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Dropping the Ball
Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.
The answer: Everything. Great lessons for PMs are not always on newspapers' hard news pages. Occasionally, they're on the sports pages as well. The pathetic saga of the NBA's New York Knicks' miserable 2006 season proves it. The once proud and legendary team founded in 1946 that boasted Hall of Famers Walt Frazier, Tom Gola, Bill Bradley, Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere and many others closed their season with a string of humiliating losses.
The Knicks' payroll exceeds $130 million, the highest in the league, but the team is one of the worst in the NBA. Everything that could possibly go wrong with a project went wrong with the Knicks this year. The team's problems include poor management, dissension within the ranks, poor morale, infighting and lack of cohesiveness. Even its most loyal fans are disgusted. Wearing a Knicks cap these days takes guts. It's a sad thing indeed when once-loyal fans boo their team when it plays in their hometown arena, Madison Square Garden.
You don't have to be a basketball fan--or even a Knicks' fan (if there are any left)--to learn from the team's mistakes. It's not like you have to dig deeply to find the lessons. They're right in front of you, like glaring billboards with incandescent messages that can be seen miles away.
Here's what the press has to say about the Knicks:
The New York Times: "The Knicks are breathtakingly chaotic,…
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"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines." - Frank Lloyd Wright |