We tend to think only about the success and read success stories, thinking that we could succeed as well, if we just do the same. We try to find a pattern for success, could we find pattern to failure?

How do You measure success?

Well - one of the important aspects in this discussion - how to You define success/failure? What if the project was successfully built/made - but does not fulfill intended goal? Could it still be counted as success? What if customer got happy, but money was lost eventually?

Sydney opera - success or fail?

If You’ve ever been interesting in big projects or architecture - You might have come across the story about Sydney opera. From pure project management perspective the project is disaster, even though a completed one. From the perspective whether outcome serve it’s purpose - huge success that made Sydney famous across the whole world.

People are not systems

Quite often - we treat people like systems, like mechanisms. We talk about terms like “productivity”, “downtime”, “availability” and we relate them not only to machines or processes, but also to people. When talking in project management terms, we often call people doing actual work - “resources”. There might be whole department - human resources… However, unfortunately - people are not systems and do act like them. We can’t just push the right button, say the right work so that human being would start doing it “right”. They do have their own problems and lives outside work routines that affect their actions at work. We often forget about that.

Lead people, manage processes

We need to lead people (and we need to be lead by leaders, not managers) in the right way by supporting them, being always there, removing impediments along the way - and they will handle the projects, they will take responsibility and bring the boat do the desired destination.

Conclusion

It’s one of the greatest mistakes thinking that we need to manage people, as that’s the most straight forward approach to kill their motivation. Book Drive by Daniel Pink explains a lot how motivation work, any it works no more. We are no longer in industrial era, when we need to start work at certain time and produce certain amount of deliverable. As living in the new era - we must rethink our approach to leadership and motivation. Book No Rules Rules by Erin Meyer tells the interesting story of Netflix that perhaps have helped them (perhaps) reach so good position on the market. Of course copying blindly techniques won’t work, but could help reveal some patterns and secrets.

Book about loosing money: What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Jim Paul and # Brendan Moynihan