PM-502, Management Characteristics of Successful Project Managers
A. Session No: 1, Part One.	Short Title: The Ronin as a Metaphor for Project Manager

C.  Learning Objectives: The student will study the metaphor of the Japanese Ronin as a new breed of manager that can successfully transcend the rapid transition taking place in industrial society.
D.  Reading Assignment: Potter: all.
E: Session Description: With change comes chaos, uncertainty and confusion.  This session will study the methods of successfully doing “ronin” and will prepare the student to use the model of the Ronin to bridge the gap between the industrial era to the information society.  In times of change, the ronin archetype emerges.  The Ronin can handle the ambiguity unavoidable during such in-between periods, and those who employ new strategies and new definitions of success will be the winners.
F: Point One: 
a) Question: What serious problems have developed in the work place since the peak of industrial growth in the early 1970's?
b) Key Point: Productivity declined; unemployment increased; people were increasingly discontent.
c) Instructor Notes: Capable workers began colliding with a feudal work system; highly educated, ambitious, and talented people (baby boomers) trying to squeeze into the upper levels of a shrinking corporate pyramid.
G: Point Two:
a) Question: What has given rise to the project management profession?
b) Key Point: A new breed of discipline is emerging, project management (or Ronin).
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) Ronin is a metaphor based on a Japanese word for lordless samurai (optimal career strategy for the next decade).
2) Guided by a personally defined code of adaptability, autonomy and excellence.
3) Employ a career strategy grounded in a premise of rapid change.
4) Properly managed, project managers can be catalysts.
5) Ronan can stand out starkly and regarded with drive and suspicion.
6) Project managers play a key role in the transition of the corporate feudal society to the information age.

H: Point Three:
a) Question: What sort of life do you want to be living when you grow up?
b) Key Point: Have we assumed that the life created by following a linear path up the corporate ladder toward affluence would satisfy all of us?
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) We likely want something more than affluence and possessions.
2) The change can be characterized in one word: diversity.
3) We also want more freedom from the economic power of corporate plants and office bureaucracies.
4) We want to feel that our work, and thus we as individuals, are important (challenge, growth and fulfillment).
5) The sluggish economy limits our upward mobility.
6) Organizations respond: centralize decisions, authority, services, and planning.
7) Out of this chaos, a new breed is emerging: the Ronin (Have Gun Will Travel).
8) Ronin advance along non-linear, irregular career paths; gaining more experience and options multiply.
I: Point Four:
a) Question: How does career feudalism diminish the personal power of individuals?
b) Key Point: Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies (Albert Camus).  Career feudalism is a way of organizing work that diminishes the personal power of the worker in three ways.
c) Instructor Notes: 1) First is the division of labor and standardized jobs (career specialization).
2) Second, not having a mobility to shift career tracks, becoming a vassal, becoming indentured.
3) Third is the demand or absolute fealty, absolute loyalty to the company, which is often more important than performance as a criterion for advancement.
4) The ultimate paradox:
Individuals Are:			Organizations Demand:
  Ambiguous				  Clarity
  Unpredictable			  Predictability
  Imperfect				  Perfection
  Unique				  Standardization
  Emotional				  Reason
  Subjective				  Analysis
5) Signs of job burnout (stressful changes)
a) Intellectual disruption
b) Emotional disruption
c) Social disruption
d) Physical disruption
e) Spiritual disruption
6) Stress and burnout - Uncontrollability ----> Threat ----> Fight of Flight Syndrome ----> Stress ----> Stress related disorders.
7) A word about motivation (increase performance)
a) Gaining a positive (positive motivation)
b) Avoiding a negative (negative motivation)
c) Casualty: - If - Then
d) Uncontrollability - learned helplessness
8) Empowering employees (how to do it)
a) Self knowledge - (physically, intellectually, emotionally)
b) Stress management - (what situations trigger response)
c) Decision making - (learn and use a decision model)
d) Skill building - (just-in-time skills)
e) Thought control and mood management - (mental discipline)
f) Detached concern (higher-order level of mental control)
g) Provide “good work” (can win at).
h) Goals - (navigate thru decisions)
i) Feedback - (progress toward goal)
j) Participation - (people achieve more when they set their own goals)
k) Acknowledgment - (reinforcement of progress).

J: Point Five:
a) Question: Have we been “socialized” to be what we are today?  Can we change to be something different?  Can we do Ronin?
b) Key Point: Bujutsu - Martial arts are ways of disciplines of moral advancement - mature, balanced and integrated person, in harmony with his social and natural environment.  Achievement of ultimate, remote goals, far beyond the work of mere combat.
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) We have socially implanted self-directing mechanisms likened to a map or a template - how, when, where to act.
2) Our internal gyroscope can be a liability in times requiring rapid adaptation.
3) A new type of person must emerge - the autonomous directed person - the modern Ronin or Project Manager.
4) Seeking excellence - men and women will become good builders as a result of building well, and bad builders as a result of building badly (Aristotle).
5) Like the acorn, we have an innate tendency in the direction of the best condition of which we are capable.
6) Understanding the Golden Mean - Continuation of possible actions between two extremes.  Excellence is that place somewhere in the middle that is right for the situation.
7) Understanding Freedom - We cannot be free if our actions, and our attitudes are bound by external constraints.  Autonomy requires that a range of alternatives be available.
8) Understanding wisdom - Theoretical wisdom - which we acquire from education (universal truths).  Practical wisdom - Involves attending to all the circumstances that may relate to an action; how to act in a particular situation.
9) The Five Enemies - we are doomed to relive our unlearned lessons -
	a) Fear - Without risking, we can meet few challenges, pursue few dreams, learn little.
	b) Confidence - Although confidence releases us from fear, it also blinds us - we forget!
	c) Power - Innately satisfying and delicious - becomes an end instead of a means.
	d) Complacency - Creeps in on cats feet as self-satisfaction lulling us into smugness.
	e) The Shadow - Our habitual extreme - our personal weaknesses - we must observe ourselves, learn your tendencies.
10. Schools - socialize youth to function well within societies and its institutions.  Need to change schools to educate flexible and autonomous people.

K: Point Six:
a) Question: Was Palladin, played by Richard Boone, merely a gun fighter?
b) Key Point: Like Palladin, the Modern Ronin, or Project Manager, use their skills as a ticket to ride.
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) Palladin was a sophisticated multi-dimensional strategist
2) Generic skills, those essential to all fields, are the most powerful.  Self-managing, self-knowing, deciding, transforming, and communicating are skills of adaptability and on going development.
3) Manage Thyself - Doing ronin meant struggling to become ones own master, to direct one’s self.
4) Motivation, goals, small steps, self-acknowledgment, avoiding perfectionism, incremental commitment, and creating your own structure.
5) Know Thyself - Man ignorant of self, creates his own misery.
a) Observation and data collection
b) Occupational temperament
c) Use memories of the past
d) What do you like to do
e) Analyze your data
f) Analyze your skills
g) Find work that fits
h) Explore alternatives
6) Transform dissatisfaction - For all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been.”
a) Make it a game
b) Seek challenges
c) Compete with yourself
d) Use the next-time rule
e) Find a need and fill it.
f) Identify needs - be alert
g) Make friends at work
h) Create balance - avoid extremes
i) Change your thinking
j) Today’s job is a stepping stone.
L. Point Seven:
a) Question: How adaptable and changeable are you?
b) Key Point: The Book of Changes (I. Ching) is often considered the oriental apotheosis of adaptation, of flexibility.  The theme of this work is that everything in existence can be a source of conflict, of danger, .. if encountered directly at the point of its maximum strength...  By the same token, any and every occurrence can be dealt with by approaching it from the right angle and in the proper manner — that is, at its source, before it can develop full power, or from the sides (the vulnerable “flanks of a tiger”).  If by chance, the frontal impact of events should over take a man, the I. Ching advises him to avoid him to avoid any direct opposition and adopt the attitude of “riding along” or “flowing” with the tide of events, thus keeping slightly ahead of or on top of that massive force, like any other concentrated force in creation, will inevitably exhaust itself once its concentration has been dissipated.
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) There are always alternatives 
2) Strategy: Move indirectly.  Avoid the linear strategy
3) Strategy: Concentrated Dispersion
4) Strategy: Maintain the Initiative - Create your own world
5) Strategy: Concentrate on the Key Factors for Success
6) Strategy: Ride Trends; Avoid Fads
7) Strategy: Get visibility
8) Strategy: Get Connected
M. Point Eight:
a) Question: Is change occurring at a pace that is no longer manageable?
b) Key Point: Change is inevitable; no situation is permanent.  “You cannot be a red samurai until you do ronin seven times.  You must have seven falls and stand up eight times.”
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) Uncertainty and feelings of loss of control are threatening.
2) Its natural to dig in and attempt to regain control.
3) When faced with change, Ronin dramatically differ from other careerists.  Ronin do not fear change, running from it or clinging to the past.  Ronin thrive on change.
4) Learning to manage stress - stress is a beneficial and essential life process.
a) Be prepared
b) Relax
c) Build community
d) Think powerfully
5) Develop your Zen Mind.
a) Safe keeping self vs Risk-Taking self
b) Detached concern
c) Be here now - The Strawberry
d) Be yielding
e) Accept paradox
f) Shift your view point
g) Laugh a lot.
N.  Point Nine:
	a) Question: What will it take for corporations to remain competitive thru the next decade?
b) Key Point: The corporations that will succeed and flourish in the times ahead will be those that have mastered the art of change.
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) Traditional organizations will change to promote innovation.
2) The environment of the organization makes the biggest difference in the amount of innovative activity.  Small groups of people.
3) The corporate ronin can be a company asset — Innovation and new products is not a step-by-step, carefully planned linear process
4) Develop the mind of a strategist.
5) The corporate ronin
6) Managing for Excellence
a) Manager as coach
b) Create an arena for competition
c) Coaching with TASC +
Tell, Ask, Specify, Check Performance + Acknowledge
T      A        S       C      + Acknowledge