Strategic Project Management Made Simple: Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams

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Question #1—What Are We Trying to Accomplish and Why?

Management by Objectives works—if you know the Objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.

—Peter Drucker

FIGURE 5.1 The LogFrame Matrix Helps Organize Objectives in Relationship to Each Other

Shoot for the Moon

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely by the end of the decade. America’s grandest achievement was realized in July 1969 when Apollo 11 completed man’s first lunar landing. This was also a grand moment for me, the youngest accredited reporter at Cape Canaveral covering this historic event for a Seattle underground hippie newspaper, The Helix. Barely old enough to shave, I sat in the wooden press bleachers among a row of journalists from the world’s leading publications, including Time Magazine, Le Monde, the New York Times . . . and The Helix!

The evening before launch, the press was escorted to just 50 yards from the majestic Saturn V launch vehicle. Being so near this 363-foot tall triumph of technology and imagination bathed in bright Xenon spotlights made me proud to live in a nation with such a daring vision and go-for-it spirit.

The countdown proceeded through the night and into the next morning until the final seconds . . . 3-2-1. Ignition! The massive engines erupted in a fiery plume and the rocket slowly ascended. Even ...