It doesn't happen every day

On Basic Business Administration Principles and the Iraq War

I know, you will probably say I need to chill about this Iraq war issue. And I will, as soon as I will have nothing more to add. But these days it seems I do, so I'll just go ahead and say it.

Those of you who study Business Administration with me at the University of Bern (or really anywhere in the world) know that we are taught a few basic principles that we should keep in mind for our future jobs. One of them is that when analysing a project, and deciding whether to follow through with it or not, one has to take many factors into consideration, like the budget, the needed resources and skills, the target state, etc.
Then it occured to me: what if President Bush were working for a multi-national corporation let's say and he would have gone to his boss and presented him with a new project "How to keep the oil in the Middle East for us". He would probably have developed a great Business Plan and thought of great arguments in favor of the project.
Now let's assume we are the board of directors who stupidly agreed to this project a couple of years ago, thinking "it can't be that bad". During a project one has to continually re-assess the situation, in order to see if the project should be kept alive or not. Well, looking back at these past years, what did this project do for our company? (as a big corporation we are looking to maximize our profit, keep the shareholders happy, take care of our employees, plus the whole "environment-friendly" blah blah, etc.)
- the project was based upon false / falsified (WOW, I did not just say that!!!) data
- the project went 10000.......% over the initially agreed upon budget (you can feel free and complete the dots with as many zeros as you like)
- we have no idea when the project will be finished (and we have been taught "Projects have a definite time limit", otherwise it wouldn't be called a project, it would be called "I wanna invade Iraq, so let's find some arguments that I can fool the people with")
- the project killed 2,772 (and rising) of the U.S. Military employees (information taken from http://icasualties.org/oif/)
- the project wounded & maimed 109,900 (and rising) of the U.S. Military employees - the project caused the death of Iraqi civilians (DEAD men, DEAD women and DEAD CHILDREN - min: 650,500 and rising)
- the project will not only not create value to our corporation, but it will dial the number for bankruptcy
- ....
- ....

For the B.A. students of you, I think I already had you convinced at the budget argument, right?

And in the end, for a last note, or general wonderment if you will: how fired would such a project manager be????

till next time
s.

posted by soranelle @ 2:12 PM