Tailoring your Suit of Armor / Stocking your Armory

Career Development Leadership

George Freeman Thought Leader | Author | Architect| Florida, United States

As project managers, we should always have a defensive posture, one that protects our project vitals from injury. At the same time, we need offensive armaments to lead our teams into battle.

Project managers need strategies that are defensive and offensive in nature if they wish to reach their objectives. Using this metaphor, what does a project manager have in their armory to satisfy these two postures.

Posted: Jan 24, 2020 8:04 AM

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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina

Jan 24, 2020 2:48 PM

Replying to George Freeman

...

@Sergio,

You already know how much I respect your opinion, so I’m needing to “dig deeper” on this one to understand your position.

The message of the metaphor is “Preparedness”. Coaches of all forms (Tennis to Project Management) teach among other things, preparedness. Stated differently, it’s all about strategy, and you can’t have strategy without being prepared.

So, is it the military-based terminology that you feel is inappropriate as a metaphor, or is there something I’m missing from a functional or practical perspective?

Tennis coaches use the same than military. I have to learn a lot from Sun Tzu or Von Clausewitz. I have incorporated it to my courses related to things like business analysis or when I teached into MBAs or others as a way for people to understand about strategy and business models. No more than that. I have worked on companies located in some places of the world which are using those line of thinking to make business. Beyond that I worked with military in several countries to help them to implement Agile. So, I am not saying those are not usefull. What I firmly believe and I do not agree at all is the use of things like that "Project managers need strategies that are defensive and offensive in nature if they wish to reach their objectives". This is not a metaphor. This is something you are writting in affirmative way. If you think that, no problem, I accept it, Just I firmly believe is the first step to fail. Examples: business vs IT/software groups inside each project. Is an ancient situation to face from long time ago. I was in both sides then I understand about that. But it is just my position.

Posted: Jan 24, 2020 3:07 PM

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Tailoring your Suit of Armor / Stocking your Armory

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