CHAPTER 1
The Art of Strategic Failure
You probably won’t see American Movie Classics run a festival of “Great Project Management Movies” any time soon, but if they did, Ron Howard’s motion picture Apollo 13, based on the real-life story, would be a natural candidate. Faced with a potentially disastrous accident, project teams overcome one potentially fatal barrier after another to bring the crew safely back to the earth, guided by mission director Gene Kranz’ mantra, “Failure is not an option.”
But, of course, failure is an option. Sometimes, in fact, it looks like the most likely option of all. The odds in the actual Apollo 13 disaster were ...
