Friday, April 1, 2011

Cockburn on leadership

Alistair Cockburn--the humanist of project management--writes in what you might call a 'conversational tone'.

Here's a bit on leadership--actually, the posting is on "Leader or Manager?"--wherein he comments on what's he heard at the NASA Project Leadership Forum of 2009:



... to “lead” already implies “change”. So a leader leads a change. (Somehow this thought had escaped my notice – had it escaped yours? It hit me pretty hard in the lecture.)

If the leader in question is the PM, the person is leading a change in order to stabilize things (we can lead in order to increase stability). (This thought knocked my socks off.) ... and then the PM can “manage” the stable ongoing situation.


I think I'll just let his comments stand on their own, except to say his posting has a rich compendium of commentary from the forum, well worth a look.

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