Joshua Cooper Ramo’s The Age of the Unthinkable is geared towards international relations, but its lessons can easily be adapted to modern life as a whole. He suggests a revolutionary new way of thinking that is both challenging and effective.
When working on a really big project, it is very easy to run into trouble with unanticipated issues or for team members to lose sight of the overall goal. To combat this, we take some time during the project planning phase to identify some “mini projects” that we will run along the way.
Managing a project is then managing a collection of ever-shifting risks and demands. We must continue to reassess priorities during the course of a project and remain flexible enough to adapt to new realities.
Subtle problems can present an opportunity for bigger fixes
As the leader of an in-house team, I find myself repeatedly facing the painter’s dilemma of: “When do I stop painting? When is the painting done?” Because of their nature, no Web site is ever really done. Projects are finished, milestones and agreed-upon deliverables met, but there’s always something else that could be done. Of [...]