Management reality check… “Flowers and butterflies” vs. “Horror show”

So… Colmobil had explored the external and internal drivers for moving to an enterprise software environment and come to the assertive decision to go for the “giant leap” into ERP rather than incremental improvement in their current software environment. The necessity to replace the legacy systems had been established and SAP identified as the preferred solution. The next questions in front of Colmobil’s’ management were:

(1) Is this the time to do it? - With all the other challenges Colmobil needed to handle would it “break the camel’s back”?

(2) Can we do it? - do we have the organizational resources to handle such a project? (urban legends told about projects that consumed all of the available resources and failed!)

The answer to the first question was quick and easy. Colmobil’s vision was to always be a leader and a benchmark in the transportation industry. Colmobil had, and would continue to, position itself on the competitive edge of the industry. This could only mean that there would always be ambitious challenges in the game plan. So… now was as good a time as any.

The second question was trickier; underestimating the resources required for the project would result in under-allocation and lower the probability of success. But overestimating, or playing it safe, would lower the probability of taking on the challenge at all. If the business cost of diverting resources and attention to business was too high, then the intention to do the project might be trashed.

Gil asked IBM, who had done the feasibility study and understood the scope of the project, to present typical project structure, duties, and workloads to the management team. The message in the initial draft presentation from IBM had been significantly softened. It presented minimal impact and workloads on internal functions. In short it was all “flowers and butterflies”.

After reviewing the proposed presentation, Gil instructed IBM team to go back to the drawing board and prepare a new presentation following the saying "pessimists are immune to disappointment". The goal was to describe a realistic scenario of a project in its most difficult times. Because of Gil’s response, the IBM team concluded that he was going to kill the project. They were afraid that “putting the reality of an SAP implementation project in front of ‘uneducated’ managers can only result in a negative decision”. Possibly to prepare the management team for the perspective of the presentation it was nicknamed "the horror show".

The thing the IBM team did not understand was the mentality of Colmobil's management. As a competitive company, retreating from a challenge was not in its vocabulary, a challenge only gives them an adrenalin rush, and “flowers and butterflies” are not tolerated.

So “the horror show” was presented to the management team. The team may not have expected such an honest reality check, but halfway through the presentation the atmosphere in the board room changed from passive interest to active involvement, from questions to the presenters about a meaning of this term or that number to an excited discussion between the managers on how to do it, and how to lead the company through the project.

The presentation was a success, the decision was to go ahead with project planning, and expectations were properly set. As a result, later on in the project - when things really got tough and competition over resources was in full heat - the old presentation was retrieved from the archive and "voila" there it was, the hardships made clear in the presentation shown before the decision was made. "Pessimists are immune to disappointment….." had proven to be an important factor when preparing to engage with the management team.