CHAPTER 2The Seven Characteristics of Successful Projects

I OFTEN USE PATRICK LENCIONI’S Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Jossey-Bass, 2002) as a way to illustrate how teams work (or don’t work) in the real world. I once mentioned Lencioni’s book during a conversation with a local engineering leadership educator. Her reaction was different; to her, the book is too negative. She thinks he should have written about what leaders should do, not what they shouldn’t do.

The statement made increasing sense as I gave it some thought. I have long felt engineers and technical people are trained to be negative. As an engineer myself, I see that we spend much of our time looking out for what may go wrong, and, even when things seem to be working well, success ...

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