Last night I attended the Leonard Cohen concert at Holy Heart auditorium, in St. John's. Small intimate setting for the concert. Leonard was humble, gracious and a true entertainer. This was without question the best concert I have ever seen in my entire life. His words impacted me like no other live performance has. The only other live performance which runs a close second is the performance I have th chance to see each year when I visit Preservation Hall, in New Orleans.
Leonard Cohen's lines I remember most from last night:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
I had to present at the CME Leadership convention this morning. At 5 this morning, I threw out the notes I had prepared and wrote new notes on Leadership according to Leonard Cohen.
According to the Canadian military when I undertook officer training camp in 1987, leadership is "the art of influencing human behaviour so as to accomplish a mission or a task".
The bells you ring are the resources, the team, and the skills you have at your disposal to get the job done. Use them with all your heart. Use them sincerely. Honesty is the key, and when you are honest, you open yourself as necessary to build the relationship.
Your perfect offering is the perfect solution. It is the data you must collect, the research you must complete, the work that must be done before you make your decision. Forget it. Make your decision. Take the risk. The risk of inaction is paralysis.
There is a crack in everything. You will make mistakes. You will find them, and others will find them. Through these cracks, you will build trust and respect, as long as you hold yourself accountable.
That's how the light gets in.
One must open themselves to looking at project management in a new light. Standardize the process where you can, and schedule a self-monitoring process.
VSM the project management process.
Break your meetings into manageable categories, such as daily technical, weekly tactical, and monthly strategic. Keep the subject matter narrow in each meeting.
Stage some schedule freezes. Make the stakeholder take notice and get involved. Make them notice and approve, before the project proceeds any further.
Standardize all work possible that must be scheduled. Free your time to manage what's going wrong, or changes, or risks.
Project management has a crack. It needs to be looked at and analyzed. It needs to be critically shortened and tested for value.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
