Lessons From the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 3)

  Lessons Learned  

In our last installment, we discussed how obedience was a critical element of the Romans' success. We discussed how, in today's times, there are methods for insuring that the plan is being followed, without needing to micromanage or bark orders at people. Now we will examine some of those methods in more detail.

Control without Micromanagement

The "command and control" style is no longer considered effective or desirable, and even the military is now exploring other leadership alternatives. Today's project manager must be a leader and a psychologist, not just a manager or administrator. Nowhere is this more important that in the execution phase of a project. However, all too often, this becomes the "forgotten phase," with most of the time being dedicated to planning and closeout (using the filmmaker's approach of "always leave 'em with a good ending"), and virtually none spent on monitoring and reporting during project execution.

This line of thinking seems to assume that, since the project was so well planned, we can now rest until it's over and then spend our efforts tidying up loose ends and advertising the huge success during closeout reporting. The problem is that there are countless things that can go wrong when a project isn't monitored closely, and the project manager must then scurry to perform damage control.

So how does one monitor a project closely …

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