Week 8 Discussions\t“Around here, we keep half the people ignorant so they aren’t prejudiced, and half the people prejudiced so they aren’t ignorant.”\t\u00a0 \u00a0— Dr. Jay Shulman, c.1980\tFirst, consider the following case study background:\tBecause people don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, and are sometimes afraid that their management may “kill the messenger”, employees are often very reluctant to bring unwelcome but critically important project status information to their management.\u00a0 (This is sometimes known as the “mum effect.”)\u00a0 Therefore, it is common that important project status information does not make it to the level of management that can take corrective action to do something about it.\u00a0 In fact, it is typical that the farther up the hierarchy a manager is, the less information he or she will have about the project.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this sometimes means that those who have the authority to change things, are the very people who do not know the necessity of the change and\/or who do not have sufficient information to enable an appropriate change.\tWhistle blowing (see below) is an extreme case of bearing the bad news up the hierarchy.\u00a0 Sadly, whistle blowing can be dangerous to one’s own career.\u00a0 Unfortunately, whistle blowing in some organizations is considered illegitimate behavior bordering on insubordination.\u00a0 Even when people blow the whistle, management can ignore it (sometimes known as the “deaf effect”), essentially saying “don’t give me bad news that I don’t want to hear.”\tAll this is counterproductive to projects, whose success depends on sound decisions and timely corrections of deviance from plan.\u00a0 For instance, issues that are not elevated to the proper decision-maker before they mature into full-blown problems, become a risk to the success of the entire project.\u00a0 If the decision-maker is kept in the dark, or refuses to make a decision, or punishes the bearer of bad news, then he or she will no longer be in a position to take timely corrective action to keep the project on track to success.\tThen consider these informal definitions so that we know we’re talking about the same thing:\t“\ufffd Whistle blowing is reporting someone (usually your own management) for doing something illegal or unethical.\u00a0 (Like intelligent disobedience from the questions on the Project Scope Module, we are well advised to pick our battles wisely.\u00a0 Even the Federal whistle blowing office admits that whistleblowers generally are retaliated against, even though that is illegal.)\t“\ufffd Recall that in this context, intelligent disobedience, like civil disobedience, is refusing to go along with something that is unethical (whether it’s legal or not), while fully realizing that we may be punished or penalized for disobeying, and being willing to take the penalty for the “greater cause”.\u00a0 As Harry Truman said, “if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”\u00a0 The “intelligent” part comes from not being belligerent and especially from picking our battles wisely.\u00a0\u00a0\t“\ufffd Insubordination, on the other hand, is probably less-than-intelligent, since it seems to usually be belligerent, not pick its battles wisely, and not be for a greater cause such as ethics. It usually results in management taking career-threatening actions against the employee.\t“\ufffd Finally, there’s just garden variety differences of opinion.\u00a0 While it should be obvious that that should always be encouraged — two heads are better than one, after all — nevertheless, in some organizations, it actually isn’t!\tNow answer the following questions:\ta)\u00a0 \u00a0 What type of organizational culture might inhibit whistle blowing?\u00a0 Why?\tb)\u00a0 \u00a0 What should a project manager do to encourage his project team’s willingness to report project problems?\tc)\u00a0 \u00a0 How can a project manager effectively report project problems to the sponsor, stakeholders, and senior management?\u00a0 What techniques might the PM use?\tIf you have not worked for an organization that had internal auditors, Inspectors General (IGs), or other internal inspectors then skip to Part E, below.\u00a0 If you have worked for such an organization, then answer Part D:\u00a0\td)\u00a0 \u00a0 If you have worked for an organization that had internal auditors, IGs, or inspectors, were they effective?\u00a0 Were they welcome?\u00a0 What, in your experience, was done well and what was done poorly with such internal auditors and inspectors?\te)\u00a0 \u00a0 If you have not worked for an organization that had internal auditors, inspectors, or IGs, do you think it would be beneficial, detrimental, or problematic?\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Week 8 Discussions “Around here, we keep half the people ignorant so they aren’t prejudiced, and half the people prejudiced so they aren’t ignorant.” \u00a0 \u00a0— Dr. Jay Shulman, c.1980 First, consider the following case study background: Because people don’t Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}