There a number of people in the Project Management world that seem to take delight in standing on the side of the road pointing out all the failures of projects, processes, and the people managing them. I'm working a program for a federal agency to produce a set of Essential Views of program performance. These views will be leading indicators of performance measures, which will provide management with insight to take corrective actions.
During the research side of this work I came across this ...
My first thought was how can we improve our forecasting processes. Then I thought of those voices essentially bitching that projects aren't meeting the expectations of the public, while at the same time never providing any actionable suggestions beyond their personal gripes.
I concluded to start ignoring those type of statements and work instead on providing small and incremental steps toward Increasing the Probability of Program Success. The book Little Bets is one of our guides.
This brought me to the quote of Theodore Roosevelt, from his 1910 "Man in the Arena Speach," at the Sorborne, Paris, France.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
