In Pursuit of Management

One of the few things I really struggle with here in Sweden is the general reluctance of people to make a decision and to stick by it. Swedish society has raised it's people to repect the wishes and feelings of others, and not to do anything that can make another person feel less or devalued. It's a great notion, and we culd all learn a thing or two about it, but it is perhaps an example of a concept taken too far and which has now become out of control. The result of this culture, and the general fear that many Swedes have of sticking their head up bove the water line, is that it can be quite hard to get anything done. In my non-work life, I've kind of gotten used to this. I work on taking twice as long to do half as much, and it generally works out about right. It used to really stress me, but becoming more realistic about what is actually achievable has made a big difference there. In my work life, however, it's a completely different story. Here I still expect a professional approach and a pro-active attitude towards achieving a pre-determined result. If only. Every second week I've been travelling to a project meeting hosted by one of the largest industrial companies in Sweden. These people drive much of the nation's economy. Although you'd have to say it's more by dumb luck than anything else. Every meeting we sit there and go through the minutes of the previous meeting. We then raise points about those minutes, which are carefully noted down by the Project Manager for inclusion in the next minutes. And that seems to be all that is happening. The client's PM's sole duty seems to be to write a novel about everything that everyone says during the fortnightly meeting. Nothing actually gets resolved, merely recorded. We're now half way through the project programme and there are still some basic issued to be decided upon which should have been sorted before the team even came together. Any note of conflict during the meeting gets recorded as X from Stockholm will sort it out with Y from Malmö. For F*** Sake! Both X and Y are sitting next to each other at the meeting. Sort it out now and we'll have an answer straight away. They're right here. That's surely the entire purpose of the meeting. It's not some Happy Hour. Socialise on your own time, not on mine. I've got another 3 hour drive ahead of me.

I think that Project Management in Sweden, from what I have seen, is very poor. I've seen our own company's PM training programme, and it's a joke. It's not a PM course, it's a course about how to deal with clients. There is nothing in there about allocating the right resources at the right time, about forward planning, about time management within the project, critical paths, or about how to deal with issues before they become a problem to the project. If I had pulled a stunt like that in a project meeting back in NZ I would have, well, I just wouldn't have dared try. That's not entirely true. Back in my early days I did try the "I'll have a think about it and get back to you" stalling tactic. I was told in no uncertain terms that the entire purpose of the meeting was to resolve these issues,a nd that was why we were all wasting our time there. I never tried it again. I think the fact that I have a proper qualification in Project Management makes this all the more frustrating. I can see that none of this grief needed to have happened and there is nothing in place to stop it from continuing. Yesterday it got the better of me and I wrote a formal email to the client PM, stating the unresolved issues that I had. I highlighted how long various people had been given to come up with a solution, and what the consequences now were for both me and for the project. It was going to start hitting them in the pocket.

It was a pretty tough email, and I was hesitant about sending it. Back in NZ it wouldn't have bothered me in the least about sending or receiving such an email. Ok, I wouldn't be happy about having received an email criticising my performance on the project, but I know that that's all it is. It's not an attack on me as a person. I learnt that over time. Swedes are a little different. They seem to be unable to remove the personality from the role. If you criticise a particular performance or service, then that's taken to be criticising the person. And that's something that Swedes just won't do. They value the feelings of the person above all else. Be it their own or someone else's. So they shy away from the tough decisions and quietly hope that it will work itself out. Early on in my career here, I openly criticised a particular part of a project. Not horribly so, just pointed out that it had some flaws and we could probably tweak a few things to shore up any weaknesses. Pretty normal stuff I thought, and all healthy discussions. The person responsible for the original design never spoke to me again for 18 months. I can imagine that many Swedes would find it tough having to deal with the direct approach which is common in many countries, without first understanding what it means and what it doesn't mean.

So whether or not I've made a career ending mistake, remainds to be seen. Probably not, but I'm pretty sure I'll be getting the silent treatment from a few people. Frankly, while I don't like that, it's not my main concern. I have just one responsibility in this, and that's to deliver on my promise to my client. That's where it starts and ends. I'd like to do that with the cooperation of everyone involved, but if I have to make the choice... Silly really, it doesn't need to be that way. Swedes are smart, they just need to act that way more often.