Projects and the Simulacrum of Power

The origins of project management in the scientific and technical disciplines, and their continued dominance, have left our practice ill-equipped to deal with the forces that impact our projects. We deploy concepts and techniques grounded in rationalism, complain bitterly about the failure of those techniques to gain the success the paradigm claims they should, but look no deeper. We refuse, as most of modern managerialism does, to discuss in open and honest terms the nature of the power construct that dominates our interactions, afraid that doing so will risk the purity of our status as knowledge workers. If we did speak meaningfully about power, we would find that it is often not what we think it is. Rather than a genuine power, guiding our projects to successful conclusion through the judicious application of reason, we would find instead a labyrinth of distortion and deception, with the maze-masters cloaking themselves in the trappings of power even as they desperately try and hide their powerlessness from the people they are meant to serve. This is a mere representation of power: a likeness, a semblance, a simulacrum .