Perfectionism

“A great thing done is never perfect, but that doesn’t mean it fails” – Tao Te Ching

I’ve been working recently with an organization in Japan that is trying to improve their project management capability, but not making a lot of progress. The parent company has established the processes for running projects, but within Japan, they have been slow to adopt these standards.

My Japanese counterpart on this project shared an observation with me. He said that in general the Japanese are not quick to adopt new things blindly. Everything from manufacturing to religion, they make their own first. At the same time, he said that is probably why the Japanese are willing to accept different ways of doing things.

Do you think there’s only one way to run a project? Or, are you more flexible? One thing I like about an agile approach is that it encourages experimentation and even failure in order to quickly figure out what’s going to work best. It may not be perfect, but it will solve the problem it was meant to solve.