Real-Life Emergency? PM Skills to the Rescue!

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Risk Management  

I’m not sure that there’s ever a good time for an accident, but recently, I had to deal with a real doozy! My wife slipped on a wet concrete driveway and damaged a number of muscles and tendons in her leg. It meant she was effectively immobile—and not just for a few days, for many weeks.

As a result, I had to look after her, maintain the home, take care of the dogs, and so on. But in addition, we were in the process of listing our home for sale, so I had to do all of the tidying, cleaning, arranging, styling and other activities that real estate agents believe to be critical to the right photos and videos. (Oh yeah, and I had to run my business.)

Needless to say, I’ve not been getting bored since the accident. In fact, I have had to really focus on prioritizing what was important, knowing that there was no way I could get everything done. It’s an obvious cliché to write in an article about real-world project management, but I honestly don’t know how I would have been able to cope if not for my background in project management.

I don’t want to make this article about me, but I do want to use my experience as an example of just how well project management can help you when unexpected and unforeseen disruptive events occur.

Now, let’s be honest, I didn’t respond to my wife’s accident by developing a …

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