So here's the second post… the Long Game vs. the Short Game in Project Management. Its been my experience that many organizations suffer from myopia. The reality is that as a professional in Project Management and Management in general the role we must play requires us being able to clearly see "The Road Ahead" for good or ill and travel the road efficiently and effectively.
Its not an easy issue to tackle. Individuals who suffer from "management myopia" typically speaking, lack the ability to discern that it is a problem. When someone brings it up an issue that requires forethought or foresight they dismiss the issue as "nebulous" or "chasing ghosts". So what to do?
I really don’t have much of an answer for this but here it goes…
… I try and explain the problem in analogies.
"The Long Game"… problem here is I don’t play golf so I will put in a MMA terms. The long game is the "strikers" game. You engage with your opponent a distance. You read his movement, look for weaknesses, opportunities to strike your foe for maximum effect all at a distance. The skill sets used rely heavily on seeing everything with little or no contact while remaining maneuverable so as to predict or by your efforts lead your adversary into a situation where you can win the exchange. Mistakes can be costly, catastrophic mistakes lead to an early KO, but small mistakes say misjudging a punch but keeping your guard up allow you to take a little more and may allow you to reposition for a solid counter, because of distance you have a greater margin of error.
"The Short Game" or "Grapplers" is similar in that it’s a struggle/contest in MMA, but fundamentally different. Instead of reading at a distance you are intimately entwined with your opponent. The reading is done in subtle shifts in weight as the both of you jockey for position and in the brief instances between knees, fists, and elbows fly at your noggin. There is little time to try and predict movement and the stakes are higher when you try to apply your energy to win the engagement. In the "Short Game" the margins are smaller and against a skilled opponent its one mistake and that’s game. In less than it takes to blink your eyes you find yourself in a short arm bar or a triangle choke and all the pain, torture, and agony you faced as you trained and prepared for this fight get flushed down the tubes and all that is left is to go home broken and defeated and possibly crying.
That sounds awfully grim right? It is. Getting in the ring is grim business and when you’re the project manager or a manager in charge of projects that will play a heavy party in your organizations financial well being, well that’s grim business too.
SO does that mean I should focus on my "Long Game" and ignore my "Short Game", does one have more value than the other?
The answer is simple no. You need both.
If your "Long Game" is good you can defeat your opponents from afar without them touching you, but typically you face adversaries who are more than up to the challenge. The idea here is you wouldn’t have taken the risk to fight if the guy was a complete tomato can the purse/rewards wouldn't be worth the time.
So that means you have to leverage your "Long Game" to pound on your opponent softening him up so that if and when it comes down to the "Short Game" you can defeat him readily as you increase your margins in the aggregate and improve your probability for victory.
In business speak it means you move "strategically" (Long Game) and get buy in, solve the big problems, position yourself for maximum effectiveness ahead of time. Eventually you are faced with the "tactical" (Short Game) realities of your operational problem space, here because you set up the problem with your "strategy" you have more options "tactically" to finish and reap the rewards of success.
BTW the clip is from UFC 77 Anderson Silva a Muay Thai/BJJ fighter "Striker and a Grappler" highly skillful at both and he happens to be the champion in a very competitive bracket.
- Optimal Optimus
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