Matilda: The Musical from a project management perspective

Good project management demands discipline, professionalism and teamwork. So, asks Richard Young, how do you cope when your team includes a disruptive agent – who happens to have superpowers and a hidden agenda?

Poor Miss Trunchbull. The story of Matilda Wormwood (the put‑upon child who summons supernatural powers to vanquish tough teachers and wayward parents) is classic Roald Dahl. Even his biggest fans acknowledge that he has a darker side, but his attempt to sketch an unlovable villain in the form of the headteacher of Matilda’s primary school is an object lesson in his twisted mind. Agatha Trunchbull is played in the new film Matilda: The Musical by Emma Thompson. Reviewing the movie through the lens of project management – and basic human psychology – leaves one feeling profound sympathy for a character who’s supposed to be a monster.

Her biography is tragic. In the book, she explains that she barely felt like a child and became a woman very quickly. This emotionally stunted young lady was channelled into athletics after school, specifically into women’s power events. Through hard work and dedication, Agatha won gold at the 1972 Olympics in the hammer throw. Yet like so many athletes, world supremacy failed to translate into any financial security, and she turned to a nurturing profession – teaching – after her sporting career was over. And it’s here that her project management skills come to the fore.

The Trunchbull way

The project is to build a school capable of turning out capable young people facing a tough world. Agatha applies a quite modern approach to school administration, correctly identifying that poor discipline will undermine every other attempt to educate pupils. In other words, she has looked at the end state – the outputs – for her project and tracked back through the process to identify the critical path required to deliver them. A reminder of the essentials of the critical path method:

1. Create a list of all activities required to complete the project. Typically, this is categorised within a work breakdown structure. Agatha correctly identifies intellectual rigour (her spelling tests are challenging but achievable); physical fitness (the movie’s school assault course looks incredibly good fun); and, above all, discipline.
2. The time (duration) that each activity will take to complete. This demands strong behaviour management, particularly around assembly for instruction. Again, the movie portrays this as something negative, when in reality lateness massively undermines teacher planning.
3. The dependencies between the activities. We can only teach when pupils are attending and attentive. Agatha lets nothing slip – her attention is focused on every aspect of school life, from the lunches to school‑grounds security.
4. Logical end points such as milestones or deliverable items. In short, obedient, well‑schooled children.

The ‘Chokey’ is just Agatha’s version of the isolation units that every school uses on the most unruly pupils – admittedly without her signature flourish of an inner lining of nails and broken glass. Its expansion into a complete system, when she builds dozens of them overnight in the face of a coordinated rebellion by pupils, is a lesson in highly effective project management. Agatha identifies a major project risk, diverts resources to address it and works tirelessly on the deliverables. She’s a hard‑charging project hero, not a monster. It’s only when Matilda deploys what many might argue are Satanic powers to emotionally attack Agatha that the headteacher’s project is finally derailed.

Is Matilda a project manager?

So, are we being unfair to Matilda (played brilliantly in the film by Alisha Weir)? After all, she is victim to neglectful and abusive parents; and suffers from a poor start to her school career. It’s clearly a huge frustration for any genius to go unrecognised. From the outside, her project is to reshape the school system to suit her more unstructured educational needs. In the film, this project is shaped by librarian Mrs Phelps (Sindhu Vee) and wide‑eyed teacher Miss Jenny Honey (Lashana Lynch). But while they cater well to Matilda’s needs, any project manager looking at their contribution would be horrified at the misallocation of resources.

For example, Matilda is the only person who seems to borrow books from Phelps; and Honey devotes so much extra‑curricular time to Matilda that either her work‑life balance or her other pupils are bound to suffer. Of course, Matilda’s project comes to fruition – necessitating the failure of Agatha’s own more disciplined educational programme. But the shots of singing, dancing pupils over the end credits will leave many project managers in education shaking their heads in disbelief. A big wheel? An entire zoo’s‑worth of animals? There’s a new glass table in Agatha’s old office – that must have cost a fortune and is a risk assessment nightmare in a primary school. In short, Matilda’s project has no budgetary accountability at all.

The trouble with the eponymous hero as a project manager is that while, yes, she’s a genius and a free thinker… well, running a project with someone like that on your team is a real double‑edged sword. For every inspirational idea, there’s a missed stage gate or a blown budget. Project discipline goes out the window, and while fellow team members might like the idea of freedom – Matilda’s rebellion gains widespread success – in the end, these things tend to fall apart.

Having your cake…

This, then, is the oft‑encountered tragedy for the project leader. You have to take unpopular decisions in order to make a project deliverable at all; and manage your team and your end users in a way that seems draconian. But once you start breaking the rules for one wayward genius, things can unravel quickly. For example, Agatha is the victim of a robbery – a slice of cake is stolen, and no one is willing to grass. Then Bruce Bogtrotter (Charlie Hodson‑Prior) reveals his involvement. Rather than punish him in the Chokey, Agatha aims to cure him of kleptomania and chocoholism with kindness, offering a whole cake to eat. Which he does. A riot ensues and the pupils take the whole thing as an excuse to disrupt their own education. The incident is presented as a defeat for Agatha, but shouldn’t we maybe accept her version of events? It is at least consistent with her in‑house project methodology and objective. And it begs the question, who is the better project manager – Agatha or Matilda?

Matilda’s vision of sunshine, rainbows, fairground rides and giraffes interrupting lessons might seem like the optimum outcome. But those project goals are ultimately flawed. The organisation will never be able to sustain the costs; the pupils will be happy, but ill-educated, unfit and undisciplined. In short, the business‑as‑usual case is appalling – it’s proof that, like Bruce, you can’t have your cake and eat it. Yes, Agatha needs to work on her interpersonal skills. And it’s clear something fishy happened with stepdaughter Miss Honey. But in the final analysis, any project sponsor worth their salt wants dependable Agatha Trunchbull running the programme… not supernatural Matilda Wormwood and her wacky nonsense.

The real hero project manager of Matilda

Matilda: The Musical is a story that lacks compassion for the brutalised Agatha Trunchbull (and fawningly accepts what in another movie might be the demon-possessed child of the supernatural – Matilda: The Exorcist, anyone?), but it more than makes up for it with the brilliant dancing. The ensemble numbers are huge, brilliantly choreographed set pieces with some of the snappiest, most carefully coordinated group moves seen on film. Bully prefect Hortensia (Meesha Garbett) and Bruce Bogtrotter excel in their own dance routines with quite remarkable performances. We’re talking ‘perfect 10s from Craig Revel Horwood’ brilliant. Ellen Kane is listed as choreographer, so it’s to her we doff our caps and award project manager of the film. Bravo!

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE SPRING 2023 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.