PMI Interview

PM Network Interview re Hierarchy

From PM Network magazine

January 1998

Column: “PM@Work”1

By Greg Hutchins

I'm always looking for project management gurus or gurus-in-training. Bill Casey, an organizational development consultant is one of these.

“I LOVE hierarchy!” shouted Bill Casey. “And I'm sick and tired of people bad-mouthing it!” He got my attention quickly. At a time when hierarchy is flattening and self-managed teams are taking over organizations. Casey's ideas run against the grain. See if they make sense to you:

Hutchins: What's all this about your loving hierarchy? The conventional business wisdom is that hierarchy is evil. I don't get it!

Casey: Complaining about hierarchy is like complaining about bacteria. Sure some kinds are bad. But not all kinds. Accountability hierarchies are good. Status hierarchies (big offices and preferred parking) are bad.

Hutchins: Give me an example of an accountability hierarchy.

Casey: The head of any project or organization has huge accountability. The leader does the work appropriate to his or her level and then delegates tasks to subordinates, who in turn do the same. These are cascading accountabilities. They're nothing special. Just good time, risk, quality, management-something we all know but don't practice all the time.

Hutchins: Yes, but…

Casey: Let me paint a picture. A client became a co-project manager to a $25 million project. She asked me what I thought of it. I usually don't intrude. But having two people trying to manage the same project is like two people trying to give birth to the same baby. It ain't natural.

Hutchins: After that quip did you still have a job?

Casey: Yeah. Both project managers were good and talented people. But sooner than later they were at each other's throats. I was brought in to do a postmortem. Much of the project's budget had been wasted. The problem was diffused accountability. There had been a continual struggle to figure out who was supposed to do what for whom. And who was going to decide this.

Hutchins: Yeah, I've seen the same thing in design by committee.

Casey: Greg, you've got it. Clear accountabilities set you free. They free project teams to get things done. Telling a self-managed team “you're all accountable” produces more confusion than results because individual members don't exactly know what they're supposed to achieve. You've got the classic infield fly problem where everyone calls for the ball and nobody snags it.

Hutchins: So what should the project manager do about unclear accountabilities?

Casey: OK, here's a little PM 101. Reporting relationships are not accountability relationships unless all three C's are in place. Clear assignment from an authorized manager. Commitment from subordinates that he or she will do the job. Consequences for performance that the right things will be done right on time.

Hutchins: I see a guru in the making. Casey's Lc's. Clever alliteration, and it's mnemonic.

Casey: Come on Greg. This is for real. Go into any shoe store. The shoe store manager who runs a relatively simple operation probably has more authorities than does the typical project manager with a gazillion dollar budget. A successful project manager needs these authorities: The authority to choose team members, the authority to unchoose team members, the authority to assign tasks, and the authority to hand out meaningful performance rewards and, if necessary, consequences.

Hutchins: You win!

By Greg Hutchins

1 This material is reprinted from the PM Network with permission of the Project Management Institute Headquarters, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-2399 USA. Phone: (610) 356-4600, Fax: (610) 356-4647, Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world's leading project management association with over 60,000 members worldwide. For further information contact PMI Headquarters at (610) 356-4600 or visit the web site at www.pmi.org.

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