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The story behind the story: Galactic Empire Management Consulting: lessons learnt

This week Futures has been visited by management consultants. Specifically, a team of consultants who, under the guidance of Aidan Doyle, have come to help us sort out the Galactic Empire. Running an empire isn’t easy, and you really do need all the help — and input from stakeholders — that you can get. When Aidan isn’t plotting the empire’s new business strategy,  he can be found on Twitter or at his website. Here, he reveals the nuances of empire building — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Galactic Empire Management Consulting: lessons learnt

In the years I’ve spent working as a computer programmer, I have encountered managers who believe in the Darth Vader style of project management: making dire threats while being reluctant to learn from past mistakes. I’ve also seen projects where a seemingly endless parade of consultants have come, asked the same questions, produced the same documents that no one read, and then left before anything was implemented. There is an episode of the comedy series Peep Show in which Mark protests that he doesn’t know anything about management consulting and Johnson tells him: “In, fire 30% of the workforce, new logo, boom! Out. You are now a fully trained management consultant.”

I love the Project Management Tree Swing cartoons, which show how wide the gap between perception and reality can sometimes be in IT project management. When Star Wars tried to move towards more realism and complexity it resulted in messes like the prequels’ Trade Federation discussions and midi-chlorian pseudoscience, but I thought it would be fun to think about some of the real world issues a project the size and complexity of building a Death Star would encounter.

After the first Death Star was destroyed, I can imagine a manager suggesting that what the Empire really needed to do was build another one but make it bigger this time. I’m sure there were lots of project post-implementation evaluation committees, but no one paid attention to their reports either.

At one of my workplaces we received instructions (with recommendations from the manufacturer) on how to properly use the building’s revolving-door main entrance. I like to think that bored stormtroopers would manage to think of some creative and not-safe-for-work ways to have fun with a tractor beam.

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