initiatives scored in at a better than 95% success rate.
In 2013, we released our findings and published Bare Knuckled Project Management. As a result, thousands of operators took the red pill. The concept caught on. Our red-pill model began to transform Operations within our client organizations. Operations Executives who embraced this shift in perspective saw their own performance ratings rise while the C-suite looked on, wondering about their secret formula.
“Our goal: to determine how each company’s culture measures and cultivates effectiveness and how to reach the maximum velocity that culture will allow.”
That formula is in your hands right now.
If you’re in Operations—veteran or rookie—you’re in the right place. If you’re a project manager, you’re in the right place. Just be aware, before this ride is over, you’ll come face to face with a choice: red pill or blue. The rest is up to you.
INTRODUCTION
Year after year, the Project Management Institute and The Standish Group have consistently reported the massive failure rates of company projects. This year, the chance of success is 30%. That’s a total or partial failure rate of 70%. What’s even more surprising is that the numbers held fairly steady at 68% failure for about 10 years, then ramped up to 71% in 20153 and then settled at 70% in 2018. We have more tools at our fingertips than ever before, but things continue to get worse instead of better.
“Nothing is wrong here. Especially near the nuclear reactor.”
~Gilda Radner as Roseanne Roseannadanna, Saturday Night Live99
•17% of IT initiatives go so badly they can threaten the very existence of the company.”4
•73% of those surveyed admit their ventures are always or usually doomed from the start.5
•Failed IT projects cost the US economy about $50-150 billion annually.6
•Organizations waste $109 million for every US $1 billion invested.7
Project success rates went from 16% in 1994 to 28% in 2000, up to 32% by 2013, back to 29% in 20168 and up to 30% in 2018.9
Jaws10
Starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss Zanuck/Brown Productions (1975)
During a hot summer in a small beach community, the new Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) discovers a shark attack victim on the beach. He wants to close the beaches, but local businessmen resist. Brody backs down, and a young boy falls victim to the predator. When the grieving mother announces a bounty on the shark, amateur shark hunters and fisherman swarm into town, hoping to land the reward.
The beaches remain open, and the death toll rises.
At a town meeting, an experienced shark hunter named Capt. Quint (Robert Shaw) offers to hunt down the shark for an exorbitant price. Soon Quint, Brody, and marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) are at sea, hunting the Great White Shark. As Brody succinctly surmises after their first encounter with the giant creature, they’re going to need a bigger boat.11
In the classic Steven Spielberg movie, Jaws, a ravenous Great White Shark gets a taste for tourists in a small beach town. With the death toll rising rapidly, Sheriff Brody becomes an operations executive with one clear goal—to take out the shark. Brody assembles a team of operators—a marine biologist named Matt Hooper and an eccentric boat captain named Quint.
If Brody were a typical blue-pill operator, the shark would have a 70% chance of winning. Our question: Why?
Why does the average Operations Executive shrug off these horrific stats when their own performance ratings are also in question?
Why do talented, capable Project Management professionals and even Project Management Organizations (PMOs) fail so often?
“Why isn’t someone asking the right questions and coming up with better answers?”
Why isn’t someone asking the right questions and coming up with better answers?
A Different Playbook
On April 26, 1986, the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded, releasing more than 50 tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere. It was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. Always concerned about negative press, the Soviets attempted a cover up. Two days later, Swedish radiation monitoring stations more than 800 miles away reported radiation levels 40% higher than normal. After a string of denials, the Soviet news agency finally acknowledged that a major nuclear accident had indeed occurred at Chernobyl.12
To the Soviets, damage control with the media was their first priority. Our safety-conscious Western minds saw this as beyond ludicrous. So did the writers at Saturday Night Live. In a classic SNL skit a few weeks later, actor Gilda Radner played a Russian news reporter in Chernobyl saying, “Nothing is wrong here. Especially near the nuclear reactor.”13
“The Soviets saw their actions as perfectly logical. They just had a different playbook.”
Whether we understand them or not, the Soviets saw their actions as perfectly logical. They just had a different playbook.
Could the blue-pill Project Management model have its own playbook? Why else would such an inefficient system continue for decades without a major overhaul?
This is business where numbers rule. We started to wonder if we were looking at the wrong numbers.
Failure is Baked In14
Most executives claim their Operations run fairly well. Always room for improvement, mind you, but overall their projects deliver what they need to keep their company running and profitable.
That’s right. Everything’s fine with projects.
Except it isn’t.
Imagine taking your car to a repair shop who gives you a quote and a timeframe. When you arrive to pick it up, the car isn’t ready and won’t be ready for a while. The repair takes twice as long and costs three times as much as your quote. You drive off the lot with the engine clanging and smoke trailing from the exhaust pipe. When your friend asks how you like your repair shop, you nonchalantly reply, “They do fairly well.”
“You knew there was a shark out there! You knew it was dangerous! But you let people go swimming anyway?”
~Mrs. Kintner in Jaws100
Really?
Perceptions are tricky. Human beings have a natural inclination to make offhanded statements with little evidence to back them up. For blue-pill managers, it’s often easier to say, “Nothing is wrong here. Especially near the nuclear reactor.”
While an expectation of failure might seem absurd, it does make sense when you consider project success rates stayed at 32% for about 10 years, then dipped to 29% in 201515
