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"By the way," Fred adds, "on this last point, some other people told me that efforts to recruit personnel were late because the machines were late, and they thought it wasn't prudent to hire people and pay their salaries for nothing."

I thank him and continue. "Additional unofficial reasons, given by people reporting to the project leader. One: Too much reliance on vendor progress reports that in subsequent visits turned out to be less than accurate." I look at Fred for an explanation.

"Oh, there are many stories about vendors reporting progress on building our machines that later, on-site inspections showed they had barely started. Or, for example, in one extreme case, a vendor received a hefty order from another company and practically put our order aside for almost three months."

"I see," I say, and continue. "Two: Too loose supervision of the Malaysian construction contractors. Three: The overworked project staff were moved too frequently from one emergency to another. Four: Too many wasteful ‘synchronization' meetings interrupted the actual work."

"Does anybody have a problem understanding the last two reasons?" Fred asks the class.

"No," comes the answer from all directions.

"Can you relate to all the items in Fred's report?" I ask.

And getting a positive response, I continue, "So let's try to use this report to come up with some general observations about projects. Who will offer the first one?"

"I already did," Ted says. "All the explanations for all the problems have one thing in common. It's somebody else's fault. All that we've heard is just a long list of finger pointing.

"We heard more than that," Mark comments in his booming voice. "There is a pattern here. The lower the level of the person, the more the finger points internally, rather than externally. You'll find the same thing in my report."

"Does anybody else see the same pattern in their reports?" I ask the class.

When almost everybody does, I continue to ask, "Which reasons should we consider? The ones offered by top managers who see the global picture or the ones offered by the lower level managers who are much more familiar with the actual details?"

The following discussion doesn't lead us anywhere. We start to flounder. Until Ted says, "One thing's for sure, we can't ignore the lower level managers' explanations. And if so, at least a major part of the blame is internal."

When we all agree, he continues, "It means that the company could have managed the project better."

"How?" Ruth is not too shy to ask.

"What do you mean, how?" Charlie is irritated by her question. "Look at what they are complaining about and fix it."

"I'm looking, and I still don't know how," Ruth answers calmly.

I look again at the list of reasons supplied by the people reporting to the project leader. Ruth is surprisingly observant. I start to realize that her "innocent" questions all stem from a rare ability to look at reality as it is. Since the class is not holding Fred's report, I explain Ruth's remark.

"These people complain about lack of sufficient supervision of the vendors, but at the same time they also complain that they are so overloaded they barely have time to deal with fires."

Ted doesn't give up on his opinion. "It just means that the company has to add more people to supervise the project."

"More people means more time and effort for synchronization," I point out. "Doubling the number of people four-folds the synchronization efforts. You probably noticed that these same people are already complaining that too much time is devoted to synchronization."

"They just have to find a better way to manage themselves," Ted concludes.

"How?" Ruth nails him.

"That's what we are here to learn," Ted passes the ball into my court.

"Thank you, Ted. So, from the reasons given by the lower level managers we can conclude that we have to find a better way to manage a project. No doubt. But what about the reasons given by top management. We can't ignore those