Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior (Dorset House eBooks)

The manager reports status based on the activities, efforts, and enthusiasms of the team rather than on the risks, decisions, and issues facing the project.

Listen especially to how they communicate the status of their projects. It often reveals quite a bit about how they manage.

Since the inventor of Ethernet, Bob Metcalfe, is a friend, I thought I might look into the details of the Ethernet protocol to see how it was designed. I opened the spec to be informed, not charmed, but to my surprise, I found that the protocol was a thing of substantial beauty. It was spare where it needed to be spare, elegant in concept, and its

All roads lead to design.

Staffing a project with people who care passionately about what they’re doing is a recipe for success. Their passion may boil over from time to time, but mopping it up is just part of the price you need to pay to achieve ambitious goals.

“We need to distinguish between cost reduction and organizational bulimia.”

The right of infinite appeal ensures that no decision is ever final.

Some of these commitments are very explicit, while others are more or less implied. For example, did your company actually commit to provide you with access to all the busy people whose input you’ll need in order to finish on time? Or was that only implied?

It’s difficult to give and gain trust across a distance. It’s also difficult to pick up nuance, confidence, certain kinds of irony and sarcasm, intent, strength of conviction, hopelessness and helplessness, energy level, and deviousness.