The ongoing Hackgate scandal, we can call it that as people in the US
are now interested rather than just the dull old 'phone hacking
scandal', teaches us some very interesting lessons about corporate
politics and the meaning of the term responsibility.
I see quite a few projects where the issue is that someone somewhere
hasn't taken control or responsibility and therefore things have gone
off the rails. A lot of the time this is about the personality types
involved and those personalities massively impact how any recovery can
be achieved.
In this scandal we've seen so far five completely different views of
responsibility and each of these teaches us a lesson we can learn from
Responsibility without Action but with blame - David Cameron
First up is the Prime Minister David Cameron who has taken '
full responsibility'
for hiring Andy Coulson. What full responsibility means here is that
he has stated that he takes that responsibility, but in reality actually
nothing has changed or is in danger of actually being done. I often
see this on projects where a senior business sponsor has a pet project
that they actually don't care that much about but just want to see it
continue for power reasons. As with this occasion this responsibility
normally actually means shooting the project manager or some other
individual so in reality what is being said is that the senior
individual actually bears no real responsibility and that the failure is
further down the chain of command.
This is very common in IT projects, often you will see a programme
director being promoted during a project and then taking 'full
responsibility' by firing the person who had to clean up their mess
after they were promoted. Its a very good career strategy as it implies
that you are the sort of person who takes decisive action and has
person integrity but in reality is classic blame farming. This is one
of the hardest situations to deal with when recovering a project as you
often need the sponsor to change some of their behaviours and what you
get instead is a continual statement that they have 'taken
responsibility' but actually in reality done nothing to change the
behaviours that led to them having to take responsibility for the
failure. These people can be very useful when you recover a program as
they are keen to be seen to be doing things and if you can leverage that
into action it can be a positive thing.
Responsibility without responsibility - Rebecca Brooks
Rebecca Brooks (nee Wade) typifies another form of rogue sponsor when
issues occur. In this case the sponsor is often actively involved with
the project and seen as more than simply a sponsor but actually a leader
of the initiative. Trouble occurs and the sponsor throws up their
hands and claims that they had
no idea at all what was going on
and are appalled at how they were kept in the dark. This is a very
tricky act to play but if played well normally means that the entire
project is about to get a huge kicking as literally nobody is going to
protect the individuals and indeed the previous sponsor will often be
the most vicious in terms of lashing out in order to protect their own
reputation.
In IT programmes I regularly see this where a project within an IT
Director's remit is failing and they see that their best chance of
coming out well is to be seen as a 'strong' leader who has so many
things to do that they can't be faulted for 'trusting' lieutenants who
then turned out to be rubbish. When trying to clean up a project these
people are toxic as normally their only interest is ensuring that no
blame ever attaches itself to themselves, Brooks' initial leading of the
'investigation' is a classic case of this where someone closely
associated with the issues tries to ensure the 'correct' outcome by
either directly or indirectly leading the investigation. Sometimes in
IT the phrase 'lets draw a line under it and move on' is used which can
help if its meant as it means everyone can get on with fixing the
problem rather than with worrying about the political issues.
Responsibility with personal accountability and exit - Sir Paul Stephenson
Then we have the
Met Police chief who has resigned for the faults
within his
organisation which pretty much no-one feels touch him personally. His
extremely barbed comment pointing out that his mistake was to employ
someone who hadn't resigned in the original scandal, as opposed to David
Cameron, clearly highlights what he feels is a double standard in how
people talk about responsibility. Now from one perspective having the
overall sponsor take responsibility and leaving because of it
demonstrates strong personal integrity and leadership, but in another it
also means that the folks below are left without a clear leader and
therefore there is uncertainty on who will clean things up.
In IT this often unfortunately occurs when the sponsor feels they can
leap into another job somewhere else if they go before they are pushed.
The challenge to the project team remains who will clean up the mess
and drive it forwards.
No responsibility but lots of finger pointing
What has been most common in this scandal is lots of people from the
outside pointing fingers and suggesting how things should be cleaned up,
with in the most part very little actual personal commitment in helping
to clean things up. MPs have condemned and moaned, but not promised to
stop religiously courting the media. Other scandal sheets have
condemned and moaned about its impact on the reputation of 'good
journalism', but certainly not offered up themselves to be investigated
to clean their names.
This is really common in IT recovery programmes, lots of people standing
on the sidelines with 'helpful' advice on how to improve or how to
'learn' from the mistakes but zero actual time commitment in cleaning
things up. Managing these people is central to recovering an IT
programme.
No concept of responsibility
Paul McMullen has been the comedy turn of this scandal, a man so
divorced from reality that he continues not just to excuse but
positively to champion the sorts of behaviour that everyone is
condemning around him. Here is a man who
both Hugh Grant and
Steve Coogan have
show up to be a total and utter muppet of the highest order. At some
stages I've really wondered if he isn't really a journalist but in fact a
very hammy actor who is over playing the part.
In IT these are the folks who just don't get that there is an issue. I once interviewed an architect shortly after
Boo.com had failed.
He had been responsibly for lots of their key architectural decisions,
several of which were behind the inability of people generally to use
the site. During a curtailed interview he continued to champion the
approaches they had taken, which had failed, and even managed to support
and promote the business model for Boo.com which had managed to burn
through lottery winning cash in an amazingly short period of time (one
founder entertainingly stated that they were 'too visionary', nope it
was a bad idea, badly implemented). People like this must be quickly
exited from the programme as if they can't see any issues then they will
be unable to fix them.
Responsibility with Action
What we haven't really seen so far is someone take responsibility with
action in this crisis. Sure the News of the World has been closed down
but allegations by Jude Law against the Sun have been met with abuse
rather than a culture of '
we are pretty sure we didn't, we take these
allegations seriously, will will investigate and we are confident we
will prove our innocence'. The closure itself was simply an
acceleration of a previously announced policy so there really hasn't
been that active leadership yet in cleaning things up.
Responsibility with action in an IT failure is the person who stands up
and says 'mistakes have been made, right lets fix them' and sets about
driving change
and leading the cultural shift that is normally required to recover a
failed or failing project. Responsibility with action is normally a
quiet thing rather than a shouty thing, its something that is
done rather
than talked about. It isn't a committee to investigate its an active
approach to finding what went wrong and fixing it as quickly as
possible.
Critically its not about blame in the sense of finding people to blame,
its about finding problems and when these problems turn out to be people
then those people are given the simple choice: change or leave. It is
about finding people who
should have taken personal responsibility and ensuring that next time they do.
Recovering projects is normally one of the most thankless tasks that I
do. You enter into a scenario where someone else has screwed up and
your end result is getting the project to a place where it should have
been ages ago. There is however something personally rewarding in
changing the culture of individuals so that they are able to recognised
the mistakes that were made and in exiting the toxic people from the
process. Crucially however there is one lesson that I've learnt doing
this and that is that the first stage has to be recognise that there are
systemic problems that need to be fixed. If it turns out that actually
its a localised issue then this is great, but the assumption must be
that the rot is much broader and more general than the currently
surfaced failure. Normally there is a culture of poor sponsorship,
leadership, management and clarity that leads to a general case of fail
in which only the scale of the project fail stands out.
If you do see a project failing the first thing your should identify is
not what went wrong in the weeds but how the sponsors and leaders will
react. Will they behave like a Brooks and deny everything? Like a
Cameron and take 'full responsibility' but actually blame farm? Will
they deny that there actually is an issue like McMullen? Will they fall
on their sword and leave a vacuum or do you have someone with whom you
can actually work to drive through the recovery? Clarifying this
'top-cover' challenge is the first step in recovery,
Remember: Don't just people on whether they
say they take or have responsibility but on
what they do
