Douglas M. Brown is a Managing Member of Decision Integration LLC and author of Let It Simmer: Making Project, Portfolio and Program Management Practices Stick in a Skeptical Organization.
At first blush, he believes the world will continue to function just as it has. “Bottom line: for the next two years, not much will change. I think people overrate the impact of elections on economic activity.
Even 2008-2009 was an anomaly because both George W. Bush and Barack Obama launched stimulus programs in the hope of jump-starting the economy. The old guard politicians didn’t know of any other way to do it.
Speaking of project management, both stimulus programs were (setting aside the long-debunked macro-economic theory underlying them) dismal failures in actual practice because the spending had no viable business cases and there was no oversight of the selected investments.
Even despite this insane level of intervention, the basic laws of basic economics continued onward as if nothing had happened. We’ll see more of the same in the next year or so.”
Brown believes that anyone expecting changes because of changes to the budget practices will be sorely mistaken.
“Federal agencies will get more or less the same budgets for 2017 as they had before, because a new administration won’t have the time to do much more than tinker around the edges, and even 2018 will only see marginal change. So projects old and new will continue with much the same forecast for a couple of years. After that, who knows?”
Michel A. Vachon, Senior Partner with ViVA Consulting LLC believes there will be an immediate impact, but it will be more about the project climate than the projects themselves. “The polarization of politics (Democrats vs. Republican, Clinton vs. Trump, Brexit vs. EU, etc.) will create an era of suspicion with more uncertainty and more unknowns.”
Vachon says project owners should be braced to work with a different America internationally. “Lack of government oversight on financial markets and aggressive national isolationism resulting in a rejection of American export of products and services may be forthcoming.
The negative pressures on export could create an oversupply of products and services in the USA and an environment of price sensitive competition (LPTA: Lowest Price, Technically Acceptable bids).”
Brown doesn’t see it that way. “I don’t anticipate much immediate change. Thanks to the nature of the campaign we don’t really know what his domestic agenda might be.
There’s only so much Mr. Trump can do with executive orders; beyond that, he is going to have to figure out how to work with a Congress whose leaders, even within his own party, were tepid in their support during the elections.
Nationally, Mr. Trump is likely to let the free market work its magic, which means we may finally get out of the Great Recession, although there may be some short-term dislocation that might impact the availability of funds for projects.
The massive wild card there comes from his belief that the Federal Reserve has irresponsibly manipulated both the money supply and interest rates to shore up Mr. Obama’s anemic economic statistics.
You’ll need to consult your financial professional as to the impact of allowing interest rates to move towards true market values.
Within the Federal government, a business-like Trump administration may start putting teeth into project evaluations, killing off those that don’t work and firing incompetent program managers, which would be a welcome breath of fresh air.
Although it wouldn’t change Federal budgets much, we might start getting much more value for our money.”
Mark A Raschke, PE, PMP is a Project Manager for American Hydro Corporation. He sees the early impacts largely being related to personnel and personalities. “With the election behind us, I think there will be very little change to the technical aspect of my projects.
However, I think there will be impactful changes to the human side of my projects – societal culture is shifting, which means the manner in which people interact with a project is changing – both for the project team and for outside stakeholders.”
Dave Wakeman, Principal and Consultant with the Wakeman Consulting Group believes we may be headed for a period of relative calm. “I think that the end of the elections that there will be a bit more certainty in the funding and approval of projects. That seems like the most likely outcome. “
As for the influence of Trump in the White House? “A Trump presidency signals project environments that are more entrepreneurial – data driven to understand the risks, and then a culture that takes strategic risks for a bigger potential benefit. There will be more of an opportunity to help make the rules as we go along,” says Raschke.
Beyond the short term, the interviewees see the long-term perspective quite differently. Raschke believes it bodes well for the smaller business owner and mid-size project manager.
“Now that Donald Trump is president, I think the long-term project horizon (4-8 years) will shift more toward entrepreneurial projects run by small-to-medium-sized private entities, between now and the early days of the next decade.”
Vachon believes the longer view is one that benefits the short-term thinkers. “A Trump presidency will accentuate a sense of uncertainty due to his demonstrated unpredictability.
“The national debt will also increase but without the benefit of easy access to disappearing friendly overseas markets caused by his proposed re-alignment of treaties, trade agreements, and political revisions.
“The unknown will create a sense of insecurity. Project management could become excessively focused on short-term profits at the expense of customer satisfaction, sustainable growth and recurring business.”
Brown also believes the future is now rich with unknowns, but he sees it in a more positive light.
“This is a real wild-card question. Because Mr. Trump’s whole campaign was about breaking the tried-and-proven-ineffective mold, so we don’t really know what the impact of various policy approaches might be, and for the most part we don’t yet know what they are anyway.
“Since few of the previous administration’s policies worked and he has promised to do the opposite, let’s assume for discussion that some of what he has proposed will actually work.
“Then we’ll have a 1910-style open-for-business foreign policy that is generally non-interventionist, but with our trade and travel rights and routes backed up with a robust and quick-triggered military capability.
“This resumes our historical defense of American interests, just as we have done for in the past 150 years (except the past 12 years) without igniting any world wars. A fair-trade economic diplomacy would lead to increased exports and, with fairer pricing of imports, to more opportunities for domestic business.
“This in concert with more aggressive immigration enforcement may well increase the cost of low-end consumer goods, but the overall increase in economic activity, a reduction in the labor pool and a reduction in corporate tax rates all make room for better wages for all.
“More favorable tax incentives and bringing regulators to heel would allow domestic corporations to turn loose their massive piles of cash and start investing (in projects), while multinational corporations would return to their US bases, increasing US white-collar jobs and serving as the base for yet more major projects.
“If the Laffer curve holds, the reduced tax rates generate more economic growth and more government revenues: we can tame the deficit, reduce the national debt and cut back on government spending while maintaining essential services for those who truly need them.
“Ending crony capitalism would make companies depend on effective competition instead of political connections to survive; that’s always good for everyone except the politicians.”
In any case, Wakeman sees it as a roll of the dice. “It’s pretty unclear what we can really expect from Trump. But I would say that his projects are likely to be a lot different than Clinton’s would have been. It is just really tough to nail down what that will look like specifically. “
From any perspective, the contentious nature of the political give-and-take of the past year has taken a toll. Are there lessons to be learned from that experience?
Raschke says there definitely are. “The biggest single lesson learned from the contentious nature of this election is that influence and persuasion continue to play an increasingly large role in decision-making, as opposed to logic, reason, and policies.”
This underscores how essential it is for persuasion skills to be learned just as effectively by the project managers and other leaders who are genuinely good people, to equal the persuasion skill level of those who would use their abilities for less-than-honorable purposes.
Brown points out that the big lessons learned are tied to personal exposure for anyone and everyone. “I’m sure everyone has finally realized that anything you put on the internet or your corporate electronic network will be found, distorted and used, often many years later.
“If you don’t want everybody to know about it, don’t do it! Hopefully everyone has now figured out that the media is in the entertainment business, not the news business. In the 1960s they used to say ‘don’t trust anyone over 30’; by 2016, we’ve learned that you can’t really trust anything anyone tells you.
“Most importantly, people have seen that almost all of our so-called leaders are, under the smooth surface, highly aggressive and often rather nasty people who must never be trusted and need to kept on a very, very tight leash.”
Vachon senses that some of the political divides may be here to stay. “The USA is divided by growing economic inequalities and factious ideology. Political co-existence and alignment of economic interest (win-win solutions as opposed to win-lose answers) will be required to sustain growth.
“In business, the same principles apply in project management. The rise of evangelical zeal mixed with jingoistic debate on Muslims and Islam can only be tempered by universal ethical principles rising above religion.”
Wakeman’s thoughts are on the same vein, but he believes the big lesson learned comes from feeling what others are feeling. “Empathy is a big key to success. And, spending a lot of time trying to understand someone else’s point of view can be a powerful tool.”
