Why Societies And Projects Fail Or Succeed

With a title like that, I just had to read it. An answer to an ultimate question. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Wouldn’t you like to know why some ancient societies are extinct, while others are still full alive? It also might shed some light on why projects fail or succeed. Society is a group of people living and working together. So is a project, just a wee bit smaller.

Jared Diamond argues that there are five factors involved in the survival of societies. The remaining 99% of the book he provides examples to support his claims. His examples range from the original inhabitants of Eastern Island to the genocides in Rwanda. The broad spectrum of topics makes it captivating.

What did I learn? Well, first of all, the five factors that cause a society to collapse or survive are:

• the damage people have inflicted on their environment (use of scarce resources): chopping up all the trees turns the soil into wasteland; “no food, you die”, stuff like that;
• climate change: if you are a fisherman and your lake gets frozen, you have some issues;
• hostile neighbors (enemies): war puts a large pressure on the people and the resources, getting killed while you’re at it, doesn’t help either;
• changes in friendly neighbors (trading partners): a society can flourish because of things that are provided by your neighbors. This dependency can be lethal if something happens to your neighbors;
• the society’s political, economic and social responses to these changes: the four previous factors can be devastating on their own, but societies responses to these threats can make things better or far worse.

If we turn these insights towards Project Management, why would project fail or succeed?

• Depletion of resources: if you use too much money, time and resources there will be nothing left in the end to run your project on.
• Changes in constraints and scope: laws, policies, budgets, corporate strategies are what make up the boundaries and the rules of the game for projects.
• Corporate politics: hidden agendas and vice-presidents on a war path can kill a project before you can say “Incoming!”
• Use of sponsors: we all need a helping hand, the people that smoothen the path within organizations. Too much dependence is like too much coffee. Not good.
• Project Management reaction to changes: with measurements the PM can create or break the resilience of the project. Strategies and project organizations limit or enhance the projects survival. Doing “agile” or “plan-driven” is not just a nice discussion!

Back to the book itself. For such a big book about a very broad subject, I found it a delight to read. Diamond knows how to entertain. The views he formulates in this book are highly debated by all kinds of specialists. And that is to be expected when you have such a provocative title. If you say you know it all, people are looking with more skepticism. But to be able to bring forth the ideas he has, you just have to be some Uber-Generalist that begs-steels-and-borrows from all kinds of scientific disciplines. No matter how smart you are, you are never going to measure up in specific fields against the local experts. So I guess the author is taking a few short cuts, is making some moderate assumptions to make the story more coherent. And its the story that makes this book impressive.