The Painful Cost of the Accidental Expert
Sixty-seven percent (67%). Take a stack of 100 $1 bills. Make two piles. One pile with 33 and the other with 67. Then, take the larger pile, smile at it, then throw it in a trashcan, and light it on fire. “Burn my money? Excuse me?!” What if I told you, you already are? Stay with me.
Sixty-seven percent - that’s the rate for which projects fail because organizations don’t value project management as a necessary process, skillset, or role in their organization. This was noted in Forbes, and further supported by a Project Management Institute (PMI) study in 2018 that showed 58% of organizations continue not to understand the value of project management. On the surface, this may not seem like a big deal but it is! Why? According to PMI, “Organizations that undervalue project management as a strategic competency for driving change report an average of 50% more of their projects failing outright.” (Pulse of the Profession, p. 4).
Let me ask you a question. If you are sick, do you go into a hospital and ask the first person you see, doctor or not, to perform a wellness check on you? Do you ask them to treat you? No! You want the expert! You want the scheduler to use their expertise and schedule you an appointment, or better, work their magic and get you in now. You want the nurse to use their skills and take your vitals, and you want the physician to use their years of training, experience, and expertise to diagnose you, treat you, and make you well!
Unfortunately, time and time again in business, especially in the nonprofit world, we ignore requisite expertise in project management. They decide a project needs to be completed and assign an employee to run the project because they have some understanding of the business need. But do they understand how to run projects? Do they have the time and space to run the project successfully? Or are they being set up for failure, or at best, a painful struggle toward the finish line? I call this the accidental expert. The person appointed because they were in pointing proximity, not because they were experts in project management.
Let’s translate this to money. If 67% of projects fail due to lack of an expert project manager, let’s say the accidental project manager’s pay is $40k. Perhaps the project will take a year. That’s $26.8k lost when that project fails. If four other team members are involved with a salary of $40k per year, that’s another $107.2k lost. Assume there was a project budget of $100k for licensing, training, purchases, etc. We’re up to a loss of $234k in a single year for a single project - all of which could have been avoided for a fraction of the cost of hiring a project management expert. This does not outline the cost of burn-out, diminished culture environment, or losses related to work postponed because time needed to be focused elsewhere. Choosing the comfort of the accidental expert can have a costly outcome.
Now, I understand there are successes with accidental experts, and there are other reasons projects fail even when following the strictest project management protocols. But I hope, after reading this, that reasons for failure on future projects will NOT include devaluing project management or electing an accidental expert hoping for expert outcomes.
Not all organizations have skilled team members on staff for running projects and have to decide whether to select an accidental expert from their current team to lead a project or lean into success and hire a project management professional. However, when you grapple with this choice in the future, be sure to weigh the cost of the potential losses - both culturally and monetarily - that choosing the accidental expert may demand. Your organization may not have the right personnel and expertise, but there are organizations, like Next Chapter Strategies, that do and are ready to step in to help you succeed.
Make the intentional choice to succeed. Yes! Use that employee - but use them as a subject matter expert to define business rules and needs. Use a project management expert to manage the project. Use people as experts in their field and let your chances of success skyrocket. Bonus! Use experts correctly, and you stop burning money!
Ready to stop burning money and seek a project management professional? Contact us! We are ready to use our expertise so your team can use theirs!
