CASE 01 | ORGANIZATIONAL AWARENESS

What if the PMO isn't the problem? 

The situation

“Our projects aren't delivering consistently, and I'm starting to sense that leadership is losing confidence in the PMO. I'm hearing more questions about whether we're providing enough value, and there's increasing pressure on me to improve delivery and accountability.”

The visible problem appears to be PMO performance.

I wouldn't start by fixing the PMO.

I'd start by trying to understand what is producing the outcomes leadership is reacting to.

First, show me the projects.

Which initiatives aren't delivering consistently?

I'm looking across them for patterns.

What kinds of initiatives are struggling? Are they similar?

Who sponsors them? Are the same sponsors or business areas appearing repeatedly?

Who leads them? Are there patterns among project managers, program leaders, delivery teams or business owners?

What outcomes are they trying to produce? Are particular types of outcomes proving more difficult?

Are they internal initiatives or customer-facing?

Do they share resources, systems, vendors, functions, dependencies or decision-makers?

Then I want to look at the initiatives that are delivering successfully.

What's different?

I'm not only looking for what the struggling initiatives have in common. I'm looking for the meaningful differences between what is working and what isn't.

Then I want to understand the change in confidence.

You said leadership is losing confidence in the PMO.

That makes me want to go backward.

When did leadership have confidence?

Was there actually a period when confidence in the PMO was high or even moderate?

If so, what was happening during that period?

When did the perception begin to change?

And what else changed around the same time?

Was there different PMO leadership?

Different executive leadership?

A different executive sponsor?

Did the portfolio change?

Did the type or complexity of work change?

Did organizational priorities change?

I'm trying to establish whether declining confidence represents an actual change, and if it does, what changed around it.

And if there was never meaningful confidence in the PMO, that's important too.

The problem may not be declining confidence at all. We may be looking at longstanding skepticism that has become more visible.

Then I want to understand the agreement.

What was the PMO created to do?

What was its original value proposition?

What did leadership expect from it?

What does the PMO currently believe it is accountable for delivering?

What does its executive sponsor believe it should be delivering?

Are those still the same thing?

A PMO can believe it is delivering successfully against the mandate it was given while executive leadership is evaluating it against an expectation that has changed.

Maybe leadership changed.

Maybe the organization changed.

Maybe the portfolio changed.

Maybe the PMO's mandate never evolved as the organization's expectations evolved.

If that's true, improving execution against the existing mandate won't necessarily restore confidence.

Now I'm looking for intersections.

This is where the investigation starts coming together.

If struggling initiatives share the same constrained resources, I want to understand capacity and prioritization.

If they cluster around particular sponsors or business areas, I want to understand sponsorship, decision-making, authority and alignment.

If customer-facing initiatives disproportionately struggle, I want to understand external commitments, dependencies, requirements and expectations.

If delivery changed after leadership changed, I want to understand whether expectations or the PMO's value proposition changed with it.

If the PMO appears to be performing against one set of expectations while leadership is judging it against another, I want to understand where that divergence began.

And if there is no obvious commonality at the initiative level, I widen the aperture further.

What am I actually looking for?

The consistencies and the consistent inconsistencies.

I'm moving across the work, backward through the history, around the organizational environment and underneath the assumptions contained in the presenting problem.

The PMO may be causing the problem.

The PMO may be contributing to it.

Or the PMO may be where a larger organizational condition has become visible.

Those require very different responses.

The missed commitments tell me where the problem is showing up.

They don't necessarily tell me where it originates.

The Organizational Awareness perspective

Before you transform, understand.

Before you invest in transformation, make sure you understand what actually needs to transform.

That is the work behind The PM Muse's Organizational Awareness engagements.

CASE 02 | LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY

What if “stakeholder resistance” isn't resistance? 

The situation

“One of the stakeholder groups on my transformation is resisting the change. They participate in meetings, ask thoughtful questions and say they support the direction. But afterward, decisions take longer than expected, deadlines slip, and we keep revisiting things I thought we'd already agreed to.

I've increased communication, followed up after meetings, documented decisions more clearly and escalated when necessary. Nothing seems to be changing.”

The leader has already identified the problem:

Stakeholder resistance.

I wouldn't accept that conclusion yet.

My first question would be:

How do you know they're resisting?

Separate what happened from what you've concluded.

Tell me what you're actually seeing.

Did someone explicitly disagree with the change?

Did someone refuse to act?

Did they agree in the meeting and behave differently afterward?

Are decisions being reopened?

Are approvals simply taking longer than expected?

Are commitments being made by people who don't actually have the authority to make them?

Are you observing resistance?

Or are you observing delay, inconsistency or lack of action and interpreting it as resistance?

Those aren't necessarily the same thing.

Now show me where it happens.

Does this stakeholder group behave this way with everything?

Or only certain decisions?

Does it happen with every part of the transformation?

Does it happen with other initiatives?

Who is involved when progress stalls?

Who isn't in the room?

Where does the work actually stop?

What happens between apparent agreement in the meeting and the point where action should occur?

I'm trying to understand whether there is a repeatable pattern underneath the behavior.

Then I want to understand the conditions around it.

Who actually owns the decisions that aren't being made?

Has that changed?

Do the people participating in your meetings have the authority required to act?

Are there competing priorities you're not seeing?

Are there incentives that make agreement with the transformation more difficult outside the meeting than it appears inside the meeting?

Is the stakeholder group receiving conflicting direction from somewhere else?

Has sponsorship changed?

Has leadership changed?

Is there history between these groups that matters?

What organizational condition could make this behavior completely rational from their perspective, even if it looks like resistance from yours?

Now let's look at what you've been doing.

You've increased communication.

You've documented decisions more carefully.

You've followed up.

You've escalated.

Those are all reasonable project leadership responses.

But they're also based on an assumption about the problem.

If the issue isn't lack of communication, more communication won't resolve it.

If the issue isn't unclear documentation, better documentation won't resolve it.

If the people you're escalating to don't own the underlying decision, more escalation may not resolve it either.

At some point, continuing to execute the familiar playbook can keep you busy without helping you understand what's happening.

This is where the leadership shift happens.

The question stops being:

How do I get these stakeholders to stop resisting?

And becomes:

What is this situation requiring me to see that I haven't seen yet?

Can I distinguish what I know from what I've assumed?

Can I see beyond the boundaries of my initiative?

Can I recognize where authority actually sits?

Can I identify the agency I still have inside the authority I possess?

Can I change my approach when the process I've been following stops producing useful information?

And resistance may still be the answer.

The purpose of questioning the conclusion isn't to prove that the stakeholders aren't resisting.

They may be.

The purpose is to understand enough to know.

Because stakeholder resistance, unclear decision authority, competing priorities, weak sponsorship, conflicting incentives and organizational history may produce similar symptoms.

But they require very different leadership responses.

The Leadership Capability perspective

This isn't simply a stakeholder-management problem.

It's a judgment problem.

Leadership increasingly requires you to recognize what a situation is asking of you when the process can no longer tell you what to do.

Where are you relying on process when leadership is requiring judgment?

That is the shift behind The PM Muse's Leadership Capability work.