Thought Experiment: Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in Government Modernization

Many Government IT projects fail. It's true. Reflecting back on my years doing IT contract work for the Federal Government I began to ask why? How can the same team be so effective at one agency and fail at another? Finally, I came to an answer ... Emotional Intelligence (EQ).

Projects can fail for a variety of reasons ... poor requirements, poor scheduling, poor contract language, and on and on. But if you really think about it, a lot of these problems can be overcome. These problems are solvable. The challenge is that those problems are solved through conversations where you balance scope, schedule, and IT feasibility. Those conversations require that all parties (contractors and government employees) have high EQ. In fact, I would take it one step further and say there is an unspoken assumption in Agile Development. Agile assumes the parties involved have at least an average EQ. Without an average EQ backlog grooming, sprint planning, even retrospectives simply become ceremonial and the development project is immediately at a higher risk of failure.

Modernization of Federal IT systems necessarily means change, and change requires having difficult conversations involving scope, schedule, and IT feasibility. It is for these reasons that EQ is the X factor that either increases or decreases a project's chances to succeed.

But why is the Federal Government different?

Why do projects seem to fail more often in Government than in the private sector?

I believe the answer lies in the subtle differences between the private and public sector. Let's take Microsoft for example. The first difference is that at Microsoft there is a common goal: to increase shareholder value. At the Federal Government there is never a true common goal. Even in the military politics and priorities collide and create confusion. The second difference is that if a Microsoft employee is doing poorly (not increasing shareholder value) they will eventually get fired or demoted. This does not hold true in the Federal Government. This is a really important point. It's my contention that employees with higher EQs tend to get promoted and those with lower EQs either stay stationary or get fired. In the Federal Government, not only is this not true but the the opposite is sometimes true. It's quite common for Federal Employees to get "Promoted out of the way". Yes, you read that correctly. In many cases, the path of least resistance when you want to remove a Federal employee from a position is simply to promote them to another position. You can't fire them, and you can't demote them, so you promote them. This creates a problem. You now have employees with low EQ in positions making very important decisions. Additionally, the overall percentage of effective employees to non-effective employees is lower and with a fixed budget this reduces the overall effectiveness of the agency.

But what about Contractors? Don't they have a part in whether a project succeeds or fails?

Absolutely. A bad contracting team certainly is to blame if a project fails. The same EQ rules hold true for contractors. Successful modernization requires at least an average EQ on both the Government and Contractor side. The difference really is that on the contractor side they can actually get fired... and they do. Additionally, in the contracting game the Government has all the power and writes all the rules. If a contracting company is doing poorly the government can and should terminate the contract for convenience. Additionally, poorly performing companies will receive poor scores from the government and these scores are used when that company bids on future work (think eBay rankings). So yes, contractors carry their share of the blame but the difference is that the market does have a say and there is a natural attrition of companies and employees over time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pick on Federal employees. I have worked with some amazing Federal employees. I mean truly amazing. Folks who believe in the mission and work their hardest every day to improve the Government. My point here is simply to say that the way the system is set up there are situations where modernization is extremely difficult.