سیاره مدیریت پروژه فارسی

We say that Project Management is about getting things done, which means that at the end of the day pragmatism beats all methodologies and theoretical models.

Just what is pragmatism? And why does this approach to work bring so many of us into conflict in the workplace?

It’s been called ‘pernicious relativism' by some and logical positivism by others. It seems to me that pragmatists are about getting on with things, but we operate in a world of people who seek 'one best way' to get things done. Maybe there is one, maybe there isn"t.

Maybe the important thing to do is try something and improve on it.  And here we see the link between pragmatists and empiricists.  As we start to deal with empriricism we start to migrate back to the idea of a theoretical "one best way"

Once again I find myself in need of the consultant's quadrants…. Pragmatism and philosophizing.  Theory and pragmatism aren't opposites, they're orthogonal. And just where is the sweet spot between theory and pragmatism?

I am thirty three years old and have not once seriously considered moving to Bolivia.

It’s weird, because normally I wouldn’t even mention that.

But here we are. Most women do end up moving to Bolivia.

And by my age, you’re pretty much expected to either already moved there or at least you’re supposed to be trying really hard to get there.

To be clear: I have nothing against Bolivia. It seems like a lovely place. Just not one that pulls me. It has never called my name.

And even though I don’t talk about my relationship (or non-relationship) to Bolivia, we will talk about it today.

Because I have words that need to be said about loneliness, power and the extremely problematic word: “choice”.

Loneliness.

There is so much of it when it comes to this hard topic of Bolivia. Or maybe it’s not so much loneliness as isolation.

Every woman has her own experience, her own relationship with moving or not moving to Bolivia. These relationships are often painful, challenging, hard to express.

So you have the women (like my dear friend E.) who are desperate to get into Bolivia. They wait in lines, jump through endless bureaucratic hoops, do what they can.

Sometimes dying inside from the frustration of seeing how other women end up there with such ease.

Then those women — the ones who weren’t even planning Bolivia — they’re isolated too. An extra glass of wine and bam. Welcome to Bolivia.

There are women who aren’t in Bolivia and are happy. Women who aren’t in Bolivia and are unhappy. Women who wanted to move to Bolivia but now wish they hadn’t. Women who didn’t want to move to Bolivia but are now delighted to be there.

And the ones who don’t know if they’re going, but determined to be happy either way.

It’s hard for us to find each other and talk to each other, because each of us is having such a different experience. It gets lonely.

“Choice.”

This word. I have no more patience for it.

I feel frustrated and helpless when people ask me why I’ve “chosen” not to move to Bolivia because I don’t know how to answer.

And I feel uncomfortable when people support me, saying they defend my “choice”, because I need to know support is there even when choosing is irrelevant.

What choice? There has never been a question of choosing or deciding anything.

This concept makes no sense to me.

I didn’t choose not to move to Bolivia.

I didn’t choose not to move to Bolivia any more than I chose not to become obsessed with traditional Armenian embroidery.

I didn’t choose not to move to Bolivia any more than I chose not to take up water polo.

It’s not that anything is wrong with life in Bolivia or Armenian embroidery or water polo.

It’s this:

If it were not for the fact that so many of the women I know are either moving to Bolivia or talking about moving to Bolivia, it never would have occurred to me to even think about it.

The only reason I think about Bolivia is that so many of my friends now live there. And that so many people have opinions about me not being there.

But to say that I chose this life of Not Living in Bolivia? Impossible.

What is choice?

To me, choice generally implies at least some of the following characteristics:

[+ consideration]
[+ giving active thought to something]
[+ both sides have to be appealing or compelling in some way]
[+ caring about the outcome]
[+ weighing the odds]
[+ pros vs cons]
[+ following intuition]
[+ being pulled towards something]
[+ wanting]

It isn’t that I decided against Bolivia. That never came up. It didn’t need to.

There was no decision-making process, because Bolivia exerts no pull over me.

I heart Bolivia.

The food, the culture, the art. The warmth and friendliness. Yay Bolivia.

And I know a lot more about life in Bolivia than I’d ever planned to, now that so many friends and colleagues live there.

To be honest, certain aspects of life there sound pretty distressing to me. But then after they tell you about the awful parts, they gaze at you intently and wish it for you.

So who knows. It must be like when I lived in Tel Aviv for a decade and people thought it had to be awful when actually it was sublime. So I can be pro-Bolivia. And still not feel the desire to ever move there.

Things that are hard about not moving to Bolivia.

The social pressure. The assumptions. The way people ask you when you’re moving to Bolivia and you explain that you aren’t and they say “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

As if you’ve just said you were dying when you are actually expressing completeness.

Losing friends. Some of my friends who have moved to Bolivia are amazing. Like Pam and Naomi and Jen.* You can talk to them about Bolivia but also politics and business and art and creativity and seven thousand other things.

* Other neat people in Bolivia: Jesse and Amber and Jenny the Bloggess!

Other friends are full-time evangelists for Bolivian life. And while I’m happy to spend an hour looking at pictures or admiring the landscape, I can’t do all-Bolivia-all-the-time. I miss the opinionated, curious, hilarious women I used to know.

And the vocabulary of choice. The way it has to be about “decisions”. I don’t want to identify as “Bolivia-less by Choice”. Where are my people who also didn’t choose?

The pull of Bolivia.

I know this mysterious pull that Bolivia exerts on women must exist, because I keep hearing about it.

My biologist friends insist it’s a thing. Maybe.

Maybe a biological thing that not everyone is susceptible to, plus cultural programming and expectations that people are mostly unaware of. I don’t know.

All I know is that I have never felt it.

And that I have girlfriends who are considerably older than me and who also have never felt it.

And that they, like me, heard those hollow words over and over again: “When you’re older, you’ll change your mind about Bolivia.”

Without the pull, there’s nothing.

“Changing your mind” is another one of those choice things. Like decision. As if all I have to do is stop being so determined not to go there.

But I’m not “determined”. I just don’t understand why I should. And I’m pretty sure that if it were about choosing, and I weighed the pros and cons, my non-Bolivia life would win every time in the categories that matter to me.

Of course, if I had a burning desire to be in Bolivia, those other needs wouldn’t matter as much. They would pale in comparison.

And I’d find a way to make it work. Believe me, if I wanted to live in Bolivia, I would move mountains trying to get there.

But since there’s nothing that instills in me a desire to move there, it’s not about choices and choosing. It’s about living my life.

I’m living my life.

And loving my life.

Not because I made a choice. But because I’m here, and here — for me — is good.

And comment zen for today.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for years. And not wanting to at the same time.

Because I know that some people are not really capable of encountering a different way and still understanding that we are both allowed to have our way. Of knowing that my way doesn’t imply that your way is wrong.

I get my way. They gets theirs. Also, the entire culture supports the way that isn’t mine, so trying to tell me I’m wrong in what I know to be true for myself? Not cool.

Anyway. All that to say that this is a hard, sensitive topic. With so much potential for pain, misunderstanding, distortion.

I hope it is clear that I have love in my heart for women who live in a variety of ways. And that I am not picking on Bolivia. All places have their own charm.

We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We let people have their own experience. And we don’t give advice, unless someone asks for it.

What I don’t want: “I support (or don’t support) your choice”. This is not about choice for me. It’s about mindfulness and trust and many other things, but not choice.

What I’d love: Your stories. What you know about isolation and about completeness.

If this kinda seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• Very Personal Ads #53: to the Sabbatmobile!
• Preparing for the arrival of a thing you really, really want.
• Naming the moon.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, writes about what can be learned about leadership from the failure of BP CEO Tony Hayward to cope with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Leadership Tips from Tony Hayward (or Not):

The Case of Tony Hayward and the Gulf Oil Spill will be fodder for business school discussions for years to come, as a how-not-to-do-it guide for leadership when disaster strikes.

Mr. Hayward must have studied management in a parallel universe, where a set of anti-rules for bad leadership are taught. Here’s what I imagine are those anti-rules.

* Deny and minimize problems. Drop any mention of the high-minded principles you announced at the beginning of your term, such as safety and a culture that puts people first. Sweep them under the rug as you play down the significance of the crisis. Or better yet, find someone else to blame — a supplier, a business partner, a lowly employee or two.

* Emphasize your own power and importance. Keep yourself front and center all the time. Rarely bring forward the rest of the team, nor even indicate that it’s a team effort.

* Make the story all about you. Talk about your heavy burdens and the costs to your life. When forced to acknowledge the true victims, pay lip service.

* Never apologize, and don’t even pretend to learn from your mistakes. Brush off public disapproval, and persist in the same mindless behavior that provoked criticism in the first place.

* Hang onto your job even when it’s clear you should go, in order to negotiate the highest severance package, whether you deserve it or not. Don’t even consider a deferred resignation to allow for smooth suggestion. Cling to power, and keep everyone guessing to the very end.

Just reverse these rules, and the outcome could have been different. Good leaders must face facts, prepare for the worst case scenario, draw on the whole team, show constant concern for stakeholders, acknowledge mistakes and not make the same ones twice, and do the honorable thing if getting in the way of company progress. BP, in fact, mobilized thousands of employees and former employees from around the world to work on the Gulf Oil spill; the saga of Mr. Hayward now seems peripheral to the main action.

Related posts:

1. Catastrophe Bonds: Markets, Learning and Volatility
2. Water in the American West: Learning from Crisis
3. The Dark Side of Business Management