Is modern project management really multi-supplier, virtual vendor, contract management?

Last week I attended a meeting of a "learning set" I belong to. This is a group who voluntarily meet and support each other's learning. It grew out of a group called IQEQ, who were interested in developing improved Emotional Quotients (EQ) in environments typified by high Intelligence Quotients (IQ). Most of the group, apart from me, have a link or background to HR, but now occupy a variety of roles.

Meetings are facilitated and the largest part is where a member brings along a challenge they are facing, outline it to the group and then listen to the group reflect and explore the question(s) posed. Interestingly as the proposer of the topic, once you have outlined the issue, you can make no further comment being entirely an observer until the very end when asked for any closing comments.

This last meeting I brought questions related to how modern working life (at least in my experience) is making the establishment of trust more difficult, particularly in project/change teams. Given that most team and project management thinking has been built on the supposition of trust, are their new tricks to be learnt of has the world changed?

The initial briefing is only 10 minutes or so. Necessarily, while drawing upon personal experience from 30 years of driving business change in financial services, I generalised slightly to illustrate the issue. I firstly laid out the trust formula

In this context intimacy relates to an understanding of how the other person ticks, what affects them and how they are likely to respond to developments.

I then summarised my experience of projects teams over four decades.

My summary was this was a time when project resources were largely permanent employees who have worked together before and have a strong connection with the organisation they are trying to change.

In the 90's as organisations shed staff there was a greater use of external and contract staff, but the project manager (the role of programme manger was only just emerging) was involved early on, recruited his (or her) team and managed all the parts. Usually resources were dedicated to the task and allegiancies were still pretty clear even if one did have to invest in team building early on.

With the new century the pace of change grew as did the pressure to keep costs down. External/contract resources were increasingly important as were the number of people within the business assigned part time and thus required to multi-task. Job security was falling. As a result of these changes the project/programme manager had to wear a lot of hats pulling many pieces together. Loyalties were increasingly unclear, there was less face-to-face contact and the self-interest of project members was higher. The pressure for quicker results and less money to invest in training/team building was also true.`

It feels as if now the programme manager often parachuted into a specific role and "given" many of their resources (for good or bad). While it is often said that the programme manager is accountable and responsible, in practice most/many decisions are outside of their hands. Communication is increasingly impersonal and "sanitised", with a sense of creating the right impression being more important than facing up to and dealing with the real issues.

The question I posed was

So then I listened. I half expected that the group would say that the modern world was not one of teams, but of groups and that expectations should be reset/adjusted. That said I had HOPED that the team would have some suggestions as to how to accelerate the development of trust.

What I actually heard was interesting. The first part was that the group felt that trust was still important and those that had not seen the trust formula before recognised its value in analysing the basis of trust.

The second part was more interesting in that the group quickly homed in on the fact that modern project management as descreibed is much like contract management with many, many, small or individual suppliers. I wanted to say, "no that is not what this is about or what I meant", but according to the rules of the group I had to stay silent and listen.

The group did not move of the contract management theme no matter how hard I wished them to and despite the fact they did revisit the questions before the end.

I did not get out of this session what I expected, but I do find myself reflecting on the fact that they may be right, that my natural tendency and preference to create a work environment based on trust needs modifying for the workplace I now operate in. I do not know how hard that will be, but as they say, being aware of the problem is a large part of the way to solving it, as is the wish to do so.

If this resonates with you as a reader please do let me know and share your thoughts too.