Why do projects so often fail to deliver expectations?

Let me outline a common scenario that projects implementations experience in complex organisations. Do you recognise this situation?

The company has decided to introduce a new system for allocating work and has chosen to appoint a project team to design and guide the changes. The team includes a core of three permanent employees and representatives from each of the operational functions who use the system. The team gets together for the first time, and after open discussions with the sponsoring executives, develop clarity about their task. Objectives are written, documents prepared and plans made for ongoing activities and the group begins to feel excited and engaged in their important role. Communications are sent out to the organisation as a whole, signed by the CEO who even prepares a corporate video for internal TV.

The part time project team go back to their jobs and, though they find it challenging to juggle their day job with the needs of the project, they do their best to be available to the design team as they are needed and to fulfil their obligations to both roles. They find it exhausting but exciting and definitely worth doing. After much discussion, their new design is produced and approved by the sponsor.

But, as the project proceeds, the team starts to run into some resistance from colleagues and implementation seems to falter. People seem to argue over points that seem irrelevant, and generally continue to use the old system where they can. Some teams work hard to find dispensations for aspects of their work that can be managed to fall ‘outside’ the new system. Sponsors move on to new roles, and changes in direction begin to occur.

The project team by now is feeling that their ‘important’ role is unvalued and misunderstood and may in fact damage their career. The more astute and career minded begin to distance themselves from the project, substituting team members to their roles and reducing the authority of the team. The revised team continues, but with a reduced vigour. Inevitably, impetus and momentum suffer and the project is in danger of running into serious difficulty.

The organisational grapevine quickly picks up on the new climate surrounding the project and its reputation begins to decline. With that, resistance to its objectives begins to rise, and it becomes even harder to achieve even the smallest result.

Eventually, a review is ordered, and the project is either strengthened and relaunched, substantially changed, or stopped altogether.

Most of us have probably experienced a situation like this at some time, and hopefully it has not had too great an impact on the organisation.

Well, the first observation is that many things were done very successfully in this project. Firstly, the project was well conceived, and the start-up and launch phases were well managed. Executives selected a good team, and took personal responsibility for ensuring that the team were fully aware of their task. They also publicised the project and its goals to the organisation at large and lent their weight to the cause. We will assume that the quality of project preparation was adequate, and that roles and responsibilities within the project team were clear and understood.

So where did things go wrong? Inevitably, there will not be one single cause, but an integration of factors impacting on project success. Here are some of the issues that may have been at play.

Whilst the project launch has involved relevant staff representatives at the outset, it has failed to involve or engage the remainder of the organisation or to keep other people up to speed with progress. This has left a gap in knowledge between old and new processes, and influential managers began to feel excluded. Attitudes hardened towards changing to a new method of work and the change agents experienced resistance as they worked towards implementation.

A more effective solution might have been to involve the managers in information and feedback sessions at different stages of the design, engaging their thinking on the topic and getting their feedback as the ideas were forming. If the approach is taken to ‘Tell us why this won’t work’, then negative opinion is legitimised and potential problems identified early. The managers feel they have been consulted and that their input was valued. They begin to have an early stake in developing a successful outcome and can’t legitimately say ‘Not invented here’

During the implementation, leadership is critical. This is the time when the sponsor and senior operational managers need to be visible in their support of a new initiative. This has the effect of counteracting the myriad of questions around a new process, such as ‘Does my manager agree with this? And What will happen if I don’t use it? or What is the level of organisational support behind this initiative?

Our case study project suffered a failure in leadership and communication at critical times which proved to be terminal. It shows that the real reasons for project failure are not usually the quality of the project or its solutions. Good projects fail too. Governance and communication are the real reasons for a project’s reputation to fall and these are the areas that need to be given great attention during the planning phase and throughout the life cycle.