• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About Mel Bost
  • About the Book

Mel Bost - PMO Expert

PMO Expert

  • PMO
    • PMO Leadership
    • PMO Maturity
    • PMO Benchmarking
    • PMO Execution
  • Risk Management
  • SMART Goals
  • Project Information
    • Project Lessons Learned
    • Project Business Requirements
    • Project Communications
    • Project Community
    • Project Environment
    • Project Manager Qualities
  • Knowledge Management
  • Practices
    • Next Practices
    • Best Practices

Does Structure Influence Behavior? The Role of Mental Models in Driving Group Behavior

January 27, 2014 by Mel Bost Leave a Comment

In my new book, Lessons Learned:  Taking Project Management to a New Level in a Continuous Process Improvement Framework, I talk at great length about the role that organizational dynamics plays in driving the behaviors and ultimately the performance of groups like PMOs or Project Offices.ford-mondeo-05

Some people have asked me to elaborate more on this subject, so I want to provide a real life example that vividly shows the relationship between mental models in groups/individual behavior.

When I worked for Ford Motor Company many years ago, I was a Product Planner in a non-automotive Product Planning group.  The automotive Product Planning Group was a group within Ford that drove product strategy and ultimately new product offerings for the Company.  Everyone considered automotive Product Planning to be the pinnacle of personal achievement and success within Ford.  So, naturally, many people sought positions in automotive Product Planning because of the “stature” of the Group.

One of my colleagues in the non-automotive Product Planning group decided he wanted to reach for that pinnacle himself.  So, about six months after joining our Product Planning group, he was able to transition to the automotive Product Planning group.  Everything seemed rosy for awhile.  But then he noticed that the automotive Product Planning Group had an unwritten rule that no one left the building until early morning….meaning that most of the group worked almost around the clock each day.

My friend began to think about how he could make a change in his own behavior.  So he began to go into work earlier in the morning, thinking that arriving early meant that he could complete his days work and leave for home before midnight each day.

Unfortunately, he found that the peer pressure and mental model that existed for the group members to be at work together, working diligently, until way past midnight every night, was too ingrained to make a dent in.

What was happening here?  Organizational dynamics teaches us that Vision, Mental Models, Systems Archetypes, Patterns of Behavior, and ultimately Events are the sequence of leveraging actions for scenarios like this one.

Events in this case were the daily schedules of the individual group members.

Patterns of behavior were what the group exhibited by being at work almost 24 hours every day.

The Systems Archetype from this example can best be summarized by the title:  “I Can’t Leave Work Until….”

But the Mental Model and the Vision were really at play here.

Everyone in the Company had a Vision that the automotive Product Planning Group was the “be all and end all” of elite Groups.  To be part of this group meant an identity within the Company that was unsurpassed by even the President and CEO of Ford.  The Mental Model that developed from this Vision was one of personal diligence to uphold an image that “no one ever goes home.”

How powerful can Mental Models be in an organization?  Powerful enough to turn the most loyal employee into a slave of the “structure” that induced the behavior.  It is the same “structure” that the organization puts in place to drive results and outcomes and performance.  But it also drives behaviors that are sometimes detrimental to overall performance.

In you Project organization, are there mental models that need to be challenged and put to rest?  Think about it!!!!

Filed Under: Best Practices, PMO Leadership, PMO Maturity

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Search The Site

About Mel Bost

Mel Bost is a project management consultant specializing in project closeout and lessons learned, as well as process improvement, best practices, and benchmarking. For the past several years, he has been teaching “Project Management for Research” to postgraduate students at Arizona State University, as well as developing new approaches to the research process. Read More

Project Management Lessons Learned: A Continuous Process Improvement Framework

The NERS department congratulates C. Melvin Bost, Jr., on the publication of his new book.

Categories

Footer

Recent Posts

  • To My Project Community Readers:  Please Support the Fastest Path to Zero Initiative
  • The Role of Cognitive Sciences in Project Management and PMO Performance
  • A Tribute to Louis Tice: What He Contributed to my Thoughts about Project Management
  • How Can Project Managers Use the “Scientific Method” to Finesse Projects?
  • When is Project Management Much More Than Just Cost, Schedule, Scope and Quality?
  • The Importance of Perception in Capturing and Documenting Project Lessons Learned

Read the Book

Search the Site

© 2023 · Mel Bost, PMO Expert · Customized by Element Associates