Well, I’ll confess. Not only has failure happened to a friend, but I’ve seen it, I’ve heard it, and I’ve lived it. Personal, professional, and project problems grow and cascade into a torrent of trouble. In other words, project problems don’t remain confined to the project; they inundate every part of one’s life.
This challenge is what I’m going to address in this series. Many excellent writers and thinkers have laid the foundation of project management and project recovery. And indeed I’ll outline many of those standards and practices, along with my take on them.
However, my experience is that projects rarely fail because the initiative’s leaders were ignorant of tools and techniques. They usually “knew the good,” but did not “do the good.” This inability to translate knowledge into effective action is often driven by neglect or damage in one’s personal and professional lives.
What do I mean by personal and professional?
For now I’ll keep it simple. The personal life refers to one’s mind, body, and spirit and the balance among the three. I’ll borrow from Eastern and Western traditions to illustrate what and how the personal life gets out of balance. The professional dimension is more like a complex Interstate or Autobahn interchange. It’s where one’s career goals, relations with one’s team and bosses, and professional network come together. We’ll look at both in more depth later.
Filed under: PMO Tagged: Change, Leadership, Recovery, Things Fall Apart, Troubled Projects
