Turn on your television and try not to look at CSI Miami, NYC or Tonopah. It is amazing how popular crime series are, crime series where the geeks will save the day. It must be a universal thing, as the series are as popular in Europe as in The States. For me as a Project Manager it is a great inspiration. They find a dead corpse and an FBI Profiler is brought on the scene. He looks around, sniffs the air and creates a nice profile of the potential killer. Gut feeling, combined with a mix of experience and science transform a dark alley into a rich source of evidence.

When looking daily at the remains of my planning I feel like an FBI Profiler, or more appropriate, a Project Profiler. I look at the evidence and know the problem: death by control. Its liberating to feel like the lone, intelligent and, most of all, cool project profiler that collects evidence and clues, to build a case. Like at the FBI, based upon assumptions a profile is created. New information can lead to new assumptions and a new profile. But also the underlying assumptions steer the direction of the investigation, hoping to find evidence that support the probability of the profile. So, it is not just a matter of information gathering, and presto, you have a clear cut description of the problem. It is a lot of backward and forward reasoning. Based upon some first sparse info snippets assumptions are made, and as time progresses you get a cycle of "assumptions leading to the direction of investigation" and "information leading towards change in assumptions".

The be able to create assumptions and being able to reason to what happens based upon those assumptions, you need theories, you need models. They provide us with a simplified version of reality which make it possible for us mortals to have a clue about what happens if we press button A or button B, take the blue or the red pill, scream loud or shut up. So, to be able to perform project profiling we need theories and models about project reality. And we need a lot of them. Project life can throw a zillion possible situations at us, and as models are by definitions simplifications, we need as much mental images as we possibly can come up with. If you have multiple models, chances that you have one that suites the situation are increasing dramatically.

If you are talking about "agile project managers", this would be the key aspect of my definition. A project manager that has a lot of mental models about projects available, and can adopt his mindset according the situation without problems, is what I call a true "agile" PM. As with any social situation, a group of interacting stakeholders is a very complex system. You are never going to come up with one this-size-fits-all model that is usable. The only shot PMs have is being fluent in more than one mental model.

The nice thing about models is that you can create your own. It's your head, make sure you are using it for your own ideas. I myself like the idea of using Google Earth, the application that lets you zoom in on the globe until you can see your own house. You can zoom in and out, and flip the globe as much as you want. By zooming you can determine your own level of abstraction. How much details do you want to see? How much of the geographical positions do you want to look at? Same with social models. Do you want to look at two people interacting or do you wish to focus on society as a whole? You are in charge of your own zoom-slider.

Models Effect Reality

No, I am not going to get all cosmic on you. No, I am not going to sell you that if you think long enough about becoming a weasel, you will become one (although I have seen some astonishing examples that support this). What I am going to tell you though that mindsets, models in your head, are a very powerful tool. Models really do affect reality in a sense that the effect the decisions and behavior of the people that hold them. A good example is the use of metaphors. When using metaphors you are taking the images of a different system, and use that to describe, to model the workings of the system at hand. A famous metaphor is that of a machine when looking at an organization (thanks to Taylor). Every employee is looked at as one of the many gears or bolt in the machinery. Talking about pure efficiency this is a powerful metaphor. However, adapting this mindset, means neglecting the individual character of every employee.

People can talk about projects as if they are conducting a war. They are using words like "marching orders" and "the troops". If a Project Manager has a mindset like this, war as a metaphor, his mind is thinking in friends and foes, allies and enemies. You are either with him or against him. This view of the world will make it very difficult to collaborate with this person if you disagree. So, in the end, the war metaphor effects reality. If the model is powerful enough and wide spread among more people, the model will even become a reality. The project will end up as a war.

If models can have such an impact on the performance of reality, you almost have to be aware of the images that people try to fill in your head.

"In courses on corporate governance grounded in agency theory … we have taught our students that managers cannot be trusted to do their jobs -which, of course, is to maximize shareholder value- and that to overcome "agency problems," managers' interests and incentives must be aligned with those of the shareholders by, for example, making stock options a significant part of their pay. … Why then do we feel surprised by the fact that executives in Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco and scores of other companies granted themselves excessive stock options…?" [1]

Ghosal [1] in the same article sums it up pretty nicely:

"Unlike theories in the physical sciences, theories in social sciences tend to be self-fulfilling."

Perhaps you are wondering at this moment why I am making such a fuzz about all this. Fair enough. Up until a year ago I wasn't completely aware of this phenomenon. I used to work in environments very influenced by corporate politics. The metaphor I created for myself was that of "monkey hill" where all the baboons are showing off their butts to each other in the eternal struggle for having the most red butt. Although this model helped me to run my projects in such an environment, after a couple of years all you can remember is that you are working in a zoo. Everything you see is getting translated into an image of a political arena. Heck, if you stay long enough your own butt is starting to get a slight orange color. And in the end, you almost become what you hated in the first place. I snapped out of it, just in time, thanks for asking.

So, I make the fuzz because I think it is a subject too much neglected in the discussions about the models and theories we as professionals use. And we should especially take care of the ones based upon some gloomy ideology. If you think that every one in the world is lying and cheating, this will of course influence your behavior. If in fact every person on the globe turns out to be a negative soul, your good. If it turns out that only a very few are bad persons, and the majority is all about love, peace and tenderness, you will run into a problem. You must be able to look at the underlying assumptions of the model, and the validity in the situation you are trying to filter through the model. Yes, I know, easier said then done. Although, you have no idea how few people are even aware of this principle.

The Three Lenses

To return the start of this article, in order to get to the source of human problems in his project, a PM has to be able to switch back and forth to several ways of looking at the same situation. There are tree lenses through which a project (as a group of interacting stakeholders) can be viewed:

1) The individual: in this view each person is regarded as a independent, rational entity, that will perform behavior that benefits him the most. Each individual selects the proper strategy based upon his personal aspects and inputs from the environment. This is the view of the world that is brought to us by behavioral psychology and economics.

2) Individual as member of social groups: each persons identity is created by his associations with different social groups, based upon his race, religion, occupation,hobbies . Each social group has its own rituals, laws, sense of common wisdom. Being part of a group, or a desired wish to belong to a certain group influences individual behavior. Sociology helped us creating this particular lens.

3) Interactions: instead of the individual members of the group, you can also focus on the interactions between the members. The flow of information, the flow and distribution of power, the structure of the task flows. The project is treated as a network. This view is based upon social networks, complex adaptive systems and general systems theory.

[1] Sumantra Ghosal, "Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices", Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2005, Volume 4, No 1, 75-91