Think Twice—Balance Matters!
Project Business Management
SERIES ARTICLE
By Oliver F. Lehmann
Munich, Germany
“Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.”,
Carlo M. Cipolla: The 4th Basic Law of Stupidity.[1]
Summary
Methods – such as people and organizations – have limitations in what they can achieve at a given time. These limitations have two major elements: Firstly, the fundamental boundaries of their mental, physical, financial, and methodical assets, and secondly, the imbalances of resources assigned. Unawareness or ignorance of these limitations can impact internal projects and – even more – cross-corporate project business.
An Observation
Last week, I observed two car drivers running into an altercation caused by a minor misunderstanding. Nobody was hurt, nothing had gotten damaged. It was just anger by both parties escalating in less than a minute. Both drivers had left their cars to confront each other, becoming increasingly heated and noisy in just two minutes. They could instead have said “Sorry” and moved on, saving themselves a lot of time and distress, but their focus was on the confrontation in open public. Clenched fists and reddened knuckles gave the impression that a physical confrontation was imminent, but I was happy to note that they just stopped short from brawling. After about five minutes, the quarrel was over. Each driver got back into their car and drove away, but their faces showed that they were still angry, and I assumed that it would take them a long time to get their testosterone and adrenaline levels back to normal and calm down again.
Humans cannot be angry and empathetic at the same time.
In this article, I want to dig deeper into this effect and what it means for Project Business Management.
More…
To read entire article, click here
Editor’s note: This series of articles is by Oliver Lehmann, author of the book “Project Business Management” (ISBN 9781138197503), published by Auerbach / Taylor & Francis in 2018. See author profile below.
How to cite this article: Lehmann, O. (2024). You Want to “Go Agile”? Think Twice—Balance Matters! PM World Journal, Vol. XIII, Issue III, March. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/pmwj139-Mar2024-Lehmann-Want-to-Go-Agile-Think-Twice-2.pdf
About the Author
Oliver F. Lehmann
Munich, Germany
Oliver F. Lehmann, MSc, ACE, PMP, is a project management educator, author, consultant, and speaker. In addition, he is the owner of the website Project Business Foundation, a non-profit initiative for professionals and organizations involved in cross-corporate project business.
He studied Linguistics, Literature, and History at the University of Stuttgart and Project Management at the University of Liverpool, UK, where he holds a Master of Science Degree (with Merit). Oliver has trained thousands of project managers in Europe, the USA, and Asia in methodological project management, focusing on certification preparation. In addition, he is a visiting lecturer at the Technical University of Munich.
He has been a member and volunteer at PMI, the Project Management Institute, since 1998 and served as the President of the PMI Southern Germany Chapter from 2013 to 2018. Between 2004 and 2006, he contributed to PMI’s PM Network magazine, for which he provided a monthly editorial on page 1 called “Launch,” analyzing troubled projects around the world.
Oliver believes in three driving forces for personal improvement in project management: formal learning, experience, and observations. He resides in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, and can be contacted at oliver@oliverlehmann.com.
Oliver Lehmann is the author of the books:
- “Situational Project Management: The Dynamics of Success and Failure” (ISBN 9781498722612), published by Auerbach / Taylor & Francis in 2016
- “Project Business Management” (ISBN 9781138197503), published by Auerbach / Taylor & Francis in 2018.
His previous articles and papers for PM World Journal can be found here:
[1] (Cipolla, 1976)
