In June, I delivered a keynote address at the Euroforum PMO Symposium in Berlin. I presented the results of ESI’s second annual Global State of the PMO; some of our findings really resonated with the audience, especially our point of view on what the “Next-gen” PMO looks like. Download our survey report and let me know your thoughts as well.
As is often the case with such conferences there are many experienced and top-notch speakers so I rarely give my pitch and leave; I stay to hear as many of the speakers as I can. Although I’ve been in this business for 38 years, I know I still have a lot to learn (and not just about project management!).
One of the speakers at the event, who was part of a panel discussion, was Dr. Michael Kötting, Project Portfolio Manager from the BMW Group. Dr. Kötting is a practitioner spending his days working hard to advance BMW’s skills and competencies in project management, chosing the right projects, and getting them “out the door.” In other words, a real practitioner.
When the topic turned to project management and cultural concerns on teams Dr. Kötting asserted “cultural issues do not exist on projects.” That’s it; that’s what he said.
And he said this to more than 100 project professionals hailing from the U.K. and a large number of European countries (in other words, a cross-cultural audience of experienced professionals). This comment so shocked the audience, even he couldn’t believe no one offered a countervailing view, or even asked him to clarify his remark.
Dr. Kötting went on to say that he had worked on four continents with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, languages, religions and cultures. He said that the root cause of problems in projects is not cultural differences; it’s because people don’t understand the requirements. He claimed that if you made it very clear to the people who are doing the job what the requirements are they will get it right so it makes no difference what their cultural backgrounds are.
I thought about his remark long and hard. In fact, I’m still trying to sort it out. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to talk to Dr. Kötting after the panel discussion but if I ever run into him again I’m going to spend some time asking him these kinds of questions: Do you think we make too much out of all this cultural business? Do we focus too much on trying to be so knowledgeable of everyone’s cultural characteristics and peculiarities that we are doing ourselves a disservice? Should we spend more time worrying about whether the requirements are clear and less time worrying about offending one of our teammates because of some hand gesture or suggesting they eat foods that are prohibited in their culture?
What do you think? What would you ask Dr. Kötting (other than to let you test drive a new BMW?)
J. LeRoy Ward, PMP, PgMP, Executive Vice President, Product Strategy & Management, ESI International, brings more than 35 years of expertise in project and program management to the refinement of ESI’s portfolio of learning programs. He works closely with ESI clients worldwide to guide the assessment, implementation and reinforcement of knowledge and skills that allow for the effective measurement and successful adoption of learning program objectives.
Well, I think Dr Kötting was referring to cultural traits.
What’s a cultural issue if not a filter that you need to deal with or circumvent in order to make your message get to the destination, and some feedback to make you know it was received and “correctly” interpreted?
Then Dr. Kötting says you need to make “…it very clear to the people who are doing the job what the requirements are”. You’ll need to make it “very clear” involves preparing the message, sending it, circumventing or dealing with the filters and getting an acknowledge on the mutual understanding.
I mean, just a matter of labels.
Regards,
Ricardo
Based on over 45 years of experience in PM in 20+ countries, including 18 in the Corporate setting with General Electric and Battelle Memorial Institute, I find Dr. Kotting’s observations somewhat disturbing. I, like thousands of other PM professionals, have always maintained that one of the keys to obtaining the result desired while executing a project using the tools and techniques of the trade is and always will be founded in the clarity of the requirements definition. However, to imply that this requirements clarity eliminates the potential impact of “culture”–personal, organizational or geographical–in the project management world is almost irresponsible. I have had the pleasure of directling successful High Performance Teams comprised of diverse multi-cultural professionals and I am convinced that had I not paid careful attention to addressing and respecting the “cultural” issues the same level of success would not have been achieved. The process of communicating CLEAR project requirements has embedded within it the recognition of cultural issues as the requirements message is prepared for delivery. Failure to take the cultural issues seriously will directly impact the clarity understanding of the requirements and subsequently the approach implemented to achieve the requirements.
Gentlemen: many thanks for your comments. This is a tough one to be sure. I agree that communicating requirements is paramount; however, having worked with folks from many different countries, I too see where awareness to cultural differences can play a role in being successful as a project manager. I don’t think project management is quite as mechanistic as Dr. Kotting’s remarks seem to imply. That said, if people don’t understand the requirements it makes little difference which culture you’re from, the job won’t get done right. To be honest, I’m still debating this with myself!
I think it’s a really interesting and provoking comment. I tend to agree with him more than disagree with him, if only because at the heart of what he’s saying is really, “you can’t blame project failures on cultural issues.” By sweeping the cultural factor off the table completely, perhaps it allows people to look at the problem differently.
Actually, it’s really not much different than saying, “Personality conflicts are not project issues.” And I think I would agree wholeheartedly with that.
My take on this is that he is taking into account cultural differences, the point is to focus on the project and effective communication. To make it very clear what people have to do, effectively, you have to take cultural differences into consideration in my opinion. That said, we also need to be accepting on both sides that we are all on the same team, working to the same goal and on occasion there will be misunderstandings that can be attributed to cultural differences.
So let’s all put on our steel toed boots so that we do not hurt/get hurt when we accidentally step on each other’s toes.
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