Addressing Conscious Deception and Strategic Misrepresentation in Project Management

Welcome to this blog following the third event in the series focusing on Conscious Deception and Strategic Misrepresentation in project management. We uncover the impact of biases on project outcomes, drawing insights from the APM Specific Interest Group 2023 events exploring the topic of strategic misrepresentation. This blog discovers the challenges project professionals face and proposes an objective for the profession to address this issue. Read on to explore how fostering transparency, ethical conduct, and data-driven decision-making will make for successful projects.

Exploring Strategic Misrepresentation

Conscious deception on projects, caused by bias towards strategic misrepresentation, power bias, and political bias, is considered by many academics and in the project management community as a significant contributor to projects failing to realise their expected benefits, on time and cost.

?The APM Governance SIG initiated a series in 2023 to delve into the context of Strategic Misrepresentation, a term encompassing biases that influential actors exploit to misrepresent information for their strategic purposes. Strategic misrepresentation is synonymous with the risk of conscious deception.

?Event 1: March Findings

Event 1 in March revealed an underlying cause of strategic misrepresentation was, at best, a general culture misinformation in the project profession and, at worst, negligence regarding the need for "evidence-based management," as noted in Event 3. The first event explored the concept of using historical data to empower data-enabled and designed projects for data-informed decisions, mitigating unconscious biases such as optimism bias and anchoring bias. It firmly established that the audience recognised Strategic Misrepresentation as a significant challenge, with limited knowledge of how to address it.

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Event 2: May Exploration

Fast forward to Event 2 in May, a fully-packed in-person event, where we delved into the "how," "who," "when," "where," "why," and "what" of strategic misrepresentation.

Event 3: Findings and Solutions

Event 3, held on 11/09/23, featured Mark Vincent and myslef presenting the findings to date and further exploring the drivers for strategic misrepresentation. Many of the solutions discussed were presented in an earlier blog, providing an indicative framework for mitigating strategic misrepresentation, accessible here.

Understanding the Problem

Research indicates that only 0.5% of programs and projects deliver on time, cost, and benefits, with some suggesting that 50% of large projects fail due to strategic misrepresentation. With such a high failure rate, understanding the causes and drivers of this issue is essential.

?Identifying Key Issues

Arising from Event 3, participants highlighted several key issues contributing to strategic misrepresentation:

1. Lack of Evidence-Based Management: Projects often lack data-driven design and enablement, hindering the use of historical performance data for decision-making.
2. Lack of Knowledge and Awareness: The profession lacks a clear definition of strategic misrepresentation, with limited high-quality studies and research publications on the topic.
3. Absence of Tools and Frameworks: There is a scarcity of commonly available tools and frameworks to address strategic misrepresentation.
4. Community Support Deficiency: The lack of community interest and support groups on this topic impedes progress.
5. Educational Opportunities: A dearth of educational opportunities through organizations like APM hampers awareness and knowledge dissemination.
6. Historical Culture of Non-Whistleblowing: Project cultures historically haven't encouraged whistleblowing, making it challenging to call out conscious deception.
7. Ethical Standards Shortcomings: Existing ethical standards lack the robustness to address conscious deception effectively.

An Objective for a Profession

During Event 3, The audience was asked to define an objective for the Association for Project Management in addressing conscious deception and strategic misrepresentation. The summarised objective is:

"To lead the project management profession by setting and upholding the highest ethical standards, fostering a culture of transparency, and equipping professionals with the knowledge and tools to eliminate strategic misrepresentation"

The audience strongly agreed that this should be considered a high priority for the Association for Project Management.

Moving Forward

The last three events have highlighted the pressing issue of strategic misrepresentation and conscious deception in the project management community. The surveys conducted suggest that project professionals are deeply concerned about the impact of misrepresentation on success rates. There is also a general lack of awareness and confidence in addressing this challenge. The project management community desires collective action from APM to tackle this issue.

Collaborative Efforts

Following Event 2, a small group of interested volunteers and APM members have come together to address this challenge. Our plan is to meet monthly over the next 6-9 months to find solutions and seek support from the Association for Project Management against this objective.

Get Involved

If you are an APM member interested in this topic and willing to contribute an hour or two a month to join our working group meetings, please get in touch with me on LinkedIn. We welcome diverse perspectives, including opposing views. Addressing strategic misrepresentation requires collective effort, and your input is valuable.

Conclusion

From all of us in the working group, thank you to all those who have attended our three events this year and contributed to our discussions. We look forward to the next 6-9 months of collaboration with our colleagues across the APM to define an objective and initiative to tackle the issue of strategic misrepresentation.

Additional Resources

Event 3 Information

• Event 3 Video Recording
• In-event survey results

Further Reading

For those looking to get into Data Analytics or better understand the barriers to implementation, the following publications are recommended:

• How to get into project data analytics
• Barriers to project data analytics and how to overcome them

To better understand behavioral biases in project management, please refer to this excellent article by Bent Flyvbjerg, and the follow-on book "How Big Things Get Done": Article on Behavioral Biases

With Thanks

To those who have supported this work to date, far to many to mention but including

With Callum Batey, Nermeen Latif, ChPP, Hannah Asante-Appahm, Will Whitaker, Donna Unitt, Martin Samphire, Roger Garrini RPP FAPM, Andy Murray and Jonathan Daley ChPP MAPM, Andy Murray , Mark Vincent , James Lea , Michael Hooper CEng MIET RPP ChPP FAPM , Sarah Slater , Martin Paver , James Elliott , Adam Dean , Ian Heptinstall , Adam B.

And of course, to the professional body supporting us to date and key to addresing this challenge, with great thanks to the Association for Project Management .