Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
All Ya Gotta Do!
David Schmaltz is a project manager in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Most novel projects have so many cross-functional complications that no one person can assess their overall complexity. And yet it seems to be human nature to discount the unknown and unknowable in favor of an “all ya gotta do” attitude. There is an alternative approach that invites surprises (scenarios) and is comfortable with the new challenges (opportunities) they may bring.
The first installment in this series — “Special Agent” — introduced the concept of Agency as “the facile ability to actually do something. It is instinct and knowledge embodied in the moment into productive action.” I questioned whether teaching about project management ever translates into Agency. In this second installment, I introduce a model for inducing Agency, beginning with an excerpt from my first writings on the concept in This Isn’t A Cookbook — The Elements of Project Style (1999).
I don’t have the recipe for project success, but I know one sure-fire recipe for project failure. I recently read Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire, the tragic story of smoke jumpers who were overrun and killed by a forest fire. The story outlines how a routine fire became an unmanageable inferno. The first assessment of the fire was that it was unexceptional. The smoke jumpers were routinely dispatched and deployed, with little hint that they …
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"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater." - Albert Einstein |