The Impossible Project

XYZ Berhad is a public-listed Malaysian conglomerate with interests in commercial real estate and infrastructure development. Over the years since 1997, it has under gone numerous management restructuring. 1996 and 1997 had been difficult years for them, as they had been heavy in debt, and saw poor revenue income from the commercial office space market already facing a glut.

I had just finished midway through the section on "Why Projects Fail", when my twenty-five participants started exchanging glances and whispering to each other. My comment was on the unrealistic timeframe and budget of projects. They said, this happens all the time, "not only do we have the impossible project constraints, we are not being recognised and treated as Project Managers."

"We are more like Project Administrators! Just following orders and management just want getting things done without asking for our input", confirmed one participant, followed by the nodding approvals of his colleagues.

He added, "Our top boss finalises his negotiation with his top-level client, and he makes his own expectation on the timeframe and budget to his client. The deal is signed-off, and we are at the receiving end of his orders to make sure the project meets his expectations. He did all this without even consulting one of us. We are the engineers for goodness sakes!"

He continued, "You know what…our top boss doesn't have civil engineering background - he's an accountant by training and profession! He was from one of the top six public accounting firms in Malaysia."

After listening to their argument, I told myself that this shouldn't be the way a project-oriented conglomerate operate, let alone having an accountant who knows nothing about civil engineering projects, to head the helm. Then something struck me. Surely, after the many management restructuring exercises the conglomerate had faced, this couldn't be happening. What if it is the impossible that needs to be challenged?

I asked them how many times had they failed to deliver the project on time and on budget. They replied that they had managed to keep the timeframe, and sometimes failed to deliver on budget, but not much in excess. "Very good", I said. "Don't you see it? It is not the project constraints being impossible to you, because somehow, you had been resourceful to overcome them. You had taken each impossible project constraint as a challenge and you had proved to yourself. Perhaps, this is a way your boss wanted you to see for yourself the impossible has turned possible."

I related a story I heard about the Sony Walkman. The chief engineer gave his project team the dimensions and weight of the mobile cassette player, and he left it to his team to figure out what needs to be done to miniaturise the critical components. You see if a team is posed with constraints, only then will they be creative in their work to get it done.

There was silence for a moment, and I left it like that. I knew it is best not to rationalise or try to explain their boss' thinking and the manner of which a project is conceived. Let us hope that the participants get the message and learn from the experience.