The Viking Approach to Project Management

The Viking Approach to Project Management Morten Fangel, Chief Consultant, fangel Consulting as, Denmark morten@fangel.dk Those involved in future advances in project management can benefit from heeding the wisdom of history, in form of successful management of ancient projects. The Viking age of over one thousand years ago is an example. The lessons learned from studying this epoch are that today s Nordic project management in many ways reflects the Viking approach and this similarity should be even more significant in the future. Keywords: project management, cross cultural differences, environment, vision and objective, organisation, resource allocation, teamwork, ceremonies. Introduction To deal with the Viking approach to project management may sound like a bit of a joke: What has the Viking approach to do with today s project management in the Nordic countries and elsewhere? In spite of the risk of not being taken seriously, this paper tries to clarify the Viking approach and to indicate how today s Nordic project management reflects this approach. Inspired by the Viking approach, it also describes some trends in Nordic project management. The simple idea of the paper is the Viking approach and Nordic project management are rather similar for two reasons. Firstly, the Vikings really seemed to make successful managers, hence their approach might also be useful in today s project management. Secondly, project management in any context reflects some culturally determined values that do not change that much even over a period of a thousand years. * Therefore, the paper may also be seen as a modest contribution to coping with crosscultural differences, a task that is essential for any international interaction on the advancement of project management. Essential inputs for the analysis of Nordic project management and attempts to draw lessons from the Vikings have been received from project management professionals in all the Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The clarification process was supported by the NORDNET co-operation forum. * At the closing of the 7 th IPMA World Congress 1982 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Geert Hofstede from the Netherlands described the consequences of culture differences in work-related values. A remarkable conclusion of his Institute for Research on Intercultural co-operation is that the values determining work relations are changing very slowly. NORDNET is a co-operation forum for the project management association in Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden and with contacts to Denmark, where the association was terminated at the end of 1985. 5152-13A 1

The Viking approach The purpose of investigating the Viking approach is to draw lessons from an epoch with lots of successful projects that created welfare and wealth in the Scandinavian countries, i.e. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Further, the projects led to landnam which means incorporation of new land in, for example, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland in the North Atlantic. Figure 1 depicts the Viking approach in the form of the supreme Viking ships that roamed the oceans. According to an ancient history book, the Nordic people showed for more than two hundred years, from before 800 AD up until approx. 1050 AD, a remarkable capability to spread over new countries. The Nordic hosts established themselves westwards in England and eastwards in Russia, they occurred in thousands in France, they harried the Mediterranean coast and they settled down in Constantinople, at the Emperor s court. It is a Nordic time of expansion. Like the English expansion in the 18 th and 19 th century that led the English in large crowd to all the coats of the world. (See bibliography) Figure 1. The mighty Viking ships on the high seas There seem to be several determining reasons for the Vikings successful projects: Settlement in the Scandinavian home countries had reached a point where many young men, in view of the continuous increase of population, found it much too heart-breaking and ungrateful to clear new land and perhaps get involved in feuds. The raids allowed them to escape from these routine-like tasks. The development of unified kingdoms in Denmark, Norway and Sweden during the Viking period did, on the one hand, limit the activities of the regional family units including mutual fights that might have been the purpose of the unified kingdoms. This left a pool of potential managers consisting of the sons and relatives of the 5152-13A 2

regional leaders. By joining the Viking projects, these managers more or less got rid of the feudal line organisation. On the other hand, the unified kingdoms also proved to be useful as a co-ordinating body for major raids. The shipbuilding technology had been developed over several hundred years, so the Vikings were capable of building long and light ships mostly navigated by oars. Let us now focus on specific Viking projects and try to draft some characteristics, without having made major research and well knowing that the characteristics might have changed during the Viking period: A Viking raid seems to have been initiated by a real vision far beyond the activities at home: if they succeeded, the participants would improve their living conditions considerably. A raid did also include major risks and threats. It took courage for the Vikings, for example, to sail westwards and make a landfall. The Vikings did not only impose their way of life on the new countries; they were sensitive to what they experienced and seemed to be proud of bringing home new ideas. Each raid had a limited duration of one or a few seasons that allowed them to mobilise extra effort while the project was going on. The initiatives to make a raid seemed to come both from local regions and from the kings, but in any case it was essential to get full acceptance from the parties in the raid, and the final decision whether to go or not may even have been made by voting. Each raid was rather well prepared and planned, but the plans had presumably been adjusted to new possibilities and new conditions. After all, who could plan to make a raid towards Paris not knowing if Paris existed? However, nature and weather gave respect to the attainment of certain milestones. Figure 2. Interior of a typical Viking dining hall 5152-13A 3

A raid was often organised across the upcoming kingdoms. A raid towards the southwest might have consisted of Danes, Norwegians from the Oslo Fjord area (called Viken from where the Vikings may have got their name) and Swedes from the Vest Goten. A raid included a number of small manoeuvrable and autonomous unites which also satisfied the individualistic attitude of the Vikings and their need for feeling equal. During the raid, the participants were working hard both by rowing the ships and by fighting. When the winter came, they slept night and day. For the Vikings, ceremonies were an essential part of a project. Once a milestone had been reached, they almost always arranged a big party and coming home from a successful project, the party in the Viking hall (a typical example is shown in Figure 2) did take several days, perhaps weeks! These characteristics of the Viking approach lead to an idealised checklist. Of course, the Viking raids were not at all easy. They had internal problems and used rough methods in particular when the vision of a project was threatened. But from the Scandinavian people s point of view they did create successful project management that is, as long as they used their talents on raids. During the 11 th century, they turned out to be more ambitious and tried to develop huge feudal institutions such as to manage the entire kingdom of England. This seems to have lead to the collapse of the period of the Vikings. The Nordic Approach Today Spontaneously, Nordic project participants may identify themselves with the ten characteristics of the Viking approach. They may promote these characteristics to be criteria of successful management or sign the statement that Nordic project management implies use of the Viking approach. However, to be more serious, we shall now extract a few statements on project management, which definitely indicate a state-of-the-art approach in the Nordic countries: It is normal to have good co-operation with the project environment, including the client and the authorities. They are basically considered as co-operative partners, not enemies, but this sensitivity towards the environment may lead to the project not taking place at all! A relatively long period is used for defining the mission and objective of the project. It is essential to listen to the participants and get their acceptance, otherwise you can be sure that they will sail their own course throughout the life cycle of the project A stepwise planning of the processes will be carried out with periodical evaluation of the strategy of the project, it is extremely difficult to convince anybody to use standard methods and procedures! The project organisation will mostly reflect a group structure and have a minimum of levels. The participants must have the feeling of steering their own ship or subproject. Then their co-operation on the project as a whole can be counted on, as a result of not allowing much interaction, the participants might feel uncomfortable and thus minimise their involvement! The participants also like the feeling of participating in a raid. You can count on their resource allocation when it is really needed. In these situations they might work day and night, but trying to motivate them by saying that they have to do something because the result is needed in two months will not work. They will continue working on other projects or be sleeping! It is rather easy to develop good teamwork. The participants will beforehand accept that it pays off for everybody to co-operate, and most of them will contribute to the 5152-13A 4

balancing of interests in the group. In most cases, you can also count on their loyalty, and trust that the participants will act according to achieved agreements, but by ignoring the group process, you can also be sure that they will have no respect for your decisions. They will find even more sophisticated methods to avoid the effects of these decisions! The keyword of the whole story on Nordic project management is co-operation more than management. This is also reflected in the use of terminology: the parallel to the English or American label implementation of project management is, in today s Nordic language, directly translated as implementation of the project working methods or project co-operation. This may reflect some cross-cultural differences that you should not ignore but jut try to understand and utilise in a fruitful way. Trends in the Nordic Approach Let us complete this attempt to follow a specific approach to project management by indicating some ongoing or future trends in which project management is or should be handled, at least in the Nordic countries: The project working methods including project management will be broadened to encompass new types of tasks at all levels in the corporation. The reason is a need for more effective development and delivery. However, with reference to the Vikings, the project working methods may also meet some basic desires to take active part in raids. The increasing number of projects means that project participation will be the predominant lifestyle for an increasing number of people. An extreme vision is that we are approaching project organised societies and that general management is more and more resembling project management. # At the same time, the importance of a real vision of a project seems to be more essential. The success of the project will also be even more dependent on the commitment of the project manager and other key persons, and on their capability of keeping this vision alive in the minds of the participants and the environment. The projects are going to become more international. Here we can learn from the Vikings in unifying resources from several countries. A major advancement has to be made, from running international projects by summing up national sub-projects, towards having projects with cross-national representation at all levels. Although we have a tradition for teamwork in the Nordic countries, we need an even better utilisation of the hidden forces and talents of each human being. This is not at all easy. It demands courage from the project manager to be genuinely open and to be in the boat together with the participants contributing actively to the hard work of the group. When managing a project, we must be more aware of the use of ceremonies throughout the life cycle of the project. Inspired by the Vikings, we should organise ceremonies more actively as a management tool. We must be more realistic regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the project working methods including the bulk of techniques for project planning and management. We have to accept that some projects can succeed without the use of sophisticated methods. The analysis of ancient approaches may help us to reinvent the basics of project management. The purpose should be to change the image of # The visions of the project organised society and company management like project management were introduced at the first NORDNET symposium which took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1983. The development since then seems to prove a tendency in that direction. For instance, at the Nordic symposium in 1985 in Copenhagen, a seminar on Corporate management just like project management drew a larger audience than any other topic. 5152-13A 5

project working methods from being a co-operation method for good and wellmeaning human beings towards a fruitful method for fighting together. Following these trends, the future of Nordic project management will even more be reflecting the Viking approach! Bibliography 1. Ottosen, Johan, Our History, Copenhagen (1902) This paper was first presented at the NORDNET-IPMA-PMI Conference 1987 in Reykjavik, Iceland, in September. 5152-13A 6