I’m not making this stuff up! This is the 3^rd, study in a week to blame organizational culture for the failure of change. This time it’s PMOs (Project Management Offices—the governance, coordination, and standards for project management). Of the companies that abandoned PMOs, 60% identified incompatibility with the culture.

The study, conducted by Business Improvement Architects, covered over 750 global organizations. Just for the record, most projects don’t realize projected financial results. A recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey found that 50% of global business projects fail (are never completed). That was half of the 10,640 projects studied and valued at $7.2 billion.

I worked, for only a short time—thanks goodness, for a PMO consulting practice. It made gobs of money during the Y2K bonanza.

Most PMOs are better in theory than in practice. In theory, the PMO provides a single methodology, training, and centralized reporting for projects. In practice, a PMO tends to be bureaucratic, created for the benefit of executive management to maintain control and to report progress. Project managers, project members, and ordinary employees usually end up with extra work, but no benefits.

I think it’s natural that people resist what doesn’t directly benefit them. I don’t know of any organization where the employees said, “You know what this company needs? It needs a good PMO.” If they ever do, well then it must be true. Go ahead help them install a PMO. However in most cases, the basic operations of a PMO don’t support employees, so it’s perhaps unfair to blame the organization’s culture. In this case, it might be management that wears the black hat, for expecting people to support a group that doesn’t support people. People have common sense. In the case of discontinued PMOs, maybe the employees are wearing the white hats.

Keywords: business culture, change leadership, project confidence index

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Michael Cushman, The Engaging Guru, wants you to master enrolling others in your truth, get the goodies of life, and change the world.  www.engagingchange.com