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78: Soft yet Strong

The Project
Earlier this week I was telling Dave that after last week, when everything seemed to be going wrong, this week everything seemed to be going well. I should have known by now that would put the mockers on everything and sure enough it did. The survey of the existing cable ducting is on the critical path and we failed to get an adequate response to the ITT for the duct work. On the face of it that is likely to set us back by four weeks while we repeat the exercise.

Time to be flexible, we’ll see if we can split the it in two so we can move ahead more rapidly with the survey. That should allow us to get started on schedule with the cabling of the existing ducts while the new ducts get built. In this job you just have to stay flexible.

The Way
A poor project manager is rigid and unbending and ultimately will break. A wise project manager is like water, soft and yielding, yet water can wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a general rule, whatever is soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.

The wise project manager knows that yielding overcomes resistance and gentleness melts rigid defences. He does not fight the force of the project team’s energy, but flows and yields and absorbs and let’s go. This ability to be soft makes the project manager a good leader. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong. I know this, for this is the way of the project manager.

The Tao
Lao Tsu tells us:

Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this,
Yet no one puts it into practice.
Therefore the sage says:
He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country’s disasters deserves to be king of the universe.
The truth often sounds paradoxical.

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