked at that stack and once again got a bewildered look on his face. The training session began, and Sam impatiently fidgeted in his chair as the trainer painstakingly droned through the material.
After an hour into the meeting, Sam got up and said to the Procter & Gamble folks: “Look, boys, I’m not so sure we need to go through all those transparencies. I think we are all beginning to get the idea behind this total quality stuff. What I’d really like to talk about is how Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart can do business together with a lot fewer people involved and with a much higher rate of overall efficiency in both of our organizations. What we need is to just have you guys ship us product as automatically as possible and we’ll settle up at the end of the month and things will be real simple.”
Now it was the Procter & Gamble people’s turn to look bewildered. The total quality trainer jumped up and indicated that he was confident they could tackle that problem as a group exercise once they got through the transparencies and understood some of the nuances of total quality that he claimed easily applied to Sam’s problem. The total quality presentation resumed, and Sam took his place and again fidgeted around like a hyperactive kid.
After another hour, Sam popped up and said: “Look, we don’t want to get too loaded down with theory here. I think I see where you are going with this total quality material, and I want again to suggest that we interrupt the meeting and just jump right in to making it simpler for our two companies to get Procter & Gamble products through our warehouses and stores and off to the customer.”
The P&G folks tried to get Sam to back down, but there was no stopping him now. He took the felt-tip pen and started drawing boxes on the flip chart…Again, the P&G folks tried to get Sam to back off, but Sam prevailed. This time he got a bit more emotional. “You boys have about seven operating divisions that all offer separate products and all have different business practices. Each of those divisions sends their salespeople and their fancy cars to park in our lot and sit in our lobby and wait for our buyers. We have to have buyers for every one of those salespeople, and these sellers and buyers get all set in their ways and believe they are very important and have their own ways to do the business and it costs us all in time and money. Let’s just see how simple we can make this stuff.”
Total quality is not the only management concept to have suffered an explosion of complexity on the way to maturity. Project management seems to be following the same path. PMI’s PMBOK Guide 3rd Edition has 68% more text than the 2000 Edition, and 60% more “outputs”. The number of “processes” jumped to 44 from 39 in the 2000 Edition and 37 in the 1996 Edition. APM released the 5th Edition of the APM Body of Knowledge in January with 52 “knowledge areas”, up from 42 in the 4th Edition. PMI’s OPM3, which is “designed to be easy to understand and use”, defines an incredible 586 best practices and 2100 capabilities.
While the increasing complexity associated with project management undoubtedly drives a growing demand for people who can understand it all, namely certified project managers, trainers and consultants, the evidence is scant that corporations are buying it. Yes, PMO’s are being created at record rates, but they are being shut down or radically redesigned just as fast, according to Dr. Brian Hobbs of the University of Quebec at Montreal.
Is all this complexity necessary? Even though Wal-Mart is now establishing a PMO at its Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters, we doubt Sam Walton would listen to a presentation promoting 586 best practices and 2100 capabilities. He would be complaining about the consultants and trainers driving up in “their fancy cars to park in our lot and sit in our lobby and wait for our project managers. Project managers who get all set in their ways and believe they are very important and have their own ways to do the business and it costs us all in time and money.”
In spite of the apparent success of project management in the past several decades, we may be well advised to take Sam Walton’s advice before other executives ask the same questions.
“Let’s just see how simple we can make this stuff.”
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