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Between Knowing and Acting: Could Tools-Informed Reflection Help Project Leaders?

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Bojan Stefanovic Senior Project Management| Bureau Veritas Belgrade, Serbia

Project professionals usually know that bad news should be communicated early, impediments should be made visible, and difficult stakeholder conversations should not be postponed.

Yet knowing what should be done does not always mean that we do it when the situation becomes personally uncomfortable.

PMP practices help us ask:

What should we manage?

Agile practices help us ask:

How should we adapt?

I have been exploring an additional question:

Why might we resist or postpone an action that we already know is necessary?

Selected concepts from The Tools®, associated with Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, may offer useful self-leadership prompts for examining this gap between knowing and acting.

For example:

  1. Part X examines the internal resistance that encourages avoidance, delay, or retreat into the comfort zone.
  2. Reversal of Desire encourages us to move toward necessary discomfort, such as a difficult conversation.
  3. Active Love helps interrupt resentment and emotional reactivity so we can respond constructively.
  4. String of Pearls focuses attention on the next meaningful action rather than waiting for certainty or a perfect plan.
  5. Loss Processing invites us to consider what status, autonomy, expertise, security, or comfort may feel threatened by change.
  6. Radical Reality encourages us to face verified facts without denial, blame, or unnecessary drama.

I am not suggesting that The Tools® should become a project management methodology, nor that project managers should diagnose stakeholders. My intention is to explore whether Tools-informed self-reflection could complement established PMP and Agile practices.

I have prepared a visual working framework to support this discussion:

https://bojanbrzi-tech.github.io/human-adoption-framework/ View the visual working framework

The webpage includes a short introduction to The Tools®, connections with PMP and Agile practices, practical project examples, and reflection prompts.

I would appreciate your experience and critical feedback:

  1. Can you recall a difficult project conversation or escalation that you postponed?
  2. What explanation did you give yourself for waiting?
  3. Looking back, was the delay based on sound professional judgment, personal discomfort, protection of reputation, or a combination?
  4. Would a short reflection prompt have helped you act differently?
  5. Where could this perspective add value, and where might it oversimplify project reality?

Examples where this perspective is useful, partly useful, or not applicable are equally valuable.

This is not presented as a finished framework. It is an invitation to inspect, challenge, and improve the idea through real project experiences.

Terminology note: The Tools® refers to practical psychological exercises associated with Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. They are used here only as non-clinical self-leadership and facilitation prompts. This independent practitioner framework does not imply endorsement by the authors, trademark owner, PMI, or any Agile organization.
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Bojan Stefanovic Senior Project Management| Bureau Veritas Belgrade, Serbia
To start with one practical example:
A project manager receives reliable information that an important milestone is likely to be missed. The sponsor should probably be informed, but the PM decides to wait because the team may still recover.
From a PMP perspective, the questions concern risk thresholds, communication responsibilities, forecast impact, and timely escalation.
From an Agile perspective, the questions concern transparency, early exposure of impediments, and rapid adaptation.
A Tools-informed reflection adds several personal questions:
Am I waiting because additional information is genuinely needed, or because I want to avoid an uncomfortable conversation?
Am I protecting the project, or protecting my image of being in control?
What am I afraid might happen if I communicate the problem now?
What could happen if I wait?
Reversal of Desire may encourage the PM to move toward the necessary discomfort, while Part X may help identify the internal arguments supporting further delay.
The Tools-informed perspective does not make the escalation decision. It helps the PM inspect whether avoidance is influencing professional judgment.
Has anyone experienced a similar situation?
Did waiting improve the quality of the decision, or did it only make the eventual conversation more difficult?
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Luis Branco CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Bojan, I think the distinction you make in the example is important: the Tools-informed perspective does not make the escalation decision; it helps examine whether avoidance may be influencing professional judgment.

I would take that distinction one step further. Before asking why we are resisting an action we already know is necessary, I would ask whether we actually know that the action is necessary, particularly at that moment.
Reliable evidence that a milestone is likely to be missed does not by itself determine when to escalate.
Waiting may reflect avoidance, but it may also reflect a legitimate need for additional evidence, impact assessment, or recovery options.

For me, this is where the reflective lens becomes most valuable: not as a way of validating action by overcoming discomfort, but as a challenge to our own reasoning.
Am I waiting for professionally justified reasons, or is discomfort distorting that judgment?

I would also add a governance question: what decision or intervention becomes unavailable, more costly, or less effective if I wait?
That connects reflection to consequences and to the authority others may need to exercise.

Perhaps the gap is therefore not only between knowing and acting.
There may also be a critical gap between evidence and justified judgment about what action is actually required.
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Bojan Stefanovic Senior Project Management| Bureau Veritas Belgrade, Serbia
Thank you, Luis. This is an important improvement to the model.
I agree that my example moved too quickly from reliable evidence to the assumption that escalation was already necessary. Waiting may reflect avoidance, but it may also reflect a legitimate need for impact assessment, recovery options, or additional evidence.
Your distinction suggests a more disciplined sequence:
Evidence → Impact assessment → Professional judgment → Tools-informed reflection → Decision → Action
The Tools-informed reflection should not encourage action merely because it is uncomfortable. Its value is in challenging the quality of our reasoning:
Am I waiting for professionally justified reasons, or is discomfort distorting my judgment?
Your governance question also adds an essential consequence test:
What decision or intervention becomes unavailable, more costly, or less effective if I wait?
This reframes the original gap. It may not be only a gap between knowing and acting, but also between evidence and justified judgment.
Thank you. This is exactly the type of challenge that can help develop the framework through practitioner experience.
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Luis Branco CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Bojan, I think this revised sequence makes the distinction much clearer, particularly by separating evidence from the judgment about what action it supports.

I would add one small refinement.
I am not sure Tools-informed reflection needs to sit at a single point in the sequence, after professional judgment. If its purpose is to challenge whether discomfort, self-protection, or other internal factors are distorting our reasoning, it may be more useful as a reflective challenge that can operate while judgment is being formed and revisited, rather than as a separate step.

The governance question reinforces that point.
Asking what decision or intervention becomes unavailable, more costly, or less effective if we wait does not determine that escalation is required.
It broadens what we need to consider, including whether delay is reducing someone else’s ability to exercise legitimate decision authority.

So perhaps the important development is not only a more disciplined sequence from evidence to action, but a process in which reflection can challenge the quality of the reasoning connecting them.
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Lissette Indhira Pimentel Sosa
Community Champion
Program Manager| HARPER SRL Santo Domingo / Distrito Nacional, Dominican Republic
Yes, I’ve experienced this. Sometimes I’ve waited because I wanted to have more information or a possible solution before raising the issue, especially when I thought the team might still recover.
What I’ve learned is that waiting for a complete answer can make the conversation harder. I can raise the concern early, explain what we know at that point, and continue working on the options afterward.

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