Succession

Season three of HBO’s hit series about a dysfunctional media dynasty in the throes of collapse has fallen victim to COVID-19. We couldn’t wait any longer for our Succession fix, so Richard Young has taken a look at the family’s fortunes, Project-style…

The catch-up: billionaire Logan Roy (Brian Cox) is founder, CEO and chairman of media conglomerate Waystar RoyCo – as well as being a career psychopath and domineering father to four children. Succession begins with Roy’s medical incapacitation, kicking off an unseemly scramble for the throne between his variously unpleasant offspring. His recovery merely adds fuel to the bonfire of their vanities and venalities.

Parallels with today’s power dynasties, from the Murdochs to the Trumps, are inevitable. But Succession reaches for wider themes than a mere rehashing of cringe-worthy anecdotes about the ugly foibles of the over-privileged. It’s an almost Shakespearean voyage through family psychodrama, pitch-perfectly set against the modern (im)moralities of politics, the media and technology. And, of course, it includes several examples of why it’s dangerous to let loose ill-disciplined, unskilled and perversely motivated rich kids on the fine art of project management.

So let us introduce you to the four Roy children and what their projects tell us about them, their failings and the power of project management. As usual, spoilers ahead…

Kendall Roy: from vanity to insanity

Logan Roy’s second son is the most committed to his business. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) is a ‘poor little rich boy’ junkie turned new media maven. We meet him as he’s trying to close a deal to buy Vaulter, a hip web gossip outfit. It’s a pet project, a chance to prove himself a visionary and not just win his father’s approval, but also secure the company’s digital future.

But Vaulter CEO Lawrence Yee (Rob Yang) doesn’t buy into the idea of old media devouring his company. “You’re a bunch of bloated dinosaurs who didn’t even notice the monkeys swinging by till yesterday,” he tells Kendall as he aborts the deal at the last minute. A good project manager would never allow this kind of late surprise to happen. But, with yes-men surrounding him, there’s clearly been no attempt to lock down key stages of the deal or escalate agreements towards a final sign-off.

Kendall commits the cardinal sin: sacrificing two sides of the iron triangle just to meet the deadline to impress his father. (He wants to throw “stupid numbers” at Vaulter’s shareholders, and the rationale for the deal is a bust once Yee becomes an enemy.) Vanity is his project downfall. How often is the sponsor’s ego the fourth side of the iron triangle? No challenge is insurmountable, they say, even as the project team despairs.

So is Kendall a lost cause? Not quite. Later in the show he’s ordered to “gut” Vaulter by Logan. And he shows a deftness in planning the corporate hit that would have even the most efficiently ruthless asset-stripper drooling. His elite project team of analysts identifies the last cent of value in the firm’s IP. He understands that the project must work in stages: soft soap Yee, charm the staff into not joining a union, set up a shadow server to keep the profitable rump going… and then fire everyone in one fell swoop. The project schedule is as precise as it is devious. But the secret to the project’s success is its clarity of purpose. When your sponsor is your father and he’s utterly ruthless, collateral damage is always secondary to meeting the project goal.

Roman Roy: disaster magnet

If Kendall is a lesson in the benefits of clear project objectives, his brother Roman (Kieran Culkin) shows what happens when a project manager tries to freestyle. Agile methodologies are great – but when you play fast and loose with technical specs, someone’s going to get burned.

Playboy Roman is an amoral husk whose connection with other people is scorn, abuse, sarcasm and neglect. A drifter on the edges of the business, he’s given a project solely to test his potential for staying in the race to succeed his father. But it’s a big one: oversee the launch of a new communications satellite.

We don’t actually learn much about his project style – he’s a hands-off kind of project manager. But we do know all his personality failings affect the project team. And he’s taken it upon himself to change one project parameter regardless of their expert advice. To coincide the launch with his sister’s wedding, he pressurises the team to accelerate their plans. Sadly for him, on the day of the wedding, no one cares about his project. He ends up watching the live feed not on a big screen at the reception, but on his phone in the loo.

The rocket explodes on the launchpad. Like so many Teflon project leads, Roman just rejoins the party, telling everyone it went just fine. He has no sense of accountability – dismissing the injured technicians, his main concern is an email trail showing him pressuring the team to bring the launch forward. (A reminder: keep your project emails, and get everything in writing if your project sponsor requests inadvisable changes.) Roman’s story also warns us that sponsors who court sycophancy (like Logan) have only themselves to blame when their project managers respond to perverse incentives with ill-advised decisions.

Siobhan Roy: good girl gone wrong

The best project manager among the Roy children is Siobhan, aka Shiv (Sarah Snook). When we meet her, she’s in the midst of running a political campaign, and clearly has a fearsome reputation for getting stuff done. She’s outside the family business, standing or falling on her own merits. The politician she ends up working for, potential presidential candidate Gil Eavis (Eric Bogosian), is an arch opponent of her father – but Logan clearly tolerates a little daughterly rebellion, since he employs her fiancé Tom in the company’s upper echelons.

In fact, she comes to learn politics is no less corrupt(ing) than her own family. And while all the Roy children have designs on the CEO’s chair, only Shiv is capable enough to define a clear project for her accession. That project is her season-two arc. And it’s another reminder that, when you’re dealing with sponsors like Logan, you need to get everything in writing. Having been told she’s Logan’s choice to succeed, Shiv begins to torpedo her political career – only to find out later that the old man is no longer committed to her as CEO.

A good project manager knows to manage expectations – and expects to be in the loop with senior decision-makers above them. If they’re not, they must adjust their project tolerances to account for uncertainties. Shiv knows Logan loves to play games, not least with people he sees acquiring any power. She should have factored his scheming into her timeline.

She’s more astute managing her rivals – including Rhea Jarrell (Holly Hunter), the outsider vying for the job. When she sees the new CEO might not last long, as a scandal threatens the company, she changes her project plan – thrusting Rhea into the doomed job. That’s Shiv’s big tip: those with inside information can expect to steer their own projects more successfully – even if that means biding their time and allowing other people’s projects to fail.

Connor Roy: out of his comfort zone

Connor (Alan Ruck) is Logan’s eldest child – and the least intelligent, likeable and capable, which is saying a lot. The desert-dwelling libertarian doesn’t have the intellectual muscle to back up his instincts – and when he takes on the project to mount a Broadway play for his girlfriend Willa, we see the full extent of his management weakness. Connor has no discernible skills, much less specific knowledge of theatre, budget or people management. A project sponsor or senior stakeholder doesn’t always need project skills, and a project manager doesn’t always need sector expertise. But when you have neither, disaster looms.

He’s also managing emotionally, not rationally. Superficially, he’s putting on a play. In reality, the project is emotional blackmail to keep his former escort girlfriend happy. Projects that allow the heart to overrule the head are doomed. Budget constraints are non-existent – Connor ends up asking his father for $100m to cover the play’s losses. And every project manager should be able to assess the quality of the work to date before green-lighting the next stage. Not only is Willa’s script only 60 per cent finished on opening night, the sand Connor has shipped in for the staging is full of mites. It’s a flop.

Time, quality, cost – Connor fails across the iron triangle. But his chief project failing is hubris. Don’t assume you can just do something because you want to – and always cover your own shortcomings with talent elsewhere in the team.

Finding success in Succession

The Roy children are fascinatingly awful project managers. How about the rest of the characters?

Logan Roy might head up the world’s fifth biggest media conglomerate, but his inability to tolerate dissenting views (his boardroom is not an inclusive workspace) makes him a lousy project leader.

Gerri Killman (J Smith-Cameron) is the company general counsel, more business-as-usual manager than project manager. But she listens, reacts and maintains focus on objectives, even when her stakeholders are losing it.

Frank Vernon (Peter Friedman) is Logan’s long-time consiglieri. Like Gerri, he’s a BAU guy, but after being dumped, he comes back in to run the merger project to save the family. Project manager style: voice of caution, smoother of problems.

Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), Shiv’s husband, has a clear project plan: become CEO. And he knows how to (ab)use other’s talents. As he says to his long-suffering cousin-in-law (see below), “you can’t make a Tomlette without breaking some Gregs”.

Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) seems to be the faltering bumpkin. In truth, his project – to become just like them – is by far the most successful in the show. He works hard, takes his knocks, but ensures each stage of his project is a secure foundation for its next phase. And he looks set to be a key player in season three…