How the Seven Deadly Sins Can Lead to Project Failure - Part 2 - ANGER (OR WRATH) by Harold Kerzner, Ph.D., Senior Executive Director for Project Management, International Institute for Learning

In a project environment, any or all of these sins can cause rational people to make irrational decisions, and this can occur at any level within the organizational hierarchy. At some levels, the existence of the sins may have a greater impact on project performance than at other levels. If a sin is apparent in the beginning of a project, then poor decisions in the initiation phase can have detrimental consequences in all of the downstream phases.

ANGER (OR WRATH)

• "For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
• "Speak when you are angry - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." (Dr. Lawrence J. Peters)
• "Anger is never without reason, but seldom a good one." (Benjamin Franklin)
• "Anger is one letter short of danger." (Anonymous)
• "Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it." (Seneca)

Anger or wrath is a strong feeling of displeasure. Sometimes we become angry because the actions of others on the project have offended us. Other times, we demonstrate unnecessary anger to make someone extremely annoyed in order to stop a threatening behavior, such as continuous schedule slippages or cost overruns. Anger is often synonymous with ire, annoyance, irritation, rage, and resentment.

When we get angry, we often lose our objectivity. The anger we feel and demonstrate can appear suddenly, or it can be deliberate. There are ranges of anger. On the soft end of the spectrum, anger can be just a mild irritation, whereas on the hard end, anger can result in fury and rage. Not all anger is readily visible. For example, passive anger can be seen as a phony smile, giving someone the cold shoulder, overreacting to something, or constantly checking things. Aggressive anger can appear as bullying, expressing mistrust, talking too fast or destructiveness.

Here are some examples of how anger can affect projects:

Situation 1: Failure Due to Unjust Anger. While selecting the portfolio of 20 projects for the upcoming year, senior management established the budgets and schedules without any supporting data on what might or might not be realistic. To make matters worse, the executive sponsors on each project emphatically stated that they would not tolerate schedule slippages or cost overruns. The project teams developed the detailed project plan and, on eight of the 20 projects, the teams determined that the budgets and schedules provided by senior management were unrealistic. Rather than inform senior management immediately that their budget and schedule perceptions may be wrong, the teams began executing the projects and hoping for a miracle. The teams felt that this was a better approach than to incur the wrath of senior management in action when they were apprised of the situation.

The eight teams were unsuccessful in their quest for a miracle. After a few months, senior management performed a health check on one of the eight projects and discovered the truth: the project was in bad shape. A health check was then performed on all 20 projects, and it became apparent that eight of the projects were in trouble both financially and technically. Senior management became enraged that they were not informed of this previously, cancelled the eight troubled projects and fired all eight project managers in one day.

Part of the blame certainly falls upon the shoulders of the project teams for not informing senior management early on. But a lot of the blame must rest with senior management, especially when they have a history of demonstrating irate behavior that may have been unjustified. When project teams believe that they will encounter anger rather than support for problems from the top of the organizational hierarchy, project management may not succeed, and projects will fail. Bad news is often filtered to prevent the occurrence of anger.

Situation 2: Failure Due to a Hidden Agenda. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) became the project sponsor for a $25 million IT project scheduled to last about one year. The CIO established October 1st as the "go live" date for the project. During a July review of the status of the project, the CIO was informed by the project manager that the "go live" date was unrealistic. The CIO became furious and asked, "How much of the software would be operational by October 1st?" The project manager responded, "Perhaps ten percent."

The CIO stormed out of the meeting after demonstrating anger, calling the project team "incompetent fools." The CIO then authorized significant overtime and awarded the prime contractor almost $5 million in additional costs if they could get at least 50% of the software operational by October 1st and 70% or more by November 1st. The CIO knew that his year-end corporate bonus was partially aligned with implementation of this project, and with 70% of the software operational, his bonus would be significant. When the project was finally completed in February, the executive committee viewed the project as a partial failure because of the $5 million cost overrun, and the project manager was reprimanded. But the CIO received his bonus.

Situation 3: Failure Due to Information Filtering. Senior management in a Government agency established a culture that bad news would be filtered as the news proceeded up the organizational hierarchy. Allowing bad news to reach the top would be an invitation for fury and rage coming from the top back down to the projects. Therefore, by the time that the information reached the top, much of the bad news disappeared, and the risks associated with the project were buried. The result on one project was just as the technical risk experts predicted: seven astronauts were killed when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during liftoff^.[3]   There were other factors, as well, that led to this disaster. During a Congressional Committee Meeting reviewing the cause of the fatality, one subject matter expert was asked by the committee, "Why didn't you explain to senior management what the risks were?" The subject matter expert asserted, "I didn't report administratively to senior management.  My responsibility was to report this to my boss and he, in turn, should have reported it higher up."

Situation 4: Failure Due to a Collective Belief. A collective belief is a fervent, and often blind, desire to achieve - regardless of the cost and consequences. When a collective belief exists, especially at the senior levels of management, rational organizations begin making irrational decisions, and any deviation from the collective belief is met with anger. People who question the collective belief or challenge progress are removed from the project or severely reprimanded. In order to work on these projects, one must suppress one's anger and go with the flow, regardless of the outcome. These projects can be technical successes but financial failures, never totally fulfilling the corporate business strategy.

A good example of this was the Iridium Project.^[4] The Iridium Project was an 11-year project that missed the service launch date by one month. The service was a network of 66 satellites circling the earth, whereby we could talk to anyone anywhere. The project management activities performed by Motorola and Iridium LLP were outstanding, especially when we consider that the project resulted in more than 1000 patents and 25 million lines of software code. Technically, it was a success. But financially, it was a disaster, invoking anger when it became apparent that they could not get the number of subscribers they needed to break even. Throughout the project, the threat of severe anger from above, as well as the existence of the collective belief, made it almost impossible for people to challenge the projections on the number of subscribers.

Anger need not be demonstrated to inflict pain upon a project. Just the implied threat or fear of anger can limit a team's performance significantly.

We painted a bleak picture here of how this Deadly Sin can have a negative impact on projects. From a project perspective, some of the sins are closely related and cannot be as easily separated and discussed as psychologists and philosophers would have us believe. This can be seen from some of the situations presented previously, for example, where the desire for control of vast resources could be considered as some form of lust, gluttony or avarice.

It is true that, in some situations, the sins can produce positive results. They can force us to become more aggressive, take risks, accept new challenges and add value to the company. Our fascination with pride and lust can help us turn around a distressed project and make it into a success so that we can get corporate-wide recognition. The greed for wanting a large bonus can likewise encourage us to make our project successful.  The downside risk of the vices is that they most certainly can have a negative effect on our ability to establish our interpersonal skills and our relationships with the project teams and functional departments.

So, should we train project managers and team members on how to identify and control the sins? Perhaps not as long as beneficial results are forthcoming. Once again, we all succumb to some or all of these sins, but in varying degrees.

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes seven virtues, which correspond inversely to each of the Seven Deadly Sins. This is shown below in Exhibit 2.

Exhibit 2: Vices and Virtues

From a project management perspective, perhaps the best solution would be to teach the virtues in project management training courses. It is even possible that in future editions of the PMBOK® Guide, the Human Resources Management Chapter may even discuss vices and virtues. Time will tell. 

Harold Kerzner (Ph.D., MS, Engineering and MBA) is Senior Executive Director with International Institute for Learning, Inc. and Professor Emeritus of Systems Management at Baldwin-Wallace College. Dr. Kerzner is a globally recognized expert on project management and strategic planning and the author of several best-selling books about project management.