Project Management Failure Analysis

This assignment analyzes the shortcomings of a hypothetical leader named Mayer in the context of project management. It argues that Mayer's inability to unlearn and challenge her own thought processes, coupled with her closed-mindedness towards opposing viewpoints, contributed to her failures. The text emphasizes the importance of continuous learning, adaptability, and open-mindedness for effective leadership in project management.

RUNNING HEAD: PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Student Name
Institute Name

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
A good case............................................................................................................................2
A description of the case.....................................................................................................2
A critical reflection on why this case is good.....................................................................2
The lessons learnt for project management practice...........................................................3
The Bad Case.............................................................................................................................3
A description of the context and the case...............................................................................3
A critical reflection on why you felt the case to be bad.....................................................4
The lessons learnt for project management practice...........................................................4
The Ugly Case............................................................................................................................5
A description of the context and the case...............................................................................5
A critical reflection on why you felt the case to be ugly....................................................5
The lessons learnt for project management practice...........................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
Reference....................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The report will discuss in detail about three cases where leader showed good, bad and ugly
side and set the good or bad example of leadership. It is important to understand here that
great leader don’t really reach any height of standard success without challenges or important
crises. In reality, many there are many exemplary leaders who actually worked through
challenges and made better decision to fight it. A great leader will obviously rise to the top in
the testing time when there are challenging decisions that are made as per the decisive action
and must be taken (Kerzner, 2013). For better decision one need to have a clear vision to lead
the team or organization through bad times, whether they are part of economic troubles or
nightmares like product failures. On the contrary there are many reasons for the business to
fail and the root cause of failure can be bad management or misguided leadership or failing
on strategic level and market changes. Following case studies demonstrate how three leaders
achieved success or failed during serious challenges.
Discussion
A good case
A description of the case
Southwest Airlines is the best example that demonstrate that how can an airline can actually
survive during the time when the government has clearly ordered to actually underground the
complete fleet and declare it shut down for so many days. This is what happened with
Southwest Airlines and other airlines after 9/11 incident where all US based airlines faced the
same kind of crisis and situation (Burke, 2013). Southwest airlines have managed to succeed
through the challenging time and the company is also known for its best customer based
services.

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A critical reflection on why this case is good.
The passengers, employees like flight attendants, ground crew and the pilots were actually
completely stranded all across the nation right after the attack (Larson et al., 2013). However,
unlike the competition, the leadership at Southwest airlines was an example showcasing what
can be done in this situation except sitting ideal. The leadership of the company took
initiative and motivate the workforce to actually leverage the approach as trademark with fun
activities at business and also help the customers who were stranded to have little fun at the
movies or other activities. At the time when the consequences of the shutdown resulted the
other companies to downsize the staff, the CEO of this company James Parker actually was
able to announce in only three days after the attack that the company will keep all its staff as
well as the company actually issued a profit sharing payment based method with the
employees.
The lessons learnt for project management practice
The leadership features can be learned from this case like management while in crisis or
problem solving in creative manner as well as a strong belief as per the vision of the company
to stay strong in such difficult time. The management along with CEO also saved the staff
which finally led to a strong airline.
The Bad Case
A description of the context and the case
The company discussed in the case is ArsDigita which was American web development
organization actually founded in the year 1993 by a person called Philip Greenspun. The
company was not under a typical kind of IT based star-up with just some geeks who were
able to excel at coding or programming (Fleming et al., 2016). The company was a group of
good as well as talented employee who were able to identify an option in the marketplace

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long before the important players like Microsoft or IBM did. The company produced an Open
Source based toolkit for manufacturing database backed websites. The company was on the
path of growth in careful manner and the founder also admitted that for every kind of work in
the company, one could not say the same thing who was not supposed to do what as well as
by when it can be sustained. Not just did the organization need to have some experience
management team members and it also required some added capital to develop the growth its
base for the customers.
A critical reflection on why you felt the case to be bad.
There comes a time of dotcom crash where ArsDigita required some kind of working based
capital and further opt for VC based funding. Investment companies like General Atlantic as
well as Greylock also extended the investment around thirty-five million dollars in the
organization and further held two of the seven seats for the board. In a year time, the new
CEO, things started to come at halt. The interest rates were all time low as well as further
fuelled by the belief that the internet is going through a revolutionary time because of which
VCs were out of any kind of funds since investors were actually looking for quick and
substantial kind of gain (Walker, 2015). But, investment in the company like this need a lot
of knowledge about the software growth along with the capacity to manage the usual
different personalities of the people involved in the case.
The lessons learnt for project management practice
The new management especially CEO as recommended by VCs came from an experience in
IT services based consulting however has no experience in the software based product
development. The VCs in addition seem to have challenging time in gaining clarity on the
challenging personalities not just founders but also a key engineering staff. For all the
motives, the company was actually a start-up and required to be handled with care and with
more experienced senior management (Verzuh, 2015). It is crucial to see some return on the

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investment however; the VCs would have get the profit or benefit with greater dividend in
that case when they just did not kill the goose that had laid some kind of golden egg in the
form of return. Permitting any kind of hostility existing between the founder as well as the
VCs selected members of board to actually escalate was unnecessary and added to the
problem. It was important for the company to set a strong leadership in the company.
The Ugly Case
A description of the context and the case
Mayer tenure as a CEO of Yahoo was a perfect example of the line that good employee does
not necessarily have the right skills for leadership. It was evident from the case that Mayer
didn’t have the right skills needed in a leader to actually be able to pull off the tough
assignment of turning the iconic company into a successful one. However, the question worth
asking here that why board of directors could not see it (Mir et al., 2014).
The analysis also says or clearly pointed out that anybody who actually assumed the helm at
the company had an actually taken an impossible work. It is important to understand here that
breathing the life back in the life of the company which was in existence for almost an era
and has also long since passed is not an easy work to manage. It was also merged with many
questionable decisions as well as poor decisions taken by Mayer. There is so much that can
be learned in this case specifically about leadership and this case is no exception. Just like
any organization which can be reinvented with strong kind of leadership and the obvious
element which was missing for Mayer and for the company’s board. The only positive thing
about the case is that it is never too late to start again and lead in a better way and this
definitely applies to Mayer as well as the board of the company (Flyvbjerg, 2013).

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A critical reflection on why you felt the case to be ugly
Culture is usually a most talked about however rarely understood concept. It is actually the
glue that completely holds all the work or business at one place. In every sense, the culture at
the company was broker under the leadership of Mayer. It is important to understand here
that toxic culture is actually the result of failed kind of leadership. Mayer completely failed to
understand that one cannot change the culture which they do not understand. The current
corporate culture is very sensitive kind of ecosystem with many methods that are
interdependent and should be nurtured so that one can thrive (Phillips, 2013). Also, a strong
culture is based on the performance which speed up the capable of developing major shifts in
the speed.
The leadership of Mayer seems to be about her that those she was completely accountable to
lead. One must not begrudge anyone on the basis of fair wage since it is the highest paid CEO
and the fair question here is whether she was worth of that kind of amount. In a situation
where she was off the spotlight, she would have performed better but it is important to
understand here that when one completely dismiss the opinion of the team, one must not be
shocked in that case when the employee or team stop sharing their opinion (Nicholas et al.,
2017). In a culture where team is scared to make mistakes one will never be able see the best
work.
The lessons learnt for project management practice
The biggest failure of Mayer is the ability or skill to unlearn. There are many leaders that are
highly skilled at the challenging the opinion of people, but are not efficient when it comes to
challenging their own thought process (Martinelli et al., 2016). The overall case is that it
takes absolutely no effort at all to cling in the present thought process. But to change the
mind need one to challenge the mind. The important thing here to note and analyse is that
most commonly ignored feature of the learning is identifying the importance of unlearning.

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Mayer constantly and completely rebuffs the differing views showed closed mindedness that
only sometimes serves a leader in right manner (Kerzner, 2017). She also had a great trouble
in understanding that there exist a big different between standing as per the conviction vs just
wining any argument. The evaluation of the position on any topic, the work or natural move
of smart leader must be to ask themselves and are they eve trying to learn anything or are
they just justifying their views.
Conclusion
The business leaders who are outstanding can take a disastrous situation and not just save it
from becoming worse, but it also turns into a good case or result for the organization. Not all
the leaders have all such skills (Turner, 2016). Some CEO have the natural talent and abilities
of leadership, many leaders lack the calibre to identify the weaknesses as well as the strengths
and take complete advantage of the options to grow the areas of weakness. When the business
professional who is able to seek on the path of becoming an effective leader, one need
experience as well as constant education grow the skills to their highest point.

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Reference
Burke, R., 2013. Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.
Fleming, Q.W. and Koppelman, J.M., 2016, December. Earned value project management.
Project Management Institute.
Flyvbjerg, B., 2013. From Nobel prize to project management: getting risks right. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1302.3642
Kerzner, H., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Kerzner, H., 2017. Project management metrics, KPIs, and dashboards: a guide to measuring
and monitoring project performance. John Wiley & Sons.
Larson, E.W. and Gray, C., 2013. Project Management: The Managerial Process with MS
Project. McGraw-Hill.
Martinelli, R.J. and Milosevic, D.Z., 2016. Project management toolbox: tools and techniques
for the practicing project manager. John Wiley & Sons.
Mir, F.A. and Pinnington, A.H., 2014. Exploring the value of project management: linking
project management performance and project success. International journal of project
management, 32(2), pp.202-217.
Nicholas, J.M. and Steyn, H., 2017. Project management for engineering, business and
technology. Taylor & Francis.
Phillips, J., 2013. PMP, Project Management Professional (Certification Study Guides).
McGraw-Hill Osborne Media.
Turner, R., 2016. Gower handbook of project management. Routledge.

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Verzuh, E., 2015. The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.