Leave Behind Century-Old Management Theory

I've been living in the dissonance of the worlds of project management and enlightened company management. You only need to read a story here and there in Fast Company or Business 2.0 to see that we are setting out to manage our companies in a different way than we attempt to manage our AEC projects. That dissonance led Greg Howell and me in collaboration with Lauri Koskela and John Draper to write the paper Leadership and Project Management: Time for a Change from Fayol to Flores. Greg presented the paper last week to the 12th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, in Copenhagen, Denmark. I got to stay home to tend to client work. I'll let Greg comment to this posting to share how the paper was received.

We succeed on projects by enabling project performers to adjust to the uncertainties of the world with benefit of full context of the planning on the project.

Our paper began with a discussion list thread gone bad in March 2003. In exasperation, I wrote an email and I posted it to the weblog, Lean Project Delivery Rejects Cartesian Thinking. Greg and I had just finished our paper on linguistic action for IGLC-11. I opened by saying bad management and leadership are to blame for the poor performance of our projects. I finished with a hunch on where we need to look for a new model.

"Our deterministic reductionist approach to projects is the limiting condition. New theory must embrace both the uncertainty that is the project milieu and the unpredictable, serendipitous, richness of the human condition when interacting one with the other."

Now fast-forward 16 months. Our basic premise in the Fayol to Flores paper is what we know as good principle and practice of management has been made obsolete by the very nature of project work. Project performers' tasks are dependent on the completion of other tasks. The unreliability of completion leads to all sorts of waste and consequent coping behaviors. The usual practices of establishing firm plans and controlling project performers' actions to those plans exacerbates the situation. Holding firm in a world that is always changing just takes you further off course. Instead, we succeed on projects by enabling project performers to adjust to the uncertainties of the world with benefit of the full context of the planning on the project. The only thing missing is theory to support a move from one set of behaviors to another.

We credit Henri Fayol, a French mining engineer, with codifying a theory of management that was consistent with the emerging mass production and scientific management of the turn of last century.

Fayol's Five Management Functions

1. To forecast and plan the future and to prepare plans of action
2. To organize the structure, people, and material
3. To command activity
4. To coordinate, unify, and harmonize effort
5. To control to assure policies and plans were followed

Fayol's 14 Management Principles

1. Specialization - division of labor
2. Authority with responsibility
3. Discipline
4. Unity of command
5. Unity of direction
6. Subordination of individual interests
7. Remuneration
8. Centralization
9. Chain / Line of authority
10. Order
11. Equity
12. Lifetime jobs (for good workers)
13. Initiative
14. Esprit de corps

I've been having some fun speaking about project management and leadership theory. I ask an audience what they think is good theory and practice. After they rattle off a few points I show them Fayol's five management functions and 14 principles. People usually agree that Fayol got it right. Then I share Fernando Flores' view of the world. People agree with that too!

Flores sees the world differently. And the world has changed in the more than 70 years that elapsed. In Fayol's time labor was the largest part of the product. The usual laborer was uneducated. The reverse is true today, especially in large AEC projects. Flores put it succinctly,

"Management is that process of openness, listening, and eliciting commitments, which includes concern for the articulation and activation of the network of commitments, primarily produced through promises and requests, allowing for
the autonomy of the productive unit." [Flores, 1982]

Can we have it both ways? We think not. We think that one significant contributor to the malaise of project performance is the management and more especially the leadership that is manifest. Our evidence is anecdotal. Nevertheless, we now have an explanation for why some companies and teams succeed taking a lean approach and why others don't.

Greg and I are optimists. We think we will come to understand our situation with continued inquiry, dialogue, and collaboration. Please contribute to our education and the reform of project management by reading and commenting on the paper.

Have a look at other papers reviewed at IGLC Papers.

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