CHAPTER 2 Child’s Play ... and Maturity

Do you remember your first project? Or the first time you managed a project?

The obvious initial answer is to think of your first project with your first employer. But I’d like you to go back further ... much further.

Go past all the projects you completed in college, past your science fair project, past your projects from school and kindergarten. Go past even those craft projects from preschool.

Toddling through Projects

This line of questioning is a trick—it would be very surprising if you really did remember your first project. If you’re like most people, you probably managed your first project before you were out of diapers.

That’s right. While taking a break from their project management training, tomorrow’s project managers are singing along with The Wiggles right now.

On your first project, you defined the scope, subdivided the work into smaller parts, and even executed scope changes. You gained practice for your workplace projects by throwing a tantrum when you didn’t get all the resources you wanted. You may have “negotiated” (by force, perhaps) some key resources from a sibling.

If you were lucky, your project sponsor praised you for the completed project, say, erecting a tower made of blocks. Without intending to do so, you took a project from concept to completion. How in the world did you learn project management at such a tender age?

Far more than mere “child’s play,” we learned and practiced a number of critical project management concepts while coloring the masterpiece our parents proudly hung on the refrigerator door. We learned and practiced project management without knowing the concepts or even knowing that we were using them.

To understand and consider the current state of project management, and to develop approaches to mastering the challenges of contemporary projects, it is helpful to study how we develop as human beings and how we think. Thinking about how we think will give us insights into what will work best for those project management issues that cause us grief.

An Instinct for Projects

It was a project like many others. The team members had been thrown together having never previously worked as a team. They organized a project so challenging, it had little chance of success. With inadequate tools and resources, the team encountered one critical problem after another.

What’s more, the project had to be performed surreptitiously; if the project became known, the team members would be severely punished.

While this scenario (minus the punishment) would describe many projects, the one I have in mind is “The Great Escape,” the true story of prisoners of war during World War II, which was cast into one of the favorite movies of all time. This team self-organized a project to orchestrate a mass escape from a maximum security German prisoner of war camp. On the night of the escape, 76 prisoners left the camp.

How is it possible that such a group can use primitive resources under significant duress, without project management skills, and accomplish such an astonishing feat?

We are constantly surrounded by and immersed in projects, consciously or not, and deliberately or not. Billions of people in the world plan and execute projects on a regular basis. Yet, they have never taken a project management course or read a book about project management, nor could they even give you the definition of project management. How is it possible for so many to execute projects successfully with no training?

Project management is an “intuitive” or even “instinctive” capability of human beings. It is something that comes naturally; it is hardwired into us, much like breathing, speaking, crawling, and walking.

Projects are often used to accomplish or obtain what we want, and to a large degree they are the vehicles for how we learn. Projects are the means we use to initiate change. Because we have an innate and endearing preoccupation with greener grass, we are always pursuing projects.

If the management and execution of projects is instinctive or intuitive, then there is much to be gained by leveraging the natural capabilities of people in the performance of projects. Before we expand on this thought, let us return to our toddler to examine what we learn about projects at an early age.

Building Blocks of Project Management

While engaging in the child’s play of building blocks, we are laying the foundation for valuable principles that will be critical throughout our lives, including our careers.

Let’s take a look at the types of thinking we develop in our childhood years that form the building blocks for project management.

CAUSE AND EFFECT, OR DETERMINISM

At the root of our training in project management is our learning the principle of cause and effect. I seek an effect, and I can take steps to cause it. This is a major development in the life of a toddler, and it is the underlying principle that animates projects, whether they are as simple as organizing a closet or as complicated as a putting a man on the moon. Through cause and effect, we are able to plan an outcome and believe that the outcome will happen. If we were unable to rely on the principle of cause and effect, our lives would be far more chaotic—and far more frightening.

INDETERMINISM

We soon encounter another important principle, the opposite of determinism, and it drives us crazy. While cause and effect works much of the time, in many situations it does not. These become sources of great frustration, and therefore opportunities for more of those tantrums. Perhaps there is no path from cause to effect, no matter how hard we wish for one. Perhaps there is a path, but it is not yet known to us. When stymied, we make a different attempt at finding the link between cause and effect.

EXPERIMENTATION

At this age, the obvious approach to learning is trial and error to determine the right pattern that will create the path from cause to effect. Sometimes we succeed and other times we don’t. Through experimentation, we discover three critical principles:

• Some outcomes are not predictable.

• Experimentation often leads to valuable knowledge.

• Through persistence, we can often achieve our objectives, even when we meet with obstacles.

ADAPTATION

A corollary to experimentation is adaptation. We learn to change strategies when we perceive that what we are doing is not working. An important ingredient of adaptation is the ability to recognize and choose appropriate times to change strategies.

ABSTRACTION

Now here’s a big one. Somewhere between the ages of six and twelve, a child formulates the ability to represent objects and ideas through concepts. This developmental stage is known as abstraction. The capability to think abstractly is crucial to planning as well as to seeing relationships between the big picture (holism) and the details (reductionism).

ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS

When objects or concepts are disassembled into parts, we practice analysis. In contrast, synthesis is the combination of two or more elements to create a new system. Analysis is necessary for understanding issues and for solving problems that are rule-based. Synthesis is an essential component of creativity and solving problems that are novel and unfamiliar.

EMOTIONAL KNOWLEDGE

While we no doubt experience emotion in some form even as newborns, an important developmental milestone occurs when we become conscious of our own and others’ emotions.

EMOTIONAL SOCIALIZATION

Once we are knowledgeable about emotions, a subsequent milestone occurs through understanding the social context of emotions. We act in certain ways to elicit or avoid emotions in others, as well as the resultant emotions we experience. For example, the conditions of embarrassment, dishonor, or shame are powerful forces in project work and form an important foundation for how humans make decisions.

META-COGNITION

Meta-cognition is the ability to reflect, or to “think about thinking.” It is the ability to examine our thoughts and actions and to evaluate areas for change, development, or improvement.

Increasing Sophistication

This list is by no means exhaustive of the types of thought processes we learn, but highlights those that are important to project management. While these developmental building blocks and capabilities grow in maturity and sophistication with age, the fundamental elements are all in place by the school-age years.

Understandably, the management skills required to carry out the school science fair project are limited compared with the skills required to manage a project portfolio at a Fortune 500 company. Clearly, our projects and the requisite skills mature over the years.

As toddlers, we execute projects because we want to, with little or no planning. Necessarily, our early projects are primitive; they are designed for immediate gratification and the explicit benefits they will bring.

As we grow older, our projects become more formal and collaborative, such as projects done at school. Other projects are performed for “barter”—the project is done not for its intrinsic value to us but because it provides some other benefit. I may choose to clean my room, for example, not because I like a clean room, but to avoid losing a privilege. These experiences help develop skills in negotiation that we will need eventually to navigate workplace politics.

Over time, school projects grow in complexity. No doubt by the end of college, every student has encountered group projects in which people issues are significant. When my kids worked on group projects, their common complaints were not about the content of the work, but rather about the “difficult” project team members. Inevitably, some kids wouldn’t work at all, or only wanted the “plum” tasks.

Nowhere in the syllabus did we ever see a learning objective to the effect of “Encounter and gain skill with interpersonal issues on projects.” Nevertheless, this became the most important part of school projects, as well it should have. This is exactly what it will be like for these students when they become adults in the workplace. School and extracurricular projects introduce children and teens to the many nuances of leadership and teamwork issues that pervade project work.

After leaving school and entering the workplace, we encounter fully the pressures exerted on our projects by the marketplace. To accommodate these forces, many individuals and their organizations seek training and expertise in good project management practices. As Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, states: “Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs.”

The techniques commonly learned and practiced in the discipline of project management lead us back to our opening question, “What’s wrong with project management?” The present condition of project management came about to a large extent because of how we think and how we believe the world works. To understand the limitations of project management practices, we must examine the concepts and assumptions that support them. It’s time to get philosophical.

What’s Your Worldview?

What in the world does philosophy have to do with project management? Well ... everything!

To understand where we are in project management, we need to pull on the thread that led us here. Our struggle with the management of projects takes us back to philosophers who did a lot of mental heavy lifting centuries ago and had a profound influence on how we perceive the workings of the world. By studying what they had to say, we can see the way more clearly to handle our contemporary project problems.

Pulling on the thread of project management philosophy to seek its origin leads us back to René Descartes and Isaac Newton. Our views of the world and the current practice of project management are overwhelmingly affected by these two giants of philosophy.

Descartes, a 17th century French philosopher, is considered the founder of modern philosophy. Incredibly gifted, he was responsible for the development of algebra and geometry. (The Cartesian coordinate plane is named in his honor.) Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists in history, followed Descartes, and both were instrumental in the Scientific Revolution. It is largely through Newton that we came to understand the fundamental physical laws that have led to the many technological benefits we enjoy today.

The legacies of Descartes and Newton can be capsulized in four characteristics, which describe their view of how the world operates:

• The natural world functions like a machine; the world is mechanistic.

• We can observe and rely on predictable cause-and-effect relationships; the world is deterministic.

• We gain knowledge through thought and reason; the world is rationalistic (as opposed to an empirical approach in which knowledge is gained through experience).

• Anything that is complex can be dissected into smaller parts and understood; the world is reductionistic (that is, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts).

The fantastic and amazing developments of civilization since the Enlightenment occurred largely because of the profound benefits of applying this worldview and exercising these methods of thought.

Think about how this worldview is applied to project management. With determinism, we develop the project plan and know that executing it will bring about the end product. What is a work breakdown structure but the product of reductionistic thinking? Rational thought enables us to deduce the steps that lead to milestones.

In short, Descartes would see the project and the team as a machine whose components use inputs to produce a desired output. As long as the process is familiar, and we stay within the capabilities of the machine, we can rely predictably on its function. Project management in such an environment is a valuable and efficient way to achieve the objectives; it is rational.

But what if the project is complex or uncertain? And what if we are working on the project with other human beings who are sometimes complex and unpredictable? If we are schooled in Descartes and Newton, the temptation is to apply their philosophies more emphatically.

This is where much of the project management community finds itself today. To a large extent, the tools of conventional project management began with Descartes and Newton. They brilliantly serve the familiar, predictable project, but they struggle with what is indeterminate, what is unpredictable, and what is not yet known.

For a revised view of how the world operates, let us get familiar with another mental heavy lifter, Immanuel Kant.

Synthesis: Greater than the Sum of Parts

Immanuel Kant was an 18th century German philosopher who addressed the subject of cause and effect a bit differently. What he had to say offers a perspective on the operation of the world that is much more appropriate for today’s complex projects.

If Descartes, Newton, and Kant were sitting around a table discussing philosophy over beer, all three would pretty much agree about the natural, non-living world. But when the discussion turned to the living world of organized beings (or organisms), Kant would differ sharply.

Kant would say that for organisms, the whole is not the sum of its parts. Each constituent part is both cause and effect. For example, the leaves on a tree both give to and receive from the roots, and each is changed because of the other.

Cause-and-effect relationships may not be explicit for an organism. The reaction of the organized being to an external action is to a certain extent unpredictable. This is absolutely the case with humans who, in addition to being very diverse in nature, can think, feel, adapt, and learn.

Therefore, when dealing with organized beings, we cannot rely on the mechanistic/deterministic/rationalistic/reductionistic approach to produce expected results. A machine cannot synthesize, but an organism can.

As Kant would say, for an organism, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Another important element to the Kantian worldview is self-organization. Because components of an organism are both cause and effect to one another, the components do not need an external organizing force. The actions of one component can influence and change another, and vice versa; changes accumulate and can converge. This understanding is key in the management of complex projects where agility is crucial.

Immanuel Kant, Project Manager

How might Kant’s thinking apply to a human organization such as a project team? Kant would say that a project team—like any human organization—behaves like an organism.

As an organism, the project team is capable of growing in capability and complexity. Think about Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard the first day in their garage, then think about the corporate giant HP 50 years later, and you get the picture. A “machine” could not do what they did; Descartes and Newton could not sufficiently explain it.

This is not to say that we should discard the Descartes/Newton worldview when working on projects. To the contrary, we absolutely need it. But we also need to understand its limitations.

Kant would say that human beings, and all of nature for that matter, behave paradoxically—as both machine and organism. It is the appreciation of this paradox that makes the right brain/left brain partnership work.

We need to apply “worldviews” appropriately so that we can use what works best according to the situation. Projects behave like machines in many instances. Projects also behave like organisms in many instances. When it comes to the “people” aspects of projects, because projects are planned and executed by human beings, we can be certain that stakeholders and project teams will behave like Kant’s organisms.

Causation and Uncertainty

Before leaving these philosophical subjects, let’s consider three more recent concepts.

The first is probabilistic causation. Simply put, the cause-and-effect relationship does not apply in all cases. For example, it has been shown that a high-fat diet is correlated to an increase in heart attacks. But we also know that many people who eat a high-fat diet never have a heart attack while some unfortunate people die of a heart attack even though they have never consumed a high-fat meal in their lives.

The other two concepts, which are related, are often credited to Werner Karl Heisenberg, the influential 20th century German physicist. His uncertainty principle and observer effect arose from his work in quantum physics, but they have also been seen at play in human social and organizational systems.

The uncertainty principle posits that when we observe a system, we are uncertain that what we are observing is the reality of the system. The observer effect means that the very act of observing a system changes the behavior of the system.

These last three principles serve as a caution for project managers in thinking about the conclusions we draw from the project environment. The worldviews of Kant and Heisenberg suggest that while we may not be able to rationally understand and plan the project completely, we can know that the team will be capable of adapting in a beneficial way over the course of the project.

By the way, Heisenberg has one of the great epitaph lines of all time. The grave of the founder of the uncertainty principle marks his presence with, “He lies somewhere here.”

If you are handicapping the project management race, while the Descartes/Newton team has a significant lead, when it comes to complex projects, expect the Kant/Heisenberg team to come on strong.

Tensions in Project Management Models

These building blocks of thought and the associated worldviews incorporate important elements of project management skills. These elements can come into conflict depending on the needs and perspectives of the various actors on a project. When we consider how the actors come to an issue with different perspectives, we will be better able to manage and resolve the conflicts that can arise.

DETERMINISM VERSUS INDETERMINISM

This is one of the key areas of tension in all of management, not just in project management. For a manager, it is very tempting to implement steps that will have a predictable outcome. Shareholders, stakeholders, superiors, and customers often seek, if not demand, a predictable outcome to projects. Yet, contemporary projects inevitably encounter complexity and ambiguity, hence the outcome becomes more indeterministic. The result is considerable stress for the project manager trying to make sense of it all.

EXPERIMENTATION VERSUS FOLLOWING THE PLAN

An excellent strategy for addressing the ambiguous is to experiment and adapt. Much can be gained when stakeholders accept ambiguity and the need to experiment. Because this approach runs counter to staying with a plan in the pursuit of a predictable outcome, one of a project manager’s primary objectives becomes to lead stakeholders toward tolerating temporary experimentation.

ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS

Conventional project management approaches use both skills, but synthesis is generally used in a more controlled manner. Contemporary projects demand advanced synthesis skills, which will lead us heavily into right-brain territory and into conflict with the rationalistic personality of most organizations.

RATIONALITY AND EMOTIONAL KNOWLEDGE

The emotional and social components of project work are typically ignored or glossed over as being irrational. Workplaces avoid even a healthy consideration of emotion on projects. Nonetheless, emotion plays a major role in the planning and execution of projects and has a primary function in decision-making. Emotional knowledge is a subject that deserves considerable attention in project management.

Development into Maturity

Personal development into maturity is perhaps the most critical element in the ability to manage contemporary projects in the workplace.

Developmental psychologist Jane Loevinger formulated a theory of personal development that describes the stages of human maturation according to how we make decisions and how we interact with other people and with the world. In other words, her theory is a representation of how we mature in our view of the world, of people, and of life. Loevinger’s theory consists of nine stages of the development of the ego, a term that describes personal development without the negative connotation of the word in common use.

Particularly relevant for projects is that the Loevinger system is a good indicator of a person’s individual and social maturity. Therefore, as a concept, it is useful for understanding the types of skills that are valuable for project management and leadership. Table 2-1 provides a summary of Loevinger’s social maturation stages.

A key point to understand in the Loevinger system, and indeed with most considerations related to personal development, is that moving into each new stage represents a fundamental shift in how a person perceives the world. This maturation in perspective has a profound effect on how we interpret our own actions and the actions of those around us, as well as the things to which we pay attention.

In terms of projects, personal development is not related to age or intelligence. Of course, a certain level of intelligence and the attainment of particular qualifications are required to be a project manager in a contemporary organization. But our capability to master the challenging contemporary project environment springs more from personal development.

Table 2-1. Loevinger’s Nine Stages of Ego Development

Personal development evolves through our experiences of life and the choices we make when faced with challenges or opportunities for growth. The key issues are character and how we learn to see and interact with the world around us.

Several of the Loevinger stages in the higher areas of maturity are most relevant for project management. These stages—self-aware, conscientious, individualistic, and autonomous—are those most likely to be encountered among adults in the workplace. The transitions involved in these stages are particularly relevant to project management.

The self-aware stage is a transitional stage in which we begin to see issues from different perspectives. Such a development is critical for work as a project manager, but this is only the beginning.

In making the transition to the conscientious stage, an individual becomes more self-reflective. He or she can perceive relationships according to emotions and motives rather than simply by actions. The conscientious stage is also marked by the development of a personal morality. In this context, “morality” refers to the norms of interaction with others, and would include, for example, fairness and tolerance of differences.

Development into the individualistic stage is characterized by seeing greater value in relationships. Another significant development is that an individual begins to tolerate paradox. This development continues more fully into the autonomous stage, in which an individual becomes comfortable with inner conflict. This development is critical to enable a person to make choices and commitments while experiencing internal conflict and ambiguity. An individual in the autonomous stage can proceed effectively in the face of ambiguity and inner conflict, while someone in a lower stage will likely experience considerable distress or may even get stuck. A more mature individual will have the important skills needed to apply to ambiguity on projects.

Maturation through these developmental states brings with it a growing ability to tolerate and master the significant issues associated with contemporary projects. Many of the issues that cause trouble on contemporary projects require a corresponding personal maturity in the individualistic and autonomous stages. We expect a high level of skill in the project manager, and ego stage maturity should clearly be on the list.

But let’s not place the need for maturity entirely on the shoulders of the project manager. When we have a team composed of individuals who have a high degree of ego development, the project can benefit tremendously.

Research backs up this linkage. The maturity level through the stages of personal development is directly linked to managerial abilities. Individuals who have developed to the autonomous stage have been demonstrated to perform better as managers.

One study specifically examined the performance of organizational development (OD) consultants according to their stage of personal development. An OD consultant is commonly engaged to lead an organization through change. We can use this performance as a valuable surrogate for project managers because these two groups have much in common in their work. Both OD consultants and project managers are agents of change, and both have assignments that are temporary. This research demonstrated a strong correlation between the stage of personal development and effective performance as an OD consultant.

Here is the payoff to our exploration of personal development. By understanding the maturity and interpersonal milestones attained through developmental stages, we can better understand what is needed for success as a project manager.

The “Other” Intelligences

Descartes’ influence also extended to the understanding of human intelligence. For decades the dominant emphasis on intelligence was the measure of cognitive intelligence, or IQ. Furthermore, the rational approach to human behavior was seen in cognitive psychology, which viewed the brain as a computer.

In the last two decades, this singular view of intelligence has given way to the belief that multiple intelligences reside in the brain. As stated by Dr. Paul Eslinger, Professor of Neurology at the Penn State University College of Medicine, “The human brain and potential is not just what we’re able to think but what we’re able to feel, and how we’re able to integrate these two streams of experience and knowledge.”

With this growing understanding of the brain, two other constructs of intelligence become key: emotional intelligence (EI) and moral intelligence (MI).

Emotional Intelligence

One of the most significant issues on projects—and one that is typically discounted—is emotion. Most organizations suppress the consideration of emotion in the workplace. In terms of projects, we are not talking about gushing emotional sharing, but rather the typical emotional component of humans functioning in daily life.

The degree or stage of an individual’s emotional intelligence is also a measure of maturity and as such is strongly related to the skills needed for project management. Table 2-2 presents the five elements of emotional intelligence.

An individual’s degree of emotional maturity is strongly related to managerial and leadership abilities—in other words, the ability to manage and execute projects. This linkage makes sense because so many of the issues involved in making a project a success involve the “soft” issues or “people” issues. Research has shown that higher levels of emotional intelligence in the project manager are linked to improved project performance. Individuals with higher levels of emotional intelligence have also been shown to be more effective in the matrix organizations that many companies use to organize projects.

Table 2-2. Goleman’s Five Elements of Emotional Intelligence

Moral Intelligence

Morality is a topic that has become increasingly difficult to discuss in the public arena. Although the topic is intertwined with religion, and religion certainly incorporates morality, the two subjects differ. We can address morality as distinct from religion or imposing certain values of right and wrong on others.

Let us focus on the meaning of morality as ethics: treating people with respect and dignity. Maturing in morality is growing in the ability to value oneself and others. In this light, morality is the capacity to perceive interests beyond our own and the ability to act with care, fairness, and even selflessness when interacting with others.

Moral intelligence is closely related to emotional intelligence; recent research has clearly demonstrated a strong link between moral reasoning and emotions. It is helpful to understand that a subset of emotions is moral emotions. These guide our decision-making when we face a situation with outcomes that may cause good or harm to ourselves and others.

Maturity in the Organization

Here is a compelling thought: not only do we need project managers and team members with mature emotional and moral intelligence, but we also need organizations that are similarly mature. We need organizations that value differing perspectives and tolerate ambiguity, and that have healthy systems for processing emotions.

Recent decades have seen outstanding developments in the project management profession toward systems of project management maturity; that is, organizational processes that progress in maturity. One example of these systems is the Capability Maturity Model and its successor, the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. The Project Management Institute (PMI) has adopted the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®) as the standard for its maturity model. CMMI and OPM3® provide guides for the process skills needed for increasing levels of maturity for project work.

Making the effort to grow in process maturity is an excellent way for an organization to improve project success. Yet, we now see that complex, contemporary projects also demand other kinds of maturity from both individuals and organizations: maturity in ego and maturity in emotional intelligence.

Maturity Makes for Better Projects

We have covered a lot of ground on how humans think, how we develop and mature, and how our outlook on the world affects the performance of projects. These insights offer significant benefits for improving success on contemporary projects. Through natural stages of human development into more advanced stages, and by applying an appropriate worldview, we can gain in mastery of the skills that promote effective project management.

The state of maturity we seek is not just for individuals but for the project organization as a whole. This state can be achieved to a significant degree through the group values, attitudes, and processes that an organization establishes.

A practical strategy is to screen for project managers who have reached the autonomous stage of development. As part of the job description, the organization can include the role of facilitating work and processes that incorporate the autonomous stage.

For example, the project manager can take the lead at the start of the project by presenting to the group the core belief that ambiguity is not only acceptable but inevitable in the early project stages. While various stakeholders and team members may initially feel uncomfortable with this concept, signaling this belief as a group norm offers a much better chance that it will become reality.

To a certain extent, humans progress in maturity when the external environment prompts and supports growth. This is why it is important for project organizations to value and support the Kantian worldview and the emotional life of a project.

Several important themes run through this worldview and the corresponding developmental milestones. When these milestones are achieved, they significantly further the mastery of contemporary project situations. These milestones are:

• Ability to master emotions internally—to respond effectively to the inevitable challenges of complex projects

• Ability to effectively read and respond to the emotions of others—to use emotional energy in a positive way, as a team

• Ability to tolerate paradox, ambiguity, and anxiety—to proceed confidently while the team converges toward resolution of these issues on the project

• Ability to resolve issues creatively—to apply new ways of thinking so that the project objectives can be achieved efficiently

• Willingness to grow—to accept the challenges of projects and see in them opportunities to develop in maturity.

These are all highly desirable traits in project managers and teams on contemporary projects. It is beneficial to have a project manager who is mature in these developmental areas, as well as for the project organization to value growth in these areas. This breakthrough thinking, energy, and teamwork are often sorely needed on projects with high expectations.

As important as it is to have effective tools and skills, the ability to perform well on contemporary projects includes an important “inner game” as well.

We began this chapter with the observation that project work is an intuitive and natural component of human existence. Likewise, progression through stages of maturity and the innate pull to grow are also instinctive parts of our human condition. We were born to perform projects and to manage projects, and we were born to master increasing complexity on projects.

These are the elements that form the foundation for the techniques of right-brain project management. To continue our exploration, let us now turn our attention to the ultimate project resource that makes it all possible: the brain.